SERMON 22 - SUNDAY 14 APRIL 2013

Sermon at St. Mary’s Parish Church, West Dean   -  Third Sunday in Easter – Morning Worship  – Sunday 14 April 2013

Zephaniah 3:14-20; Acts 9:1-6 (7-20) and John 21:1-19

May the words of my mouth and the mediation of all our hearts be always acceptable to you, O Lord.  Amen

“And someone else will fasten a belt around you, and take you where you do not wish to go” – those are the final parting words of Jesus to Peter after the breakfast on the beach.  How often in our lives do we feel like that, that we are being led where we do not wish to go – being asked to do things which we really don’t want to do?

All of today’s readings are rich in their teaching.  In particular, the readings from Acts and John tell us about the beginning of the ministries of those giants of the New Testament – Peter and Paul.  Great cathedrals and basilicas have been named after them – on Wednesday, our former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher will have a funeral service conducted for her in St. Paul’s Cathedral; we have recently seen the proclamation of a new pope at the basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome; in St. Petersburg, there stands on an island in the River Neva, the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul where Russian Tsars were crowned and buried over centuries.  We have our own St. Paul’s Church in Salisbury where regularly, every Sunday, some 600 Christians worship.  Wherever you go in the Christian world you will find churches dedicated to these two great apostles (I use the term loosely here as I know some eminent theologians would challenge my use of the word “apostle” for Paul).  Probably no single human being has shaped the Church more than Paul – and here I talk of church not the wider concept of Christianity. Yet when we study in our bible of the events that followed Jesus’s resurrection in Acts and by reading the letters of Peter and Paul, we begin to unpick what Jesus was saying to Peter when he asked him to feed his sheep on three separate occasions. 

Peter was very adept at getting things wrong.  He denied Jesus three times on that night in Jerusalem.  He constantly had to be castigated by Jesus – you can often hear Jesus’s frustration in his conversations with him when Peter suggests building shelters for the three figures at the Transfiguration; demanding to be washed all over by Jesus on Maundy Thursday,  by denying that he will deny Jesus and often not listening.  “Oh Peter!, won’t you ever get it right?” – you can hear the words of Jesus’s frustration. Or sometimes just “Oh Peter!!”  A simple fisherman whom Jesus takes away from his skilled work to be his rock upon which he will build his church – but he is flawed individual.  A flawed and ordinary guy, just like us. 

After the crucifixion, Peter must have been in a desperate place – as were all the disciples.  How he must have felt particularly wretched when he realised that he had indeed denied Jesus – just as Jesus had said he would – not once but three times!  Then not to have fully believed in the resurrection until Jesus appeared to him and others in the upper room.  When Jesus broke the fish and the bread that morning on the shores of the lake – he was saying two things to Peter and his colleagues – “I am the risen Christ, I am not a ghost, I eat like you.  I am back in the body, albeit only for a short time, and despite the denial of Peter I renew my commission to him in the same manner that he denied me three times - I affirm his ministry three times. In other words, I re-commission him. He was broken but is now whole.  He does not need to repent, I have forgiven him”.  Repentance is not something which must happen before you are forgiven – Jesus had already forgiven Peter – even before the sheep-feeding conversation. Now in acknowledging that he is reconciled with God through Jesus, Peter must also know that his life as a Christian missionary – i.e. one sent out by God to spread the gospel, the Good News, will be hard and lead him into dark places where he wouldn’t wish to be led – culminating in his own crucifixion.  Repentance is, therefore, something which happens after forgiveness.  When Jesus stopped the stoning of the adulteress he first forgave her and then asked her to repent – to go and sin no more.  Isn’t it wonderful to think that when we turn to Him, he unconditionally forgives us – however many times we might seek his forgiveness.

In our reading in Acts, of which I am certain we are all very familiar, Paul has his Damascus experience – literally!  Paul is a broken and flawed person also.  As a Zealot, he has vigorously persecuted Christ-followers as they, to his mind, have committed heresies against the Jewish faith.  Indeed, he is on his way to persecute some more of Christ’s followers in Damascus.  Could there ever be a more unlikely person to be used by God to carry out Christian mission to the Gentile world? A man steeped in Jewish tradition, who held the coats of those who stoned the apostle Stephen?  Hardly! 

The vision of Jesus stands before Paul and after asking the simple question “Why do you persecute me” he is blinded and in an echo of Jesus’s earlier words to Peter, he is led to where he doesn’t wish to go.  To the home of a Christian follower in Damascus where he meets with other followers of Christ – and from there to a life dedicated to Jesus which will lead him into conflicts with Peter and the other disciples, with the Roman and Jewish authorities and his life will be one of a nomadic existence – travelling the then known world apart from periods in various prisons. A far cry from what he had thought originally had been his ministry – persecution of those he comes to lead. Again, Jesus asks Paul to acknowledge his sin but has already forgiven him – he has already chosen him in all his brokenness to be his disciple.  And what of poor Ananias?  He was certainly called to go somewhere he didn’t want to go! To see Saul the persecutor.

These two separate but, in my view, very linked stories can be well applied to us today.  God calls each and every one of us to some form of ministry if we are true believers and followers .  We often can’t accept or deal with this - feeling that we are not worthy – we have self-doubts about our abilities – or maybe it’s just too scary!  We are sinful people.  In fact, probably one of the worst sins we can have is to harbour and protect those self-doubts within us against God’s plan.  Yes, we should be humble and gracious – not in a Uriah Heap sort of way – but by accepting and acknowledging that God does know what is best for us even if it seems impossible or sheer lunacy to us.  When we start to superimpose, over God’s will, our own views and try and lead ourselves in another direction then we deny ourselves, just as Peter did, the presence of Jesus Christ in our lives.  Then we are lost.

I love reading these stories about Peter and Paul.  They are both so human.  Both frustrate me and irritate me at times – but then again, we all frustrate and irritate people at some time.  They were broken people when they were commissioned by God through Jesus. 

As Christ's disciples we are meant to have the light of Christ within us.  Only by our human imperfections, like those of Peter and Paul, our brokenness and our cracks, can that light shine through to us.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the lyrics of the Leonard Cohen song - “Anthem” which I think sums up perfectly all I have been speaking about today:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There’s a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Amen