Peter Paul and Many

Text: John 21:13-19

Feast of Peter and Paul

Christianity is a faith that sits in the moment, acknowledges the past, but has a preference for the future. Its vocabulary is full of words about restoring what is broken, renewing what has decayed, resurrecting what is dead. It is not an accident that all these words begin with “re-”, along with many other ones like reconciliation, restoration, rebirth. The prefix means “again” or “back.” They are all about finding something that has been lost—rediscovering it—or getting back to the right path after having wandered, or being cleansed after being corrupted.

In all these words, there is a turn, a change of direction. We acknowledge the past but head on out into the re-formed future. Repent—another such word—means to make a turn. Forgiveness—an essential word but this time without the prefix—lets us grieve the past but importantly releases us from it so we can step ahead in freedom.

As a consequence, we are open to big surprises and changes in our lives. We are taught by example and doctrine that that is how God works. Words like calling, commissioning, and conversion are all about being pulled into the future. We say that we accept God’s call, but sometimes it feels like we really have little choice in the matter. Often the result is that we are comforted in unexpected ways. Other times we are distressed. But we are usually at least a little amazed.

Today we celebrate the ministries of Peter and Paul. They did not have much in common. Peter was an ordinary fisherman. Paul was a privileged and educated Roman citizen. Though thrown together in the same stew by God, it seems that they did not like each other much. Peter supported Paul in his ministry to the gentiles, but Peter had big doubts about the plan until a vision set him straight.

Peter was much more involved with the fledgling church establishment than Paul was. Peter was careful. Paul was impulsive and exuberant. Peter does not mention Paul much, but Paul refers to Peter disdainfully, as he does in today’s second reading, by including Cephas—Peter’s name in Aramaic—in a dismissive list.

But Peter and Paul did have in common Christ’s call to them. Both were recruited directly by Jesus, Peter at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, Paul on the road to Damascus after the Resurrection. They were both renamed by Christ—Peter was Simon, Paul was Saul. They were both founding leaders of what was to become Christianity.

But most of all, they both had their lives totally turned around by Jesus. A new direction. Neither of them anticipated what they would become. Neither one of them could have imagined, given their backgrounds, inclinations, or prospects, what would happen to them.

Of the two, Paul’s story is the simpler. He is called once, through dramatically, and after that seems to apply the same energy and commitment to strengthening Christianity as he did attacking it before, and he seems pretty happy with his lot and his vocation.

But Peter’s story is more complicated.

Peter is one of the first disciples called to follow Jesus. He becomes a good friend of Jesus. They were buddies, companions. Peter was an enthusiast. It is Peter who wants to build booths at the Transfiguration. It is Peter who wants Jesus to wash his whole body, not just his feet. It is Peter who tries to walk on water. It is Peter who so confidently acclaims Jesus as messiah. Peter is a doofus.

But something happens to Peter. First, he denies Jesus three times. And the death of Jesus, his friend, is a harsh blow. The Resurrection confounds him. In the Gospel of John, Peter is the first to enter the empty tomb. According to other accounts, Peter is the first person to whom the risen Christ appeared. Yet he responds by going fishing; his job before he met Jesus.

The conversation today between Jesus and Peter is a turning point in Peter’s life. One of those change-in-direction events. By the time it is over, Peter is a new person. A different person. No longer a fisherman, Peter has a new role given to him by Jesus. A more difficult role. A more responsible role. From now on in the Bible we will hear no more goofy stories about Peter. He stops being exuberant and playful.

Jesus had before nick-named him Rocky, which is what Peter means in Greek. At the time, Jesus said to him: On this rock—on you, Peter—I will build my church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. Now Peter understands the seriousness of this commission. In the course of one conversation Peter goes from a care-free flaky sidekick to a reliable but troubled leader. From outlier to administrator. From rebel to mainstream. It is Peter who has to worry about infrastructure while Paul gets to be the flashy marketeer. Peter agonizes about the admission of gentiles; Paul just goes out and signs them all up.

