Her Name is “Essential”
Mark 14:66-72
When most of us read this passage of scripture, we see two recognizable names, Jesus and Peter. This passage is the fulfillment of the earlier part of the chapter (14:29-31) where Jesus has told the disciples that their world will fall apart, and they will scatter as the events to come unfold. Peter announced that he was not going to run away but would be there standing by Jesus until the end. Jesus tells him that he will not and Peter responds boldly that he will be “a ride or die partner” with Jesus. As we read the passage, we see that Peter does indeed deny Jesus and weeps at doing so. However, I do not want to talk about Jesus or even about the seeming star of this passage, Peter. I want to talk about the unnamed servant girl that asks Peter if he was one of the people that walked with Jesus. We are not told her name. We only know her job and for whom she works. We know that Peter did not know her and yet she knew him, even as he repeatedly denied knowing Jesus. The author of this second Gospel may not have given her a name, but we all know her name., Her name is “Essential.”
It is Holy Week once again, and, as good church people, we will read, talk, and “live” through the story of Jesus and his death and resurrection. Beginning with Palm Sunday, we will move through the week commemorating Jesus’ suffering and death on a cross and end with the celebration that Jesus is alive. While I am excited that Jesus lives, I cannot help but wonder about the others; people like Essential who lived through that week as well. I can’t help but wonder about the ones we see without seeing, the people that are part of the story but who do not get named. She reminds me of the people who we see but don’t see today; the people who, if we are truly honest with ourselves allow our society to run. These are the people that run our communities and yet they are invisible in our stories. They are the essential workers. If there is one phrase that was used as often as the phrase Covid-19 in 2020, it would be the term, essential worker. And while the term is not new, it has gained a new and vital meaning in our world as the Covid-19 virus ravaged the entire globe. The word essential means: “something necessary, indispensable, or unavoidable” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. In 2020 we learned what was essential and what was not in our lives, our communities, and our world.
This passage of scripture which takes place as Jesus is being tried for heresy and headed to the cross features Peter. We first meet Peter when he is fishing, and Jesus calls him to come and be fishers of men with Him. In answering the call to follow Jesus, Peter goes from being a nameless, hardworking essential worker that provides food for the community through his profession, to a named person in the circle of Jesus. For three years Peter traveled around with Jesus and met and saw a variety of people. He became a gifted preacher and teacher. While he may have continued to use some of the skills he learned from his trade as a fisherman, he was no longer bound by the trade itself as a “fisher of men.” He would no longer be called by the generic worker name of Essential. Rather all who knew him or knew of him would come to call him Peter. Peter the bold leader. Peter the faithful. Peter the disciple of Jesus the Christ. Perhaps this is who Essential saw when she asked Peter her question. Perhaps she saw an “Essential” who had moved from being “unseen” to “seen.” Perhaps her question was based on wanting to know how to become seen. But perhaps Peter heard something different. Perhaps he responded out of his current role a reluctant leader who had been elevated to the status of a disciple. Perhaps his response was generated out of patriarchal as well as classist understandings of who he was being called to be. If there are a few lessons to be learned from this chapter, perhaps the first one is learning to lead with boldness, humility, and compassion.
The second lesson is to always be kind to everyone because we are all named and seen by God. One of the things I remember being taught while growing up was to respect all people regardless of their job, I did and still do so. When I was studying for my Master of Business degree, we had whole lessons on how important it was to be respectful of a person's humanity and get to know the “gatekeepers” in businesses. These gatekeepers were the secretary, the janitor, and the clerks, you know the essential workers. Why? Because despite what their title may infer, they tended to know what was really going on in the company.
This servant girl that approaches Peter is said to be an employee of the High Priest. As a servant girl in that household, she was sure to have heard much about Jesus and His followers, since her boss spent so much time fighting them. Being part of the essential worker brigade meant that she probably was able to speak with essential workers from other households and knew all the “tea” about Jesus and what their bosses were going to do. However, being in these households and hearing all the stories of Jesus may also have sparked questions and ideas about Jesus. She may have wondered how a regular guy, a carpenter as she heard it and some other regular guys seemed to have shaken up the high priests and rulers. How were these essential workers, who on papyrus would be in the same category as herself, able to feed, heal and clothe people? She knows what essential workers earn. Surely, they were not able to buy these things on their essential salaries! When she saw Peter in the courtyard, perhaps her intent in asking him if he was a member of Jesus’s circle was not to “out” him or get him in trouble. Maybe she was trying to see if the talk she heard in her household from her bosses when they thought she was not listening was true. Perhaps she wanted to know if this Jesus really cared about her and the other essentials. Was it true that he walked and lived among the regular people and yet still was said to be the awaited King? Could it be she wanted to ask Peter if indeed the Kingdom she heard her bosses talk about that excluded essentials, would actually include her and others as they heard Jesus had said?
But if any of these were her questions, she never got to ask them. Peter shut her down. He never acknowledged her except to deny her question. Peter was so quick to both save himself and dismiss this servant girl addressing him that he missed that he was fulfilling what Jesus had said. In his haste to distance himself from the nameless essentials, he also distanced himself from Jesus. It was Jesus who had lifted him from nameless essential fisherman to Peter the disciple for the sake of the essentials, and yet Peter no longer wanted to identify with the essentials.
The third lesson is, never forget where you came from because it can cause harm to you and others. Peter wept when he realized he had denied Jesus three times, but the problem is he wept for himself. He did not weep for the people he lied to when he denied Jesus. He did not weep in solidarity for their lives. Peter missed the opportunity to stand together as essential workers for whom Jesus had been advocating by his denials. What is worse is that his only realization seemed to be his loss, and not for those around him.
We sometimes read this passage and look at the servant girl as trying to harass Peter by asking him repeatedly was he with Jesus. However, what does it say about us when we see her as the problem and not the powers that be? Classism and patriarchy may have guided Peter in trying to ignore her question. Her being an essential worker was not enough to make her essential enough to give a real answer. In our present time, we saw last year how essential workers were important enough to serve us, but not to be saved. We prioritized Covid-19 help and relief for the high priests and rulers, leaving most essential workers on their own to ask us if we were with that man Jesus.
As we go through Holy Week 2021, I challenge each of us to remember who we are called to be for the sake of God’s people. Even if we get named in our walk, we must never forget the many unnamed essential workers that allow us to live, worship, shop, eat, work, and play. I challenge us to remember Her/Him/Their name is Essential. They matter. We Matter. We are all Essential.
Reverend Rochelle S. Andrews is a proud native of Montclair, New Jersey; is the CEO/President of The Vizion Group, a management consulting firm. As an Ordained Elder in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Rochelle currently serves as Assistant Director of The Center for Public Theology at Wesley Theological Seminary and an Associate Pastor at Oak Chapel United Methodist Church (UMC) where she works with her local UMC district on affordable housing and economic development. Rochelle is also co-director of the Amos Social Action Committee at her home church, Real Power AME Church. Her passions are working on policy, advocacy, and social justice activities to create educational and economic opportunities for underserved communities. Reverend Andrews has a Bachelor of Science degree from Rutgers University; a Masters of Business Administration from Vanderbilt University; and a Master of Divinity from Wesley Theological Seminary. She is a foodie, loves to read, travel, and is a gadget geek.