Unity, Constancy and Peace

Readings (3rd Sunday after Easter, Year C)


Lord, remembering the collaboration and the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, may we also serve you in unity and constancy and peace. Amen.

Paul’s conversion

on the road to Damascus

after having persecuted

Jesus’ followers…

Peter’s restoration

after having denied Jesus…

(Peter, do you love me? by ShouYume)

Two major events in the lives of two major figures in the early Church – one was trying to get the likes of the other one killed – and God brought them together to work side by side. What a crazy idea! Inviting a malicious opposition leader into the Church as a teacher, or putting the responsibility of shepherding the vulnerable new Church in the hands of a coward. But that’s what Jesus did – forgive them; they didn’t know what they were doing. But Jesus knew what he was doing.

One way to get rid of an enemy (other than blowing him to smithereens) is to make him a friend. It sounds idiotic and naïve, but that’s basically what Jesus did with Paul. And so the relentless persecutor of Christians became the Church’s most effective missionary. And what about Peter? 'With friends like that, who needs enemies?' But Jesus used Peter, too – the one who bailed and ran became part of the foundation of the Church. I suppose one way to teach people responsibility is to give it to them.

The story of Peter and Paul is also our story - Confrontation, judgment, forgiveness, restoration – and a new life together. In the Eucharist, we pray “Sanctify us…that we may serve you in unity, constancy and peace.” Peter and Paul neither one started out being constant, and they were the farthest thing from unified at first.

Peter and Paul were on opposite teams; Paul was jailing Peter’s friends and colleagues and having them killed, methodically and with the consent of the religious authorities. When people were stoning Stephen to death, Paul (the man on the right -->) was holding their coats for them.
Later, he got more proactive about it. He obtained letters authorizing him to round up anyone following what they called ‘the Way.’ That’s where he was headed, letter in hand, when Jesus struck him blind, asking “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

Paul was full of himself with authority. Jesus had to knock him off his high horse – literally – before he would be quiet enough to listen to the story he’d been shouting down, and hear the truth of the Gospel message. Blinded, helpless, he had to let his victims lead him by the hand, and he learned about faith from them: people he thought were destroying the faith - people like Peter.

Peter’s issue was a bit the opposite. He didn’t need to be knocked down; he was already 'lower than a snake’s belly' with shame, ever since he denied even knowing Jesus – after he had sworn to die for him. He'd thought he was brave but found out he wasn’t. Jesus had to get him to lift his head again and take responsibility for leading the others, even though he didn’t feel able or worthy to, even though he was still scared to die, because people were still trying to kill them – people like Paul.

The persecutor and the deserter... the faithless friend and the outright enemy: both would prove constant in the end.

From the beginning, Peter had left his fishing nets and his home, left everything to follow Jesus. He was the first of the disciples to correctly apprehend who Jesus was.
“Who do you say that I am?”

“You are the Messiah of God” 

At the Last Supper, when Jesus began talking about his imminent betrayal and murder, Peter vowed

"Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!"

But a few hours later, a girl pointed at him in the firelight and said he had been with Jesus, and Peter said,

“I don’t know him.”

Peter, the rock, was not so strong and constant then, and when he heard the rooster crow, he broke down crying and ran.

But encountering the risen Christ can make a difference – can change a person. Jesus rose again and came back to see them, and one of the things he did was restore Peter to dignity and to responsibility –
“Do you love me?”

“You know everything; you know I love you.”

“Feed my sheep.”
And he told him something else – he told him that it would cost him his life. And standing there by the lake, just as they had three years before, Jesus once more said to Peter,
“Follow me.”

And again, Peter did – this time, knowing all that it might mean, he didn’t shrink back; he didn’t run; he didn’t deny Jesus. He followed him to prison, to trial, and to death, crucified upside down at the hands of the Romans under Nero.

Constancy: Peter, who had denied Jesus, turned out to be as strong as a rock.

Jesus can change people in ways that don’t seem possible. We see this in the unlikely collaboration of Peter and Paul. Paul was a well-educated and sophisticated Jew and a Roman citizen. Peter was an uneducated fisherman from Galilee. Peter believed Jesus was the Messiah; Paul wanted to kill people like him. 2000 years later, we remember them together on June 29, the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul.

