It's the fellow in the fishing boat that has a lesson for us at Easter, not Judas

...as I contemplate the meaning of today’s events 2,000 years ago, I find Peter has the most to teach us. It is Peter who most truly compels our attention as the flawed human in the narrative: not the good or evil figure sleepwalking his way towards fate, but the man with choices who can’t get them right; who oscillates between the inner angel and the demands of the flesh.

It was Peter who, on that Thursday and Friday, most captured the weakness, the sheer hopeless irresoluteness of humanity — fiercely promising one minute to fight and die with Jesus, impetuously slashing off the ear of the High Priest’s servant in the garden, bravely ready to take on all comers. And then, within hours, the same, shivering, cowering, feeble Peter frantically denying to everyone his very association with the criminal. You get the impression he’d hammer in the nails if they asked him.

It’s the same human Peter visible throughout the Gospels. He’s often depicted as bumbling, weak, scared, perennially hopeless, always putting his foot in it. Even after the Resurrection he can’t quite shake this basic frailty. When Jesus calls to him to walk across the water, his faith isn’t strong enough and he fails, again.

And yet we know, too, that Peter was the chosen one, pulled from his fishing boat by Jesus, picked again by Jesus to feed his flock. And that’s the real message in Peter’s bit part in the Easter story. We know we can’t really be like Jesus. We know too we can’t really be like Judas. But in our simple, human hopelessness, and in our mysterious capacity for greatness, we can all aspire to be Peter.

Read Gerard Baker in The Times