Peter and Paul

Sunday 29^th June

I can’t think of anyone who more deserves that term “pillars of the Church” than Peter and Paul. Both of them shared the experience of prison; both paid the price of drinking Christ’s cup of suffering to the dregs. But in other ways they couldn’t be more different: Peter is the big fisherman, a bit rough and ready, often too ready to speak – as when heoffers to build tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah on the Mont of Transfiguration, sometimes too ready to go back to the old rough ways – like when he gets out his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane and cuts off someone’s ear.

But Peter is also the one with the big heart: he’s the first to say: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God; Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life”. He’s the first to leap out of the boat when the Risen Jesus appears on the shore with breakfast ready: “It is the Lord!” He’s wonderfully complex. The rock on which the Church is built, but a rock with a crack in it, deep flaws, flaws that Jesus loves. He’s Peter the betrayer, but he’s also on that same seashore, Peter the forgiven, Peter to whom the care of the sheep and the keys to the kingdom, both are given to him.

Knowing what we know of Peter, it’s enough to make you ask: Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Lord? Do you really know this man? But of course, he does.

And he knows Paul too. Saul when we first meet him, holding the coats of those who stoned Stephen, then breathing threats and violence against the saints and persecuting them with a zeal that has terrifying resonances with persecutions going on today. Killing people in God’s name? Saul didn’t flinch. So it’s no wonder that when the converted Paul is first introduced to the Christians of Damascus they’re deeply suspicious – like bringing a wolf to meet the sheep. Are you sure? they ask. Haven’t you heard about this man?

But Paul converted is just what the Lord needs. The mind of a lawyer, but the heart of a poet – “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love I am a noisy clang or a sounding cymbal; so faith, hope, love abide – these three - and the greatest of these is love”. And Paul will use any means to get the Gospel out there: Roman roads, Roman shipping lanes, sometimes even appealing to Roman Law (although under Roman Law he’s killed in the end); taking the Gospel right to the heart of intellectual Athens and debating with the philosophers on their own terms and even quoting their own poetry. He says: "I make myself all things to all men, so that by any means I may save some". Would Paul have used Facebook? – you bet. And Twitter too, no doubt, although I doubt if he’d have got his great Epistle to the Romans down to 140 characters.

Paul can, of course, get a bad press over some things that are very much of his time and context – notably that women should keep their heads covered in worship, not be permitted to teach, and be subject to men – although you have to balance this by the clear evidence that women were among Paul’s closest friends and fellow labourers for the Gospel, and that men are firmly instructed to love and respect both their wives and their children – everyone submitting to each other in love. But the greatest gift Paul gives us quite simply is Gospel.

If he hadn’t argued it out with Peter and the other apostles in Jerusalem, pleading to be allowed to extend the Gospel to the Gentiles, we might none of us be sitting here. Peter may be the Rock on which the Church is built, but Paul is the visionary, the far-seeing one. It’s significant to know that the very first Gospel we have is the Gospel according to Paul. His letter to the Galatians predates our earliest written copy of any Gospel by at least twenty years.

And this is what he tells the Galatians: the first written proclamation by any Christian that’s come down to us – “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery”.

These two imprisoned men, know that grace has set them free. Could you have more to live down, more to regret than either of them? Peter with his three denials, Paul with his hatred and violence, his past as a bigot with a mission. And Jesus sets them both free. Both would know miraculous jail breaks involving angels – no need for a key hidden inside a cake or a bar of soap if you’ve got angels around. But the real liberation is the one they preach and their voices echo right into this place, this time and into our hearts. Peter, who self-deprecatingly says he can’t compare with Paul’s learning (and actually sometimes doesn’t understand him – which is comforting) is in fact every bit as much of a poet as Paul is. Why? Because he’s in love: I have this to tell you, he says, “and you would do well to be attentive to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and Christ the morning star rises in your hearts”.

Set that alongside Paul’s “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? No, in all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Set these words of Peter and Paul side by side and you have Good News – and millions have been touched by the witness of these flawed, but beloved and grace-filled men.

Two men who could not be more different, but the same love claimed them – and the love that claimed them claims us too. This Jesus who loved them into being more than they ever dared dream of will do the same for us. Paul says: For freedom Christ has set you free; Peter says, and he should know, This truth – this Jesus - is a lamp to shine in any dark place.