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The most common rooster crowing meaning is that it’s the morning. When roosters crow before sunrise, it’s to let the flock know that it’s time to scare off predators and forage for food.

The “head rooster” will always be the first one to crow during a rooster wake up call. If there are other roosters in the flock, they will join in after.

There is still a lot unknown about the question, “why do roosters crow in the morning?” It mostly has to do with their internal clock that lets them know to crow at the same time every morning.

Our reading today ends with the rooster crying but it occurs to me. We need to go backwards to find out how we got here. If you were with us last week, Jesus and his friends disciples extended community gathered for a meal and she says washed their feet as a representation of overturning the powers of this world, the hierarchies and structures of this world and demonstrating to his followers. His disciples how they might love and serve and live in this world and a way that is counter to the Empire of this world.

That was The beginning of chapter 13.

What follows is generally referred to as Jesus’ farewell discourse. Jesus speaks of his betrayal and Judas goes off into the night. Peter says he would give his life in place of Jesus’ and Jesus tells him Peter will betray him before the rooster crows. There are some lovely and important things said in the following chapters.

At the end of chapter 14. Jesus says to disciples get up. We’re leaving this place. Which seems to be the same as “welp, I guess we should be going” in a Midwestern goodbye because he continues talking per chapter 15, 16 and 17.

At the start of 18 which we didn’t read, Jesus and the disciples go to a garden Judas returns with soldiers and guards and Pharisees. They say they’re looking for Jesus and he says I am he so they bind him up but he seems like he’s just prepared to walk with them to what is to come next. It’s just an interesting note, but there’s no kiss in this text. We’re so used to Judas betraying Jesus with a kiss, but that isn’t in John’s gospel. There is however Simon Peter with a sword cutting off a slave’s ear.

It has been an incredibly long night.

If we were to look at Peter up until the point that we read together this morning, we would see him as someone who was all in who was totally committed. Who is willing to kill, well maim, for Jesus. Who declares? He is prepared to die for Jesus in place of Jesus to take the bullet as it were. And I think we are supposed to believe him. If we hadn’t heard the next part of the story, we would believe him. I’m certain he believes it.

I’m sure it’s why he followed Jesus while he followed the soldiers where they followed where the Jesus was going. Why he saw it entrance into the courtyard.

Whether Peter was trembling and fear or what they might do to him as a follower or whether he was being strategic and his movements and his answers, whether he just was doing whatever he needed to do to be close to Jesus, whether he Decided at Jesus’ arrest and hoarding the idea of a violent response that Peter had given. Whether Peter had decided in that moment that he was no longer a disciple of Jesus.

I don’t know if it matters, because I think they all mean the same thing. Peter had lost sight of the light. Peter was living in the darkness and the ways of the Empire and the ways that the Empire functioned functions, with deceit violence death. Peter was living in the night. Then the rooster crowed.

I think there is a particular kind of evil. That is when the Empire is casual about its violence and war and destruction and death that it wields.

And I think that one of its goals is to chip away at the rest of us to leave us in fear or hopelessness, vengeance or deceit thinking there is nothing we can do or the only things we can do are use the tools of the Empire to bring its destruction and it never works. In our Lenten study

In our Latin study, we were talking about some of the spiritual practices of Saint Ignatius. What has become the practice of the Jesuits and one of the things we didn’t talk about was Ignatius ideas about you are always standing under one of two standards flags. If you were it was the 1400s. They were all always at war you have to choose whether you will stay up under the standard of the Empire or the standard of Christ. There is no middle ground

Kelly and I talked less than a year ago. I guess about whether or not you me us whatever need to be in a position to move people across state lines to find other homes or houses or help keep people safe and in that conversation. Kelly suggested that I might need to vocally comply with powers that mean to give me appearance of compliance. Perhaps a strategic move? Not unlike Peter’s making a decision to stay close enough to the Empire to maybe in the future do the good work that needs to be done. Problem is and I told her then. There’s nothing I can say in the future. There’s no good work left that I could do I could not be encouragement to the community and complicit in the empire

The late Tony Campolo told a story that he had heard from a friend over dinner that his friend had heard from an old soldier.

WHAT DID YOU DO?

A friend of mine told me about being at dinner with a veteran of World War II. As they talked, the man related a story of what it was like during the famous Battle of the Bulge. He described how one foggy, rainy morning his commanding officer commanded his unit to go out and shoot any of the enemy that were lying about wounded. Of course, this did not fit in with the Geneva Convention, but given the confusion and disarray of a battle in which there were no clearly drawn lines, the officer believed that it had to be done. In this battle the rules had been abandoned, and prisoners were not to be taken.

The veteran then told about coming upon a German soldier sitting on the ground with his back against a tree. He wasn’t wounded. He was just too tired to go on. He was totally dissipated. There was nothing left in the way of will power. He was too listless and tired to resist anything or anyone.

The man telling the story said, “As I aimed my gun at him, he asked me to wait a moment. Speaking in English, he told me he wanted a chance to pray before he died. I immediately sat down with him as I realized that he was a Christian brother. We talked about our families. I showed him pictures of my children. He showed me photographs of his family. We read some Scripture together. It was wonderful.”

My friend asked, “Well? What did you do?” When the man didn’t answer, my friend kept pressing. “What did you do? What did you do?”

The man said, “I stood up, aimed the gun at him, and said, “You’re a Christian and I’m a Christian. I’ll see you in heaven.’ And I shot him!”

~ Tony Campolo

I have never been in that position. That’s a decision I’ve never had to make. I have never held in my hands the ability to offer life or will death. And I know what I hope I would choose. Because I imagine the struggle that  Peter felt and the hours and days that followed. And I imagine how that soldier struggled with himself and his conscience and his God in the years to come. Just as we will continue to struggle with how to care for the vulnerable in our community in the days and weeks and months to come.

What I do know is that the call of the rooster is not a sound of despair or hopelessness or guilt. It is the call to morning before the sun rises to get up to get ready to know the light is coming that this night will pass

The rooster doesn’t crawl or cry out because things are ending because everything is starting again. It isn’t a cry from a rooster that marks the end of Peter’s ministry, but just the beginning chance for him to decide again and again and again under first

And Peter will have to decide thousands or more times under whose standard he’s going to be work and move. Sometimes he’s going to get it right. And sometimes so are we. but he will again and again get a second change to get it right.

Because we know the cry of the rooster isn’t the ending of things. It’s only the beginning.

The rooster crows, a new day begins, God isn’t finished with us yet.