Weather Vanes

These days, I guess that a weather vane on top of a barn or a building mostly serves as a decoration. In the past, though, people relied on a weather vane for more practical purposes. A farmer could look up at that little arrow, twisting and turning with the breeze, and know the direction of the wind. On a particularly windy day, the weather vane might spin in many different directions. Over the centuries, folks have adorned weathervanes with a variety of images, but the most popular by far is the rooster. The next time you see one, I hope you’ll think of our letter’s author: Simeon Peter (1:1).

His parents had named him Simeon, after one of Jacob’s oldest and most volatile sons (Gen 49:6–7). It turned out to be a fitting choice. Simeon by nature is brash, impulsive, self-confident. These traits elevated him to leadership among the disciples, who looked to him as their spokesmen. Simeon alone had walked on the water to Jesus, and was the first to confess Jesus as the Christ. Yet these same traits often led Simeon into many embarrassing blunders—like when he tried to talk Jesus out of going to the cross. If there is one characteristic the gospels highlight in Simeon, it is his instability.

But when Jesus met Simeon, he gave him a new name: “So you are Simon the son of John?” Jesus said, “You shall be called Cephas (John 1:42).” Cephas—Peter—means “rock.” Jesus would make something strong and reliable out of unstable Simeon. This transformation would not happen overnight! It would require a long, halting, and often painful process. The journey from who we are by nature to who Jesus calls us to be by his grace is always this way: the New Testament calls it “sanctification.”

It seems Jesus set Simeon apart to teach us just how inefficient sanctification can be! The New Testament goes out of its way to record Simeon’s slips and falls on the way to becoming Peter. The most notorious incident involved his boasting that all the other disciples might fall away, but he would follow Jesus to death (John 13:37). Jesus knew better: before the rooster crowed three times, Simeon would deny Jesus three times. This incident is the reason why Simeon Peter came to be the patron saint of weather vanes. In the ninth century, the pope decreed that churches affix to their steeples a weather vane featuring a rooster in his memory: it is a monument to instability.

Yet Jesus told Simeon more: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers (Luke 22:31-32).” In Jesus’ hands, Simeon’s humiliating failure would not be the end of his discipleship, but the turning point in his transformation. Jesus would use Simeon’s fall to empty him of the pride and self-reliance that left him so spiritually shaky. Jesus would stabilize Simeon with his redeeming grace, and send him out as Peter, the Rock on whom Jesus could build his church. Now, Peter is “strengthening his brothers” by writing this rich letter.

This is the right place to begin our study: with the Savior who loves to stabilize the unsteady by his grace. Jesus does not need strong people to serve him; he happily receives the fragile and the failed. He leads us, through our many blunders, in a messy but beautiful process of change into the servants he has called us to be. In his hands, even our most painful failures can moves us from Simeon to Peter.

Do you believe this?

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Article by Eric Smith
Senior Pastor, Sharon Baptist Church