Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

This year I am relating to Peter more than any previous Easter. Like Peter, I suffer from Post Traumatic Stress.

Have you ever suffered from Post Traumatic Stress? This is where a smell or sound causes a severe reaction out of proportion to reality. After escaping a fire, the smell of smoke or ashes causes our hearts to race and creates the “fight or flight reaction.” After a car accident, we tense up whenever a driver swerves unexpectedly.

Two weeks ago, I stepped wrong off a chair during a staff activity and my right knee buckled. (Okay, there is some irony in the fact that it was a staff team-building exercise to increase our shared leadership. The team took me out and then took over as leaders.) Anyway, the knee is still swollen and I am wearing a metal supported knee brace to keep me going. This next week the surgeon will examine the MRI results and we will make a decision regarding surgery.

This knee problem goes back to an injury as a gymnast in college. I had arthroscopic surgery two years ago. But there was something different this time. When the knee buckled for the third time as I tried to get up, I went white as a sheet. It was not the pain. It was a vivid flashback to the original injury. My brain went into a Post Traumatic Stress reaction.

Doctors tell us that our brains are wired in such a way that we have two separate minds that function on very different levels. There is the rational mind, which is centered in the neo-cortex or front part of the brain, and the emotional mind, which is centered in the amygdala or brain stem area. Most of the time these two parts of the brain function in harmony. However, in times of crisis or severe stress, the emotional mind is wired to react faster than the rational mind. In fact, the emotional part of our brain can hijack the rational part of the brain. We sometimes refer to this hijacking by the emotional mind as the "fight or flight" reaction.

The problem is that a severe tragedy can permanently scar our emotional minds. From that moment on, when we feel something similar to the original crisis, our minds are hijacked by the same adrenalin reaction we originally had. Our brains read the new situation as dangerous and we react with fear or anger based on the original memory. We know this reaction as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Peter must have suffered from this problem, having denied the Lord three times on the night of Jesus’ arrest. The events of that horrible night left lasting imprints. After Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, He appeared to Peter in order to bring emotional healing.

Read John 21:1-9.

A man walking home after the late shift discovered that he could save time by taking a shortcut through the town’s cemetery. One night, he fell into a freshly dug, open grave. For a few minutes he frantically attempted to jump high enough to get a hold on the edge of the grave and pull himself out. Finally, he gave up and settled into a corner to wait for daylight and someone to rescue him. He had just dozed off when a second man also fell into the same open grave. The second man was beginning to jump for a handhold when the first man spoke out of the darkness, "You’ll never get out." But he did!

Adrenaline is amazing. It helps us do things we could not normally do. The fight or flight reaction can save lives. However, since the emotional mind responds so much faster than our rational mind, it can also become a trigger that gets us into trouble. How do we keep an emotional trauma from becoming a trigger that damages our relationships? Therapists say that we need to relive the experience in a safe atmosphere that will allow our rational brain to reprocess the information in healthy ways.

This is what Jesus did with Peter after Easter at the Sea of Galilee. Picture the situation. Peter has just caught more fish than ever before. He also discovered that the man on the shore was the risen Jesus. He was so excited that he jumped into the water and swam to shore ahead of the rest in the boats. In this positive, emotionally charged atmosphere, note what Jesus did. Jesus immediately walked Peter over to a charcoal fire to let Peter dry off and warm up. The key to the story is the charcoal fire.

The word for this particular kind of fire only shows up twice in the entire Bible. Here in this resurrection story and also we find this same word on the night Jesus was betrayed.

That evening when Jesus was arrested, Peter followed as the guards took Jesus to the place of the trial. While Jesus was on trial, Peter remained outside, near a charcoal fire. He wanted to remain faithful to Jesus. However, as he stood by the fire warming himself outside the courtroom, those sharing the fire questioned him. "Aren’t you one of his disciples?" Three times he was questioned about his friendship with Jesus, and three times at the charcoal fire he denied even knowing Jesus. This must have created an emotional scar. His intentions did not match his actions. That charcoal fire became the place of his personal betrayal of Jesus.

To the rest of the disciples, Peter’s denial was no worse than their running away. “Hey, get over it. We all abandoned him. It’s no big deal.” But Jesus saw it for what it was. If he did not heal Peter at an emotional level, this disciple would carry that emotional trigger the rest of his life. Every time Peter was near the smell of charcoal, he would have an unexpected emotional negative reaction. He would probably try to pass it off as nothing. Eventually he would not even remember the smell of the charcoal. He simply would have the emotional trigger go off at the weirdest times and in totally inappropriate, hurtful ways.

So the risen-from-dead Jesus, at the shore of Galilee, brought Peter to another charcoal fire and began healing his emotions. "Peter, do you love me?" "Yes, Lord." Three times Jesus asked and three times Peter answered at a charcoal fire on the shore of Galilee. Jesus replaced the old wounded memory of abandonment with a new, healthy one of restoration and love. For the rest of his life, Peter would associate the smell of charcoal with Jesus’ love.

This Easter I wonder how many of us can relate to Peter? Have we ever reacted to something in a fierce, unreasonable way? Could it be that our unhealthy reaction is a symptom of some emotional trigger from our past?

This Easter we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus as more than a historical miracle—a doctrine of Christianity. There is also an intensely personal aspect to it. Just as the risen Jesus took Peter to a special place at the shore of Galilee in order to heal Peter’s emotional wounds, this same Jesus wants to heal our emotions.

What emotional healing do you need Jesus to heal?

This year I am relating to Peter more than any previous Easter. Like Peter, I suffer from Post Traumatic Stress.