Our national cathedral is the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. How did they end up together, these two who started out so diametrically opposed to each other?

Paul had thrown people in prison and approved of executing followers of Jesus, trying to protect his faith from those he felt were trying to destroy it - until Jesus met him on the road and turned him around. Paul then became a wholehearted follower of Jesus and studied under those he had tried to have killed, including Peter, submitting to their leadership. Amazingly, they let him in and taught him – and then sent him out with their blessing to preach to others.

It ended up mostly being Gentiles who listened to him, and this created another complicated issue for the Church. Lots of people weren’t sure Gentiles should be included, or if they were, perhaps they should submit to the Jewish customs also. In Acts, Peter has a vision, followed by an encounter with the family of Cornelius, a centurion, that leads him to accept the idea of Gentiles being part of the Church, but it wasn’t easy for him. Paul tells about confronting Peter for not being consistent in his acceptance of Gentile Christians. They had a very public argument about it. But when the church leaders gather for a council in Jerusalem, it’s Peter who stands up first to speak on behalf of the Gentiles.

For his part, Paul was also putting his neck out there in support of the Gospel being for everyone. During his travels, he was arrested, beaten, put in prison, stoned, and exiled – several times – before being beheaded, for preaching that Jesus was the Savior of the whole world: Jew and Gentile alike. According to tradition, Paul was also executed in Rome under Nero, the same year as Peter. Being a Roman citizen, he was granted the right to have his head cut off rather than be crucified. The Jew who had approved killing to protect the Jewish faith from the Gospel in the end died proclaiming it to people who weren’t even Jews.

Peter and Paul had different backgrounds, different gifts and failings, and different missions in the Church. Both worked, in different contexts, to spread the good news that Jesus had saved everyone in the world from sin. When you have a message like that, it’s ridiculous to fight over logistics.

We have the same message to share. We have different backgrounds, different gifts and failings, and different missions in the Church. We live and work in different contexts. Peter and Paul’s collaboration is an example for us of the unity we pray for and work towards.

Jesus’ words to Peter and to Paul - and to us - are clear.
“Why are you persecuting me?”
“Do you love me? …Feed my sheep.”
Our prayer and our response should mirror theirs: Lord, open our eyes to ways we injure you in our conflicts; give us strength and courage to follow you despite our fears… “that we may serve you in unity, constancy and peace.” (BCP 363, Eucharistic Prayer A)

Amen

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Extra! Extra!

"Stained glass bluegrass" group Daily & Vincent singing "Don't you want to go to heaven when you die?" - partly coming from today's gospel text:

Here's another one: "Peter, Do you love me?" by The Primitives

John 21:15-19 in American Sign Language.

Seventh Word

It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, while the sun's light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." Having said this, he breathed his last. (Luke 23:44-46)

When it comes time for me to die, will I have the time, the opportunity, to choose to let go?

In the Great Litany (BCP p. 149), we pray:

"From dying suddenly and unprepared, Good Lord, deliver us."

But it's not dying that we pray to be delivered from; we all die - Jesus died. And if you had to choose the amount of time it took, some may prefer suddenly.
It's this idea of dying unprepared that's terrible.
- - But this is the thing you do have a choice about. There is no choice about whether you will die, and how you'll die is not really in your control either.
But preparing, you can do - and you can do it now, at any time.  That's the point of Ash Wednesday (BCP p. 265):

"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Jesus taught us everything we need to know about being human. He showed us how to love, how to serve, how to pray, how to suffer - even how to die:
"Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."

Most of our lives, we're learning to let go: of people we love, of places we leave, of things we don't need - and anyway can't keep, even of ourselves - who and what we have been.
When we die, it will be letting go of the last of what we're holding onto here and putting ourselves in God's hands.
When it comes time for you to die, will you be able to say this, to do it?

Do you realize that you already have?

As Paul said to the folks in Rome (Romans 6:3)

 "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?"

Remember our baptismal covenant (BCP p. 302) :

"Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior ... Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?"     I do.

And remember our prayer at the Eucharist (Prayer B - BCP p. 369):

"Unite us to your Son is his sacrifice, that we may be acceptable through him..."

