A Sermon preached on April 10th 27th,
Easter III, at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden
Acts 9:1-6, Revelation 5:11-14, John 21:1-19
Just recently, Warner
Brothers released their latest superhero movie blockbuster: “Batman versus
Superman: Dawn of Justice.” Without giving away the ending – so no spoiler
alert - the plot is that Superman has become a controversial figure and Batman,
over in Gotham City, views him as a potential threat to humanity. At the same
time, Superman, in the fair city of Metropolis, who knew those two cities were
so close together, also sees Batman as a threat, and seeks to stop him. In fact
it is the evil villain Lex Luthor
who has been sending messages to our two superheroes to heighten their
animosity towards one another and to force them to fight to the death …..
that’s all you’re getting from me!
But when I looked
at today's readings I couldn't help thinking for a moment that the lectionary compilers
have given us a superhero blockbuster of their own, let’s call it “Paul versus
Peter: Dawn of Discipleship.” I find it a little ironic that the church often
puts saints Paul and Peter together. In January the feast days of the Confession of Saint Peter on January 18th
and of the Conversion of St Paul on January 25th bookend the week of
prayer for Christian unity. The two of them share their personal feast day on June
29th.
Yet in my reading
of scripture, I reckon they probably sometimes hated each other’s guts, in a
very Christian way of course. Which is not surprising when you consider their differences.
They came from very different backgrounds. Paul came from the provincial
capital of Tarsus in what is now Turkey. He was a Jew of the diaspora,
Hellenized on the one hand but had probably received a proper rabbinical education,
and he was a convinced member of the Pharisee sect. Peter on the other hand was
a fisherman from rural Galilee, a good Jew, but also one of Jesus's very first
disciples. Paul was arrogant and proud: “I advanced in Judaism beyond many
among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions
of my ancestors.” (Galatians
1:14). Peter was humble, often a little bumbling, prone to blurting out
whatever was on his mind, however inappropriate.
Just look at
today's gospel reading. In last week's Gospel, we heard how all the disciples,
gathered in the Upper Room had been breathed on by Jesus and sent into the
world as his agents of forgiveness. Yet some undefined time late we encounter
them back home on Galilee on the shores of the lake they knew so well, and all
that Peter can think of is to go fishing. I think he was a little overwhelmed
by Jesus’ commission and was trying to return to normality and get on with
life. He was always more a doer, than a theologian.
One thing we do
know about Paul and Peter is that they fought and argued. Paul recounts one
fight they had in his letter to Galatians (2: 11, 14): “But when (Peter) came
to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; … . But
when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel,
I said to (Peter) before them all, ‘If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile
and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?’”
And yet they also
had lot in common. They followed Jesus at great personal cost – to their deaths.
They were both key figures in the early church and responsible for spreading
the Good News of Jesus Christ into the entire known world. Both of them betrayed
Jesus. Paul had betrayed Jesus by persecuting his disciples: "Saul, Saul,
why do you persecute me?" (Acts 9:4) Jesus asks him, to pursue his followers
is to pursue Jesus. Peter of course had betrayed Jesus by running away and by denying
him three times on that fateful night when Jesus was arrested in the Garden of
Gethsemane. Last and not least, both Paul and Peter needed, as we heard today,
a direct, personal encounter with the Lord to wake them up, to turn them round,
and to forgive them.
Jesus’ appearances
are as individual and different as Paul and Peter are. Paul’s encounter is a dramatic
one: a light from heaven flashes around him, he is thrown to the ground, and
blinded. He is physically stopped in his tracks. As Paul is without sight for
three days, he is forced to look at Jesus not with his eyes, but with his
heart. As a result, once he has regained his sight, “immediately he began to
proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’” (Acts 9:20)
In Peter's case,
the encounter looks more gentle, but I suspect is no less painful. After all,
his conversation with Jesus on the shores of the lake must remind him of his own
betrayal. That too took place next to a charcoal fire: “Now the slaves and the
police had made a charcoal fire because it was cold, and they were standing
round it and warming themselves. Peter also was standing with them and warming
himself,” (John 18:18) before he denied Jesus. Three times Jesus asks: Simon
son of John do you love me?” just as Peter had denied Christ three times. Through
this act, Peter is healed and forgiven. A key sign of that forgiveness, though not
a condition for it, is the renewed commission to Peter to love, to care for,
and to feed Jesus’ sheep.
What can we learn
from their example? Well for one thing that conflict is not just a bad thing. Paul
and Peter needed to argue about the right way forward for the “followers of the
Way, for those who became known as Christians. Both their missions were
strengthened by their creative conflict over the right approach and goals. Paul
helped Peter to see that the sheep that Jesus had given him to look after were
not just the lost sheep of Israel, but that everyone needed – and needs – the right
relationship with God that Jesus offers. Peter helped Paul by ensuring that
Paul and his new converts remained connected to the founding disciples and with
the Church in Jerusalem, as symbolized by the collection for Jerusalem that
Paul insisted upon in all the churches he founded. In the end both of them
ministered to Jew and Gentile alike, to anyone who was willing to give their
life to Christ, and if the later stories are true, both of them lost their
lives in Rome.
Let us keep that
in mind: Conflict can lead to positive change. It is when conflict and
disagreement are not dealt with openly and honestly, when we try and avoid them
at all costs, that the underlying issues can escalate to the point of no return
and the worst-case scenario that conflict-averse people fear, comes to be. In fact,
I think one mission of the Church is to model how to deal with conflict, how to
disagree with one another in love, and how to heal and reconcile once a
decision on the way forward is taken. After 2,000 years of church conflict we
should be good at it by now! And sometimes we are. Just last month I attended a
meeting of the German Council of Churches (ACK). At that meeting, we agreed on
a joint “Word on the Reformation.” It was a very moving and emotional experience
to see how churches that had been on either
side of the often bloody conflicts of the 16th century reformation,
together with Orthodox churches who had split from the west 800 years earlier,
and even those churches that grew out of the radical reformers that both the Catholics
and Protestants persecuted and oppressed, to see how this diverse group of
Christians all agreed on a joint statement on what was good, and what
was bad, and what we can learn for today from the Reformation. I just hope we
don’t always have to wait 500 years for something like this to happen.
An agreement was
possible because we recognized that what we have in common is even greater than
what divides us. We have our humanity in common, we have our creator in common,
we have our need to forgive and be forgiven in common, and as Christians, we
have the means of forgiveness in Jesus Christ in common. Paul and Peter’s
struggles were not about themselves and their personal preferences or position,
but about how best to serve the Lord and his sheep. What comes first is our love
for Jesus Christ. Today’s readings gave us a glimpse of how Paul and Peter were
transformed by their encounters with that love. I can’t give you a blinding light,
nor do I have grilled fish and bread on offer. What I can offer today and every
week is the encounter with Jesus in the Word, in prayer, and in the Eucharist,
in the bread and wine made holy, in his body and blood. What I can offer is the
opportunity to be transformed by that encounter, to be filled with God’s love. What
I can offer every single day is Jesus’ commission to follow him, to feed and
tend his sheep, and to be a sign of his love in a divided world.
Amen.
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