Before the Rooster Crowed: Mark 14:66-72

While Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came by. She saw him warming himself by the fire, looked closely at him, and said:

"You also were with that Nazarene, Jesus."

A servant girl. Not a soldier, not a priest—a servant girl. And Peter crumbled.

"I don't know or understand what you're talking about," he said, and moved away toward the entrance.

The rooster crowed once. Peter did not notice.

The servant girl saw him again and said to those standing around, "This fellow is one of them."

Again he denied it.

After a little while, others said to Peter, "Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean."

His accent betrayed him. Every word he spoke marked him as one of Jesus' followers. There was no escape in lies.

Peter began to call down curses, and he swore to them, "I don't know this man you're talking about!"

Don't know this man. The one he had called the Christ. The one he had promised to die for. The one whose feet he had followed for three years. I don't know him.

Immediately the rooster crowed the second time.

Then Peter remembered. Jesus' words crashed back: "Before the rooster crows twice you will disown me three times."

He broke down and wept.

Mark uses a word that suggests violent emotion—Peter threw himself down, collapsed in grief, sobbing in the courtyard while somewhere inside the building Jesus bled from the blows of soldiers. Peter had done exactly what he swore he would never do. His loudest promises had become his deepest failure.

The fire still burned. The rooster fell silent. And somewhere in the darkness, the man who would become a rock was shattered into pieces.