The Gospel According to Lebowski

Peter’s denial of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke is one of the Bible’s best known passages, so to read it in front of the whole church on Palm Sunday was humbling.

But it was hard to keep a straight face.

I occasionally serve as a lector at my church and over the weekend was assigned to read part of the Passion, the section where Peter claims not to know Jesus. But the voice that rang through my had when I practiced the reading wasn’t the apostle Peter’s.

The servant says, “Surely this man also was with him; for he is a Galilean.”

And Peter replies,  “Man, I do not know what you are talking about!”

Peter sounds like the Dude.

No matter how I said it, it kept coming out in various shades of Lebowski. Hmmm. Let’s place the emphasis slightly differently and… it’s still the Dude. Wait — let me try it like this. No. His Dudeness.

It’s weird, yes. And by coincidence, there’s a character named Jesus in The Big Lebowski. 

I’m pretty sure a few people in the crowd picked up on this, for I could tell by the look on their faces that they heard the Dude when they were supposed to hear Peter.

Maybe it was just my imagination, but I don’t think so. And if you disagree, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

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