From dying suddenly and unprepared, he has already delivered us.
At your baptism, you already commended your spirit into the Father's hands; His hands are already holding you.
Let go of everything else.

Fifth Word

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill scripture), "I am thirsty." A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. (John 19:28-29)

It's a genuine human need - the need for water.
We like to think we're complicated, but our basic needs are very simple; our bodies are mostly made of water, and without it, we die.
Jesus was no superhuman, no demi-god or phantom. He was human, like us, and when his body became dehydrated from exposure and loss of blood, he was thirsty.

What do you thirst for?
Listen to your body:
What makes you shaky and sweaty when you don't have it?  alcohol?   coffee?  pills?
Observe your emotions and behavior:
When do you snap at people close to you?  When you need rest?  need food?

What makes you ignore even food and rest, driving yourself into the ground after it, obsessed...
Insatiable thirsts:   for success,  for recognition,   approval?   for power,   love?   for money?
If these are what you want, you will never be satisfied with life - you'll never get enough.

Morgan Dix addressed the congregation at Trinity Church, New York on this same day, on this same topic in 1894 - more than a hundred years ago, but he could be talking to us:

"O poor, dissatisfied, harassed and troubled race! O scene of eager and hopeless longing and desire, on which this Cross looks down, telling that everlasting truth, which men everlastingly decline to believe! There is no relief from it, excepting in the Cross."

You can drink enough water for the next couple of hours, but pretty soon, you'll be thirsty again, and tomorrow, and tomorrow - like the Samaritan woman drawing water from the well.
There is no relief from even the concrete and basic things our bodies crave, much less the abstract and indefinable things our minds desire.

How much approval is enough?

How much money is enough?

If you thirst for things that you can never get enough of, your thirst will be a torture, a continual reminder of what you don't have. You will go "wretched and tormented, from loss to loss, all the days of your life." (M. Dix)

We thirst for God... In him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17)
As a deer pants for water, so my soul longs for God...(Psalm 42)

But the world around is offering me vinegar.

I am thirsty.

Third Word

Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. (John 19:26-27)

“Who is my mother?”

Once, earlier, Jesus’ mother and brothers came to where he was teaching and wanted to talk to him, and he had looked around and said, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ (Mt 12:48) … ‘My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.’ (Lk 8:21)
That’s what we’re supposed to be about: hearing God’s word and doing it. So, when we’re doing what we’re supposed to, we’re living as part of the household of God, and we should treat each other as family… or preferably, as family should be treated.

Nobody can replace your mother; nobody can replace your father, your sister, your son.

But the respect and honor you give your parents, the unconditional but also unrelenting love and concern you have for your children - can inform how you relate to people here and in the Church as a whole.

Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your
family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be
betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer
death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and
the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.  (BCP p. 276 - Good Friday liturgy)

Blood is thicker than water –
and we are bound by Christ’s blood to each other.

As he was dying, Jesus connected the one who loved him
with the one he loved.

He still does:

- he gives you people who love him and asks you to honor and respect them as you would your own parents … Here is your mother

- he gives you people he loves and asks you to love and care for them as you would your own children … Here is your son

First Word

When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals--one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. (Lk 23:33-34)


Who have you crucified?   
Nobody? Come on…

What’s the maddest you’ve ever been?
– so mad it scared you and you try to forget about it?
Who did you turn on?
What did you do to them?
Have you ever talked about it since?

Who has most deeply offended and disappointed you?A teacher? Public official? Sports figure? The president? A priest?
What did they do? Or at least… what was the accusation? (In public opinion court, it’s the same thing…) Did they molest a child, embezzle money, have an affair? … or in some other way not live up to expectations?
What was the response of the community? of the news?
And where were you in the mix? Did you shoot your arrows with the rest – or were you out front yelling ‘fire!’, doing “a dirty job that somebody’s gotta do.”

What about the time you were accused…
when they needed the blame to fit somebody, and you were called in to answer.
“So, who was responsible for this?”
Even if it wasn’t you, who did you throw under the bus?

If not any of these, there are always sins of omission...
failing to render aid…
Whose trouble have you so successfully looked past, ignored so that it’s just annoying background noise?

Not our finest hour – any of these.

And from up there, he has seen it all.

But we can join his gracious prayer: Father, forgive me… I didn't know what I was doing.