Yesterday we looked at Peter’s rash boasting before his denial, and Jesus’ response after the resurrection: “Go and tell the disciples AND Peter…” Jesus saw Peter “on the team” even if Peter didn’t. I’m reminded of a very poignant book on baseball: The Game by Robert Benson. If you like baseball, I strongly recommend. One chapter talks about a minor league player having a bad night, not delivering with runners in scoring position. In the seventh, he strikes out. Robert writes:

WHEN CRUZ GOES DOWN ON STRIKES TO END THE inning, he stands for just a second or two, looking at his bat as though it were the culprit. Then he very calmly bends over at the waist and places the bat gently on the ground. Without straightening up, he takes his batting helmet off and sets it softly beside the bat. He then unfastens the shin guard that he wears on his right leg and lays it in the helmet. Then he pulls his batting gloves off, puts them neatly one on top of the other, and lays them in the helmet as well. As he straightens up, he picks up the helmet and the bat and calmly hands them to the batboy and turns and walks to his position at first base. No runs, no hits, no errors, but then no muttering, no tirades, no whining either. 

There are those who would say that they are not quite sure what to think about a ballplayer who has a cool post-strikeout move that he does when he strikes out to end the inning. After all, it would lead one to suppose that he has struck out quite a bit, perhaps a bit too often even. They are thinking perhaps that he ought to be angry, be remorseful, be something, be anything but placid and calm in the face of defeat. I am thinking that this is a man who has played the game for many years and knows some of what baseball will teach you if you are willing to listen. I am also thinking that I want my kids to learn to do what he does when they strike out. I am also thinking that maybe I should learn some sort of post-strikeout move myself. 

…

[speaking metaphorically] Sometime here in the late innings, I am going to come to the plate again a few times with a chance to do something good for the home team, and I am going to hit a weak ground ball or swing and miss. To think that I am not, that there is not as much chance to fail as there is to succeed, is to pretend that I am somehow different than all the rest of the people in the game. It is to believe that I alone will be able to do what no one else has ever been able to do, and that is to get a hit every time I go to the plate.

…

I hope that from here to the end of the game [of life], whenever it turns out that I am somehow unable to hit the ball cleanly, whenever I am unable to even put the thing in play so that someone will have a chance to come home, whenever I swing and miss, or worse, do not even get the bat off my shoulder and take a swing at the blame thing, that I will have the presence of mind and the grace to simply put my things on the ground and go back out to my position.

In Mark 16, Peter hadn’t yet learned the lesson that Jesus put him on the team knowing he would fail. Life is more like baseball than not – the best hitters in baseball are out more than 70% of the time. Just go back to your position! Maybe Peter had learned it by the time he wrote his letters:

Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5.5 – 7, ESV)