Peter & Paul

Today we celebrate the Feast Day of St Peter and St Paul. It’s the day when we remember them especially but more importantly consider their example to the Church and to us today. Eugene Petersen a theology scholar wrote, ‘Among the apostles, the one absolutely stunning success was Judas, and the one thoroughly grovelling failure was Peter. Judas was a success in the ways that most impress us: he was successful both financially and politically. He cleverly arranged to control the money of the apostolic band; he skilfully manipulated the political forces of the day to accomplish his goal.

And Peter was a failure in ways that we most dread: he was impotent in a crisis and socially inept. At the arrest of Jesus he collapsed, a hapless, blustering coward; in the most critical situations of his life with Jesus, the confession on the road to Caesarea Philippi and the vision on the Mount of transfiguration, he said the most embarrassingly inappropriate things.

He was not the companion we would want with us in time of danger, and he was not the kind of person we would feel comfortable with at a social occasion. Time, of course, has reversed our judgments on the two men. Judas is now a byword for betrayal, and Peter is one of the most honoured names in the church and in the world. Judas is a villain; Peter is a saint. Yet the world continues to chase after the successes of Judas, financial wealth and political power, and to defend itself against the failures of Peter, impotence and ineptness.’

Very rarely do we meet people who would actually say that money and material success are more important than family but very often we find ourselves dragged into a secular world of being measured and measuring others on apparent successes in our lives, but Peter shows us that from failure we can often achieve our greatest successes in life, because it is often failure or hardships that cause us to turn most decisively to God.

It’s strange how Peter and Paul are put together in the Church calendar – clearly they are 2 amongst the most important people in Christianity, but actually both in many ways show us this path from failure to honest appraisal and then to glory !

Paul of course was materially successful. He was powerful, probably wealthy, he was a married man, and he almost certainly mixed with the most influential members of society. If there was a posh function going on in the area, then Paul would have been on the guest list ! And yet he was far from happy – his life was consumed by bitterness and anger, and by doubt.

Confronted on the Damascus Road by the vision of Jesus, he fell down, knowing that he had to change his life. He gave up all of the trappings of wealth and power. His friends probably thought he’d gone mad, but he knew that from that moment on his life would be filled with peace – a strange thought when actually this peace included comparative poverty, the fear of persecution, the absence of close family and ultimately the knowledge that one day he would almost certainly face death for his new faith.

Peter on the other hand was less wealthy, but a good solid working class man, earning an honest and a hard living. He was an incredible man though, a man who gave up so much to answer the call of Jesus. He made mistakes, many of them, and of course he famously even denied knowing Jesus.

But the point about this denial is that it occurred before he knew the risen Jesus. Yes, his life had been changed by his time with Jesus, but the confusion of the arrest and the execution shook him. The meeting with the risen Jesus transformed him, not into somebody who would never make a mistake again, not into someone perfect, but into somebody who prioritised the important things in his life…

Following his meeting with the risen Jesus, there was nothing more important than sharing the gospel message, the good news message, with as many people as possible.

Both Peter and Paul were transformed by this meeting with the risen Jesus, and it is a transformation that every one of us needs… The Christian life is not a tradition, it’s not a set of rules to follow, it’s not a guarantee of a perfect life by any means, but what it is a recognition of where we get things wrong in our lives, an honest appraisal of where we are in our relationship with God and a commitment to follow a path which leads to glory !

And that commitment will inevitably lead to a desire to follow the teaching of Jesus more closely day by day, and today’s gospel reading is a perfect example of this calling as Jesus talks about the welcome we will receive as we go about doing his work. As he speaks you get the feeling that Jesus really understands the mentality of people well, ‘whoever welcomes you, welcomes me, whoever welcomes a prophet will receive a prophets reward, whoever welcomes a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous.

As he shared this message of encouragement with his followers, I suspect that Jesus knew enough to know that there were many who would not welcome people who came sharing his message, and today that is still the case. But today as then this can be no excuse for watering down this message.

Regardless of opposition, regardless of apathy, regardless of what others may be doing we are called to live out the gospel, and one of the ways we do that is by welcoming as Jesus talked about welcoming. The gospel message is about love, it’s about sharing, it’s about welcoming the stranger, even the stranger who perhaps sits in our usual seat at Church, it’s about offering hope for the person who seems to have lost hope… It’s about ensuring that everyone we meet is somehow touched by the transforming love and compassion of Jesus.

It’s a really tall order ! It’s something that both Peter and Paul even after their meeting with the risen Jesus, failed to do at times. Both still showed plenty of traces of human weakness, just as we all will. There will be times when it seems impossible to follow the path God leads us on, but it is those times when we must draw closest to him. It is those times that we must call out to him, faithful and trusting in his ever loving and ever compassionate nature to strengthen us…

A little while ago I mentioned the different colours we use in Church, and the fact that they all had meaning, and a number of people have commented that they don’t know what that meaning is. Basically we use 4 colours. There is white for times of celebration, these include Easter Day, Christmas, weddings and baptisms. There is purple for times of reflection, times of inner examination such as Lent or Advent. Purple is also used as the colour of mourning and is used at funerals…

Green is the most common colour used throughout the year – in confirmation classes we always use the idea of green being like the grass, because it speaks of growth, our personal growth as we seek to discover a greater understanding and knowledge of God and of the Bible, and how God speaks to us today.

And then Red. Red is the colour of blood and we use it as we celebrate the Saints Days of those Saints who have died for their faith. Today we use Red as Peter and Paul both gave their earthly lives for their faith. Red is also used on the Feast of Pentecost the day we celebrate the birth of the early Church, to represent the flames of the Holy Spirit being poured out upon Christ’s followers.

White is for celebrating, purple for reflecting, green for growth, but red is the colour of inspiration as we recognise how important the gospel has been to people in the past, and when we realise that strengthened by the incredible power of God’s Holy Spirit working within us, we go out to live his message every moment of every day. AMEN