Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
The Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, 2007
The Rev. Melissa Skelton
John 21:15-19
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”
From “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin
“…while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell… And this tale…has (a different) aspect in every country, and a new depth in every generation.”
I love this quote from Baldwin’s short story about two brothers whose very different and troubled lives are marked by their experience of growing up in Harlem in the 1940’s and 50’s. This comment, made by one of the brothers about the blues, in general, and about his brother Sonny’s piano music in particular, comes toward the end of the story as he sits in a little jazz club listening to Sonny and his group of jazz musicians play.
For some reason Baldwin’s words came to mind when I thought about St. Peter and St. Paul and our celebration today, their day. Peter and Paul, like Baldwin’s brothers, led very different and troubled lives, some of which had to do with who they were as human beings and some of which had to do with the times they lived in and the God who kept pursuing them. And today the tale of how they suffered and how they were delighted and how they triumphed is a tale worth hearing, worth remembering, worth taking inspiration from.
So who were these two very different men made brothers by their encounter with Jesus in a tumultuous time?
On one level, of course, Peter and Paul were as different as different can be: the one, an uneducated fisherman and the other, an educated and urbane Jew, probably a Roman citizen; the one, called “the rock,” the solid and stable base upon which the church would be built and the other, more like a river, flooding its banks to bring the church and its message of God’s acceptance in Christ to the Gentile world.
But these differences are not what I see today on their feast day together. No, what I see is a commonality in their stories of suffering and delight and triumph.
This commonality has something to do with their passion, their intensity. Both threw themselves into their lives, taking chances, heading down wrong paths, crashing and burning. But what is also true, what is also part of their stories of suffering and delight and triumph is their discovery that their God, and, therefore, our God is a God of second chances, of underserved turnarounds, of crashing and burning followed by being lifted up.
Look at their lives:
First, Peter, the impetuous one, always out there and mostly wrong. Peter, the one who blurts out “you are the messiah” to Jesus, on the one hand and, on the other hand, betrays his teacher and friend by denying him not once, not twice but three times. In our Gospel for today, we see the moment of Peter’s second chance. Jesus asks him not once, not twice, but three times, a new and costly question: “Do you love me?’ Jesus asks. “Do you love me?” “Do you love me?”
In responding to these questions Peter gets a chance to affirm what he had previously and disastrously denied: Yes, I love you. Of course, I love you. Like I said, I love you.
And he gets a chance, a second chance, to align himself with love and not betrayal, with costly relationship, not cutting and running. A second chance, an undeserved turn-around, crashing and burning followed by being lifted up.
And then there is our patron Paul, who is not a betrayer so much as he is a persecutor, whose passion is hunting down Christians in order to wipe them out, whose sense of being right about things is intense and deadly, who has no in-box and no mercy. He, we know, has to take a dose of stronger medicine. Blinded by light and knocked to the ground, he too encounters a question from Jesus: “Why are you persecuting me?” the voice of Jesus asks. “Why are you persecuting me?” To which Paul responds, “Who are you?”
He gets his answer and in a short while, the one blinded by intense righteousness, with no in-box and no mercy, comes to see things in an entirely new light and redirects his intensity to proclaim God’s mercy not just to the Jews but to the Gentiles. A second chance, an undeserved turn-around, crashing and burning followed by being lifted up.
And so to us…how is the tale of how they suffered, how they were delighted, and how they triumphed, our story? How can their passionate, chancy living, often wrong-headed and wrong-hearted, and God’s second chances be our own? And should they be our own?
If you’re anything like me, the problem with passionate, chancy living is the chaos it can bring and the fear it kicks up in me and in others. I would prefer not to provide God with an opportunity to offer me a second chance, because, well, screwing up royally and publicly is embarrassing. And, of course, nothing is wrong with being careful about what we do and paying attention to its impact on the people with whom we are in relationship.
But there’s a downside to living too cautiously, overly concerned about crashing even a little bit or about a bigger crash that will put us in need of a second chance. It’s a kind of pinched way to live, really, a way of living that is too defended and doesn’t leave enough room for the Lord of Life to do his thing in our individual lives and in the life of the church, that holy institution that lurches forward in Christ only by falling on its face first.
And so, I would say today, as we work out our own lives—individually and as a parish community—of suffering and delight and triumph, that while we, of course, should exercise prudence and caution and sensitivity, that we should also, in the spirit of Peter and Paul, put ourselves out there in risky, chancy ways. For it appears that, strangely, these risks and the potential failure and learning they bring are the touch point between us and God’s chronic gracious habit of giving us and the world second chances, different chances.
I suppose this is another way to say as Luther did in his letter to Philip Melanchthon: “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly... Pray boldly — for you too are a mighty sinner.”
Poet Mary Karr has a new collection of poetry entitled Sinners Welcome. The book chronicles her own conversion to Catholicism after years of putting herself out there in her racy and revealing memoirs and poems, and crashing and burning through her heavy drinking. What you will hear in part of this poem with the same title, is a glimpse into the spiritual life of one who lives in the tradition of Saints Peter and Paul, who like us, sinners all, bold or timid, have been welcomed, scooped up and loved by the one whose grace lifts us up, outruns our sins and our suffering, triumphs over our failures and delights us, delights us.
“Sinners Welcome” by Mary Karr
I opened up my shirt to show this man
the flaming heart he lit in me, and I was scooped up
like a lamb and carried to the dim warm.
I who should have been kneeling
was knelt to by one whose face
should be emblazoned on every coin and diadem:
…That the world could arrive at me
with him in it, after so much longing—
impossible. He enters me and joy
sprouts from us as from a split seed.
Works Cited or Consulted
“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin
The PBS website material on the program “Peter and Paul.” The material can be found at http://www.pbs.org/empires/peterandpaul/
Comments on the Lectionary Texts for the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul at http://satucket.com/lectionary/Peter&Paul.htm
Sinners Welcome by Mary Karr