Do you love me? Jesus asks Peter. Feed my lambs, tend my sheep, Jesus tells Peter. Be a good shepherd to them. Not just to nourish them, but to do all that a shepherd does. Both Paul and Peter nourish God’s people. They have that in common. But it is Peter who has to make sure that the fences are set, the hay in the loft, the lambs attended to.

When Jesus asks about Peter’s love for him, he is not testing Peter’s character. This is not a job interview. He chose Peter long ago. Jesus knows that Peter’s job will not be glamorous. There will be tough going. He will be taken places he does not want to go. Danger lies ahead. Peter’s call to lead God’s people is not a consequence of his love for Jesus. His love does not compel him.

Rather, it is his love for Jesus that enables him to respond to Jesus’ call. It is a job that he cannot do without his love for Christ. Jesus is not saying, if you love me, then tend my sheep. It is not a condition. He is saying, since you love me, you will be able to tend my sheep. The work is hard. But because you love me, you will be able to do it.

Peter and Paul are long gone, but the work of attending to God’s people continues. It is now we who are called to nourish each other in body and spirit.

It is not likely that we will be called upon to create a whole new religion. But it is likely that there will be big changes and surprises in in our lives. That we will on occasion be amazed. And that we will be called sometime to make a sharp turn into a new future. In those times, we trust that we be sustained and guided, as Peter and Paul were, by our love for God in Christ.

Of One's Right Mind

Text: Galatians 3:23-29
Other texts: Luke 8:26-39

We are each one of us a person of a thousand voices. In each of us: Clamoring and soft. Disagreeing, disagreeable, seductive. Each voice making requests, making demands: each seeing the world in a different way, each telling a different truth, each trying to prevail. A thousand thinkers inside of us. Some always present, some lying low in wait for a more opportune time.

Not demons, exactly, but maybe demons. Not usually sending us off to caves, not usually making us tear off our clothes, but sometimes, some people. Not usually leaving us locked up in chains, but sometimes, yes. Or sometimes it feels like we are.

The demons come out of the man into the pigs. How do all those demons agree enough to send all the pigs into the sea at one time? Why don’t they run this way and that, like our own demons do?

There are a thousand voices in the man. More than a thousand, really, since a legion was 6,000 soldiers. The man had so many voices in him that there was no room anymore for his name. What is your name? Jesus asks. “Legion” is my name, someone answers. The man was so fragmented that there was no more person left. Just the many voices left.

Jesus heals the man by driving all those voices out of him. Maybe when all were driven out a new voice emerged. The voice of the man as he was, as God created him before he was occupied by every other voice.

The voice of the man in his right mind, it says. It means of one mind, one heart. Being restored to one mind, one heart, the man is made whole. That is how Jesus heals him.

The purpose of the law, Paul writes to the church in Galatia, the purpose of the the law was to tutor us. The word tutor is unfortunately translated in our Bibles as “disciplinarian,” a word with difficult connotations. Disciples are students, and what guides and forms students are disciple‑formers—that is, teachers, tutors. The Message, a free Bible translation, has Paul saying: The law was like those Greek tutors, with which you are familiar, who escort children to school and protect them from danger or distraction, making sure the children will really get to the place they set out for.

The law was guide, a path to the right place. It was healing in the way that Jesus healed the man in Luke’s story. It formed a right-minded community out of a legion of diverse directions and desires. It scripted a single voice that could be spoken by the many people of the community. That guide, says Paul, though still good, is no longer necessary. Something about Jesus makes another way possible.

We are unified in the body of Christ—or maybe here we should say “family of Christ,” since Paul in this letter says that in Christ we are all children of God. One family. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of us are one in Christ Jesus, as we heard and as we pray here every Sunday.

