The Secret Life of Mrs. Saint Peter: Imagining Between the Lines of Scripture

Simon Peter’s wife is never mentioned directly in the Gospels. We don’t even know her name, but we can imagine what a roller coaster ride of a life this woman experienced. She had lived an ordinary life as a fisherman’s wife in first century Galilee until Peter brought home a traveling rabbi, who healed her feverish, widowed mother. (Mark 1:29 – 31) Did Mrs. Peter put her faith in Jesus that day?

After that, she knew Jesus was someone special, but then Pete took off for months at a time and didn’t phone or Skype. He stopped fishing for fish and started fishing for people…and who paid the bills?

This continued for several years until Peter nearly got himself arrested skulking in a Jerusalem courtyard while Jesus was on trial. How did Mrs. Pete deal with a grief-stricken, shame-ridden husband…who then turned around in less than a weekend and claimed his dead teacher was alive? Just when life was going to return to normal, because Pete started fishing again (John 21), the risen Jesus gave him a new assignment:  be a shepherd to God's sheep.

Was Mrs. Peter in the upper room at Pentecost? (Acts 2) Did they have to pry her off the floor when the Holy Spirit filled her husband and he started boldly preaching to thousands of foreign visitors? How did she feel when Peter defied the Sanhedrin’s order to stop proclaiming Jesus and he spent his first night in jail? (Acts 4)

Fisherman mosaic at outdoor altar at Church of the Primacy of Peter Tabgha in Galilee Israel
http://catholichotdish.com/the-pastors-page/peter-takes-the-plunge-of-faith/

After keeping a kosher home and a separated Jewish lifestyle for decades, was she stunned when Peter bunked in the home of a Roman centurion and ate at his table? (Acts 10 – 11) Did she enjoy accompanying her husband on his ministry travels? (1 Corinthians 9:5) Did it make up for the three lonely years when Peter had left her and wandered with Jesus?

The imagination is not stretched too far in saying Peter’s first epistle reveals his family life. When he urged newborn believers to crave spiritual milk, was he fondly remembering his own infants nursing hungrily? (1 Peter 2:2)

Peter chose Sarah as the biblical example of a wife’s submission without fear—Abraham had selfishly handed Sarah to a king to save his own skin. (1 Peter 3:5 – 6) Was Peter remembering everything his wife put up with during his open-mouth-insert-foot days?

Peter’s description of a beautiful Christian woman reflects decades of living with his wife. It’s not about fancy clothes and fussy hair and sparkly jewelry, he wrote. It’s about the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, valuable in God’s eyes. (1Peter 3:3 – 4) He urged husbands to be considerate and respectful of their wives; after all, they—and Mrs. Peter—are joint heirs of the grace of life.

What is the silent Mrs. Peter trying to tell me? Maybe that in the seasons of life, a woman may at times be married to a fisherman, an unemployed wanderer, a crowd-wowing evangelist, or a jailbird…and they’re all the same man. No matter what she thinks she knows about her guy, only God can envision what he will become with a little patience and a lot of Holy Spirit power and polish.

When I doubt God can change and use someone close to me, I will try to remember Mrs. Saint Peter.

Beyond the Fab Four

Crash Course 8

            (No, not the Beatles. Not that Fab Four. I mean the Fabulous Four Gospels.)

            The Gospels are not the only place to read about Jesus. The New Testament epistles tell lot about him, too. Peter and John, both disciples and eyewitnesses, wrote five letters between them.

            In his first letter, Peter calls Christ a “lamb without blemish or defect…chosen before the creation of the world… " (1:19 – 20). Only a lamb used in Israel’s sacrificial system would warrant the phrase “without blemish or defect.” Peter understood the significance of Christ’s substitutionary death. Peter also speaks of the resurrection and coming return of Christ (1:3 and 1:7). 

            Peter reveals two intriguing facts about Christ that I haven’t found elsewhere in scripture. (Illuminate me if I’ve missed them.) He says the Spirit of Christ indwelt and guided the prophets who wrote about him in the Hebrew Scriptures (1:11). He also writes that after the Lord’s resurrection, he preached to spirits of the disobedient Noah-era people “in prison.” (3:19 – 20)

            That’s something coming from a fisherman.

            I always imagine Peter excitedly exclaiming, “I was there!” Fifty days after the crucifixion and resurrection, Peter told a Jerusalem crowd, “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of this fact.” (Acts 2:32) Some years later when Peter wrote his second letter, he said, “We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain” (1:18). 

            I was there! I was there!

            John writes in the first few verses of his first epistle about Christ’s incarnation (taking on human flesh). “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of Life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard…(1:1 – 3)

            In less than 75 words, John manages to say in 7 different ways (highlighted by me) that he was an eyewitness, an earwitness, a handwitness of Christ. 

            Handwitness? Sure. Years ago in Fort Worth, Texas, I was beyond excited to shake hands with presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and his wife. I was an eyewitness, earwitness, and handwitness of the future president. 

            How much more memorable for John to have rubbed elbows with the Messiah in a fishing boat, to have passed him the bread at a meal, to have leaned against him as the disciples all reclined in Jewish fashion around the Passover table. To those who were beginning to deny the Incarnation, John could say, “Hold it right there. I touched him. He was really here.”

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
and we beheld His glory,
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth. John 1:14, NKJV