3 Easter Year C |
St James’, Peace River |
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Perhaps this is something that would only occur to the guy who writes the sermon every week, but I was taken a bit by surprise, by two stories of people being called – coming up in the Easter season. I'm used to hearing the stories of the disciples' call at a different time of year. Normally we see it as part of the story of Jesus' ministry which we tell during Epiphanytide: Jesus went about teaching, healing, and proclaiming the kingdom, and he invited a group of disciples to follow him as he did all that – to watch and learn so that they could do the same things in their turn. But here today we have two quite different stories of being called, two stories of the people who would go on to become the greatest leaders in the first generation of the Jesus movement. And neither of them are the familiar stories of Jesus picking a stranger out of the crowd, someone he'd never met before, and saying, “Come, follow me.” One of them certainly is a stranger. More than that, an enemy – this fellow Saul was the biggest problem the first generation church had. If someone had just stood in front of him, offered to shake hands, and said, “Come and follow Jesus,” Saul's reaction would presumably have been to cart them off to prison. There doesn't seem to have been any organized or official persecution of Christians at the time, which makes Saul's campaign even nastier: he was taking it as a personal mission to eradicate this movement which he saw as an affront to his own faith and upbringing as a Pharisee. And Jesus calls him. The reading we heard makes that really clear. This is not just a conversion, a change of heart. It starts that way – actually it starts one step before that, if we can imagine the confusion and turmoil going through Saul's heart and mind after his vision on the Damascus road. Interesting how the change of heart has to run both ways, as it's not till a very brave Christian named Ananias accepts the call to welcome – and even heal – his church's #1 opponent, not till then that Saul is able to see what's really going on. Saul's call to be a disciple comes as part of that process. God tells Ananias that he has chosen Saul to proclaim his message to kings and nations, and when Ananias heals Saul he tells him not simply to see again, but to be filled with the Holy Spirit – the mark by which the first Christians knew one another. And sure enough, the next thing we know Saul is proclaiming Jesus as the Son of God, exactly the issue which would have originally offended his strict monotheistic faith. The second call story we heard today didn't involve a stranger at all. Peter is one of Jesus' closest friends and followers. Or at least he was, till the events of Jesus' arrest and trial, when he betrayed his loyalty by denying that he knew Jesus not just once, but three times. Even in the aftermath of the resurrection, we can only imagine that Peter had mixed feelings. How amazing to see his teacher and friend alive again; but how bitter his own embarrassment at what he had done. Perhaps we can imagine him waiting for the other shoe to drop; expecting Jesus would come to confront him, wondering what the consequence would be – perhaps he could no longer be a disciple! So if there is one feature that links these stories, it may be the confusion and turmoil that both Peter and Saul felt on seeing the risen Christ. What should have been the best news ever, instead turns them both inside out: Saul because he has staked his reputation on Christianity being a fraud; Peter because he can now never erase the memory of his denials. The way Jesus actually treats Peter at this point bears a lot of thinking about. First we have to notice that Peter is not expecting Jesus – in fact he has kind of wandered away from the whole story, gone back to fishing just like he was when Jesus first found him. In fact, none of the disciples recognizes Jesus. Only the sign of the miraculous catch of fish clues them in – though that is not just any miracle, it's a pointed reminder of Jesus' promise that they were supposed to be fishing for people. But when they come ashore, things are almost as they always were – sharing a meal, letting Jesus' presence build them up, receiving bread and fish from him. Then Jesus takes Peter aside, and you can bet Peter is anxious about that – this is it, this is what he's been dreading. And Jesus doesn't mince words. “Do you love me?” It's not quite a direct accusation, but it comes mighty close especially when he repeats the question three times, just as Peter denied him three times. Here's the thing though. Peter DOES love Jesus. And he also denied him. The question-and-answer session brings out both parts of Peter's character. Both are true. And after each answer, Jesus says, “Feed my lambs... Tend my sheep... Feed my sheep,” calling Peter to be a leader amongst his followers based on nothing more than that two-sided truth. And Jesus wraps up the whole episode by looking at Peter one more time and saying, “Follow me,” just as if we were back in chapter one again. A new beginning. Very appropriate for an Eastertide story, very apt for an encounter with the risen Lord. But of course it is more than just starting over. Peter is a completely different person when Jesus tells him to “Feed my sheep”, than he was at the beginning of the book. He knows himself better, for good and for ill. He knows the amazing things he is capable of when his focus is on following Jesus, and he knows the dismay and despair when he lets go of that focus. Jesus' last words to him, “Follow me”, bring that all together in his mind and heart, and they leave him with a decision that is not just about flippantly leaving the fishing boat behind to see what's new – rather it's about being willing to stake his life on the Lord who accepts his imperfect efforts to be a true and loyal follower. I think all of that makes good sense from where we stand. For most of us, this is not our first Easter season – not the first time we have remembered and celebrated the death and resurrection of Jesus and wondered what it all means for us. And for many of us it may be a long time since we heard Jesus inviting us to come and see what he's up to – if we ever sensed that clearly at all. We are aware of how the energy of our discipleship ebbs and flows, how easily we lose focus. Perhaps there are episodes in our lives when, like Peter, we have betrayed our loyalty or, like Saul, have had to be shaken out of our understanding of how our faith is really supposed to be practised. And all of that may leave us with the impression that we are not good enough for real discipleship. Or perhaps even worse, that we are only just good enough – that we can keep up a passing grade because, on balance, we are Jesus' followers more than we aren't. Which, I think, would be missing the point of these stories. What the stories of Peter, and Saul, and all the disciples tell us is that Jesus doesn't look for heroes when he calls us, that he knows exactly what he is in for; that it is in our imperfection that we are called, and that Jesus is there with us when we get it wrong just as much as when we get it right. And perhaps there is a bigger point there, about being called by the risen Jesus, one who has been through it all and is not going away. That reinforces that our relationship with Christ is not something that goes in and out of focus for him – our calling is 24/7 whether WE remember that all the time or not. Everything we do, everything that happens to us, leads us back in some way to the one we follow. What we do for others we do for him. What we do to others we do to him. That is a wake-up call for us. But it also both a forgiving and an empowering message. Forgiving, because every time we grow more aware of our own missteps, we also grow more aware that the risen Lord is still with us, that he has committed himself to us not just for life but forever. And empowering, because we know now that our discipleship is no longer about trying very hard by ourselves to do the right thing all the time, but rather about working in partnership with one who is always present with us. The risen Jesus is here to watch and to cheer us on, but most important of all, he works from within us, closer to our hearts than we are ourselves. That can be a discomforting feeling – like the best news ever, it turns us inside out, and exposes all the ways in which we still need to grow and change. But as we actually DO grow and change, we come to know what the new life is all about: life in Christ, and the life of Christ in us. * |
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