Before we talk more about this, which we will do in second, we should remember how strange this by now-familiar reassurance was. And is, in practice. It is a fine thing to talk about the unity of Christ, and to imagine that unity extending to all Christians and to all people, as we do. But if you look around the world, you do not see much unity. You see a lot of fighting and biting. Maybe we want to be Jew and Greek. Maybe we do not want to be united. Maybe we do not want to be equal but rather we want to be better than the rest. Unity is fine as long as I get to be at the top. We value cooperation only when either it does not matter or when it helps us—our group—to better compete. You might wonder whether we got to where the world is now because we actually have wanted it that way.

Paul has a vision that he presents in all his letters but especially here. The approval and blessing of God that was once available to only one group of people is now, through the presence of Christ, available to all. We are brothers and sisters of Christ and therefore children of God and therefore brothers and sisters of one another. We are clothed in Christ, Paul says. We are all wearing the same outfit. We are all wearing outfits made out of Christ-cloth. Christ-suits, so to speak.

Because of that, no one can tell whether we are Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. This does not mean that everything and everyone is the same. It does mean that none of those things that differentiate people are significant. They do not signify anything. They are not signs that give us—or give God—clues about how to treat them. They do not convey important information.

But:; this clothing of Christ is really more like anti-clothing. It is like a disguise, but in reverse. It is as if we were stripped of all the manufactured decoration—which like high fashion marks us out as better, richer, meaner, cleverer—as if we were stripped of all the surface skins with which we have adorned ourselves. And then stripped of even our features and shape. The Christ-suit is no suit at all. And that all that is left is our divinity and our humanity.

If we are all so clothed, then it changes the way we see one another. This is not so supernatural; it is common. It is what happens to you when you see your friends. All your friends are great-looking. Right? How did they get that way? Especially since when you first met them they were so funny-looking. But you no longer see at all those attributes that seemed so obvious about them. You no longer can see their decorations, their presentation. You see them. One like us.

Paul argues that through Christ we are able to see all others that way. As beautiful to us as our friends are. That we can even see those who used to be invisible to us, like our enemies, or strangers.

The promise of Abraham of which Paul speaks is a promise of favor by God: blessing, peace, abundance, companionship. A special relationship with God. Now this relationship is available to all. Paul sees a division in the discordant world that is repaired by the healing work of God in Christ.

Christ does for the world what Jesus did for the man. To restore to us our true names. Our true names: brother and sister.

Very Risky

Text: Luke 7:35—8:3

You might call it balanced: our need for stability and our longing for adventure. You might see timidity, caution, and prudence as virtues that promote our survival—and they do. But we cannot stand in one place for very long. We cannot walk without propelling our bodies forward precariously.

We want to protect and conserve what we have. Risky moves are threatening and cause anxiety. But the things that give us the most pleasure are the most risky. Having a child (or another), leaving home for school or changing jobs, starting a new venture. And in our faith lives, too: entertaining a contrary notion or a unfamiliar practice, praying in the shadow of deep doubt, serving unlikable others, being extravagantly generous.

But while we try to maintain a balance in our lives between security and risk, Christianity is not so balanced. In its commitment to the kingdom of God, Christianity has at its core a preference for risk. We follow a man who risked his life for others and who has called his followers to risk theirs.

The story we heard today from Luke appears in all four Gospels, a rare and sure sign that something in it was at the heart of the experiences of the first Christians. In all the versions, though least in Luke, the act of the woman is considered extravagant. She brings an alabaster jar of perfume, which is sometimes described as worth a year’s salary, and anoints Jesus with it.

This is an outrageous endeavor. In every story, she is uninvited—you might say she barges in—and in Luke’s version she is evidently an outcast because of some publicly-known behavior. In every story, the invited and upright citizens (or authorities) condemn her. In every story, Jesus reprimands them. What the woman has done is good, he says. He celebrates her actions as a joyous event.

The critics in the different versions of this story object to what the woman does for various reasons. But they all boil down to the same conclusion: what she is doing is unexpected and disruptive and hard to figure out. Simon the Pharisee objects because the woman is a sinner who risks ridicule or worse and who appears disturbingly among what Simon implies are a crowd of non-sinners like him—as if there were such persons.

