Peter, Come Home

The last eight weeks I have been slogging through a tough, fifteen-week sermon series in the book of 1^st Peter.  I haven’t enjoyed it.  1^st Peter is a bit odd to preach through.  I didn’t think it would be.  I like the book devotionally.  I just haven’t enjoyed it pedagogically or homiletically.  This fact has been weighing on me.  I actually told my associate pastor, “I don’t like 1^st Peter.”  That seems weird for a pastor to say.     

However, I may have caught a second wind at the half way mark of this first Petrine epistle by way of my 11 year old daughter.  Taking her to school yesterday she asked me to put on Mumford and Sons.  I obliged.  Then she told me about a dream she had.  In her dream the band Mumford and Sons had a woman singing back-up harmonies.  Then she told me that in her dream they were singing a song about Peter (the one in the Bible).  I asked her if she could remember what the song was like.  She couldn’t.  She did remember the title of the song though.  “Peter, Come Home”.  Brilliant.  I had been praying for that same thing.  I just wanted this letter of his to fit, to make sense, to “come home.” 

I felt oddly comforted by this vague dream of my daughter’s.  Then I did a strange thing.  I wrote a song for her, and me, I guess.  I’m not a musician.  I’m not even a poet.  That did not stop me from writing my daughter’s dream.  The rough, folksy, acoustic, wordy, reflective, and harmonic lyrical stylings of Mumford and Sons and the Avette Brothers banged around in my mind as I wrote.

So, I guess I’ll ask you to listen to this song.  It’s about Peter- A disjointed man who loved Jesus and wrote a disjointed letter about Jesus’ love.  I’ll need you to provide the music.  And however you play the music in your mind, make sure someone in your band has an unkempt beard that may or may not smell like a craft beer.  (And if one of you musician types want to take a crack at it, I'd love to make my daughter's dream come true.)

 Peter, Come Home

In the dark you seek in vain

Casting bad seed.
O, fruitless pain
What will she say
When it’s empty again
And you’re hungry for more
Than what fills nets
So lost and poor
Of all but regrets
From a life you chose
With this void of hopes
Casting yourself like Jonah
In your mind, swallowed
By sea and creature to go…

             Simon, come home

            To this place of calm
             Seas and love.  Come sleep
             In the arms of the steady One

Haggard and deprived

Of humility and pride
You clean in vain
A web stretched and frayed
By the futility you claimed
On dark Galilee
But new day is burning
Hearts through words
Spoken by light
From One you never knew
You were looking for
This One who found you
With a voice of thunder
And shalom to be…

  Simon, come home

              To this place of calm
              Seas and love.  Come sleep
              In the arms of the steady One

This narrow street

Trodden, rock-bled feet
Roll on to mountain peak
You are found and lost
In bright glory and fire
To be quiet and shine
As you follow and lead
Bruised knees, granite seas
Of confession and denial
And it’s not you on trial
Who eat food never caught
On shores of redemption
When I’ll send you to feed
I know you love me…

              Simon, come home

              To this place of calm
              Seas and love.  Come sleep
              In the arms of the steady One
            
             Peter, come home
             To this place of calm
             Seas and love.  Go seek.
             For My Kingdom’s coming home