In response, Jesus tells them a parable. A creditor in the parable forgives two debtors. One owes a lot of money and the other owes a very lot of money (about $50,000 and about $500,000 in today’s dollars). In any case, more than either can pay.

One way to look at this is to compare the extremely different amounts. That is how Luke sees it. But there is something odd about that view. Luke presents this parable as a story about people’s response to being forgiven. A great sinner is forgiven more and therefore responds more energetically. But in fact both debtors are forgiven completely. And the complaint Simon has is not so much with the woman—though he does not like her—as it does with the welcome that Jesus gives her (“What kind of prophet is this guy,” he asks under his breath).

It seems, therefore, that Jesus is telling us—as he usually does in his parables—telling us less about the ingratitude of Simon and more about the nature of God. He is telling us that God is as extravagant with forgiveness as the woman was with her perfume.

The woman has a freedom that Simon does not. It is customary to imagine that she is poor, and that for that reason her actions are amazing, but not so helpful to us. She has less to risk, by this reasoning. Unlike Simon who has much. As some of us do. A kind of: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” But that sentimentalizes and trivializes a difficult choice that she makes. There is no reason to assume that the woman is not just like us. With conflicts and responsibilities and a need to be frugal. She just isn’t frugal at the moment. We can imagine her making the same kind of decisions we make when considering risky undertakings.

What gives her—or us—freedom to take risks is not that we have nothing to lose. It is that we are able to deny power to what we do have. It is not that we have nothing to bind us, but that the loss of those things is no longer determining. It is not that we will not mourn for what we give up, but that our grief—though real and powerful—does not paralyze us.

Jesus forgives the woman neither as payment for her actions nor as a cause of them. That is, her gift of expensive perfume was not a fee to buy his forgiveness, nor was it a consequence of his forgiving her. The relationship in time between the two events is ambiguous in the text. He forgives her for the same reason that the creditor in the parable forgives the debtors—Jesus’ and the creditor’s forgiveness are gifts. Given for no reason at all. Or rather, just because that is the nature of God revealed in this moment in Jesus.

Free forgiveness for no reason at all is risky behavior. To forgive another risks being made a fool of. You might be exploited. You might reward the undeserving and unrepentant. You might weaken—as we talked about a couple of weeks ago—the controlling power of shame that you hold. You might have to give up resentments, regrets, and reasons that explain how things are with you right now. Yet, it is Christian behavior.

We are followers of Christ. He is our teacher and example. He has taught us how to forgive others. And he has taught us how to take risks in life, to act bravely for justice and peace, to deny the powers of authority and property. A tall order.

Yet we are able to take these risks and to forgive others because Jesus has shown us how. We are compelled to because he has commanded us to. We desire to because of the joy it brings us. And we are free to do it because we are promised that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

A Powerful Imagination

Text: Luke 7:11-17

Preacher: Paul Stansifer.

A while ago, I watched an episode of a goofy defunct television show that struck me as weird, even weird in comparison to the kind of goofy defunct television shows that I tend to like.

Usually on TV, the person who’s in trouble this week has been designed to be totally sympathetic. But the focus of this episode was a sour, ungrateful, whiny teenager, who has been confined to a wheelchair and a life of misery by a bad heart. A cheerful – Oh, and he’s a bit of a poser, too. A cheerful and energetic employee of the “Wish-A-Wish Foundation” has been assigned to make him happy, which turns out to be a completely futile task.

I’ll skip past the murder and the raising from the dead of a couple of insurance adjusters and ruin the ending for you: a van driven by a pet monkey runs over the Wish-A-Wish Foundation employee, and in accordance with her wishes, the teen gets her heart as a transplant.

I kind of liked the episode, because it made a happy ending out of saving the life of a completely unlikeable person.

The story that Luke tells is weird in the exact opposite way: unlike most of the people that Jesus helps, the widow of Nain is surrounded by a crowd of people who already sympathize with her.

When the widow’s only son died, her life was essentially over. In her society, a woman without a household had no work, no income, no purpose in life. The crowd of mourners knows this. They know that the scriptures repeat over and over again how despicable it is to cheat or deprive widows and orphans. And they also know that it gets repeated because people disregard even that. She couldn't have been a more heart wrenchingly helpless victim.

When Jesus walks into the story, and raises up the widow’s son, the crowd immediately celebrates and declares Jesus to be a prophet, and says that God has come to save his people. They are correct.

But it is rare for Jesus's actions to receive universal approval this way. Jesus tended to get a lot of flak for working his miracles. He did them on the Sabbath, he did them to people who deserved their illnesses, he put lepers and lunatics back into a society that didn’t know what to do with them.

When a miracle of healing occurs, those onlookers who who see the recipient in a abstract, dispassionate way are able to stand around and have a debate about details of the law. But the people who before the miracle were weeping over the tragedy now feel an overriding joy.

And so, the mourners ignored minor issues such as the fact that Jesus became ceremonially unclean when he touched the boy's coffin (contact with the dead was the most serious form of uncleanliness). Did Jesus is properly purify himself afterwards? The widow could not possibly care, and, as for the crowd, they gave up their chance to be sticklers for the law when they joined her in mourning.

I'm not trying to say that all actions taken to comfort someone who's suffering are necessarily good actions. The murdered insurance adjusters in that television episode would probably argue, with good reason, that murdering an insurance adjuster is wrong, regardless of whether it might cheer up a wheelchair-bound teenager.

What I am trying to say is that Jesus viewed the suffering of the people he met as a legitimate crisis regardless of the form that the suffering took, what caused it, or who the sufferer was. You could say Jesus has a powerful form of imagination called "sympathy". The people Jesus meets in the Gospels, and the people Jesus meets today, are often alarmingly deficient in their ability to imagine how others are feeling. This miracle was an easy test, and the people pass it. But usually, we don't do so well.

A few verses later in Luke, Jesus will be criticizing the people who fail to accept John the Baptist as a prophet, because John shuns worldly things and lives alone in the wilderness, and who fail to accept Jesus as a prophet, because he eats and drinks with dishonorable people. Jesus says “They are like children sitting in the marketplace. One group shouts to the other, ‘We played wedding music for you, but you wouldn’t dance; we sang funeral songs but you wouldn’t cry.’” If those people could have imagined the urgency of carrying a message from God, it would have seemed perfectly reasonable to them to either separate oneself and stand as a beacon in the wilderness, as John did, or to go and seek out the people most in need of the message in their native habitat, as Jesus did.

The Pharisees Jesus is talking about have a lot of the same beliefs as Jesus, but as long as they see him as a freak, as someone they don't have to sympathize with, they will never learn anything from him.

To fail to sympathize with someone—to fail to regard their feelings as legitimate—that is the fast track to getting on with one's life and not learning, not helping, and not caring.

I like to think that the crowd in today’s story won’t be making that mistake any more. They’ve fallen into Jesus’s trap. He showed up when their compassion had rendered them completely vulnerable to his compassion. Now, when Jesus drives the demons out of the man who called himself “Legion,” they’ll see past the disruption caused by the death of all the pigs, and try to see the man, and feel his relief not to be hurting himself any more.

I don’t feel like I’m very skilled at mourning with those who mourn; it's pretty easy for me to think about the suffering of other people as a problem to be solved if the cost is not too high, rather than as an offense against the humanity of someone who might as well be me.

But Jesus is thinking about the sufferers. In order to make them well, by the end of time or sooner, he is trampling all over cute notions and pure principles. He's making a mess of things for those of us who are already doing fine.

But let us look at this a different way: blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted! Those who suffer and those who mourn with them understand the oppressiveness and evilness of pain. In an instant, that can become a full-hearted commitment to the joy and the goodness of the Kingdom of Heaven.