Sermons
29th June 2008 - St Peter3
We celebrate today Saint Peter, archetype of Christian faith, the rock upon whom Christ founded the church, the prince of the apostles. It can all sound rather distant, the business of saints. How many saints do you know? How many of the people you know might be described with some justification as saints? Not many?
Saints can be rather daunting to normal folk if normal folk forget for a moment that saints were and are made of the same fallen flesh and blood as ourselves, struggled with the same errant desires, failed again and again in their faith, but drew themselves up again and again as we try to. A saint on earth is not a work of perfection but a work in progress. Hagiography, the writing up of saints’ lives, often with extra spicy miracles and choice examples of sanctity may have changed form over the centuries, but it is still very popular. It is as if we would like to imagine there has ever since Adam been a truly unblemished, a truly holy person, one from whom all traces of the ravages and joys of our sinful nature have been erased. But, apart from Jesus, no such people have ever existed. There is just one state of humanity to be encountered in this life, and it is the fallen state.
In some senses we have moved forward from those incredible stories of unspotted saints. Think of the most recent case of extensive hagiographical splendour, Princess Diana. Whatever the great outpouring of supposedly un-English emotion demonstrated on her death, it was not in anybody’s mind that this woman was of immaculate character. Rather it was as if the very struggles that she had endured and perhaps created, added to the feeling that here was somebody taken away from us whom we could understand, a very human saint, a saint who made the sorts of mistakes and got into the sorts of scrapes that normal people get into.
But what about St Peter, here surely we have an unapproachably holy figure. Just listen to the importance of his role in the events which define our faith – the events that centre on the life of Jesus Christ. Peter is brought to Jesus by St Andrew and called with him from their nets to become the first great missionaries, fishing for people’s souls with the bait of the good news of Christ. Peter is called to be one of the twelve, and in all the lists of the twelve his name comes first. He is part of the inner circle of disciples who witness the raising of Jairus’ daughter, who are present at the Transfiguration, who are with Jesus in the garden before he is taken away to his death. Peter often speaks for the other disciples, he is their mouth-piece and, after he confesses for all of them the true identity of Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, Jesus confers upon him the name and ministry of the rock upon which the church will be built. After the resurrection, Peter is clearly the head of the apostles, he is the first and the greatest worker of miracles among them. In his journeying to Rome to die for his Lord he plants the geographical and spiritual marker from which the worldwide church will expand. And the early church fathers quickly realised and agreed that St Peter was the first of the great succession of bishops of Rome. The church of St Peter cannot ever be vanquished by the powers of death and hell, and to finally St Peter the keys of the very gates of the kingdom are given.
But look closer at this saint and you find a struggling man called to holiness, a headstrong man too eager to act, too slow to pray, a man who was weak at the hour of need, a man who deserted the one whom he had called Messiah. At the Transfiguration Peter rushes about wanting to do something, wanting to contain the holy, ‘shall we build three tabernacles here for you?’, he says as the glory departs. As Jesus is arrested, Peter strikes out with his sword only to be rebuked by Jesus. It is Peter to whom Jesus says ‘Get behind me Satan’ in the gospel of St Mark, as Peter does not want to countenance the suffering that Jesus must undergo, and three times he denies his Lord.
Perhaps because of his failures Peter is a very attractive character; like Princess Diana he is easy for us to associate with - his eagerness and then his falling away, his certainty that he will not betray his master ‘Though they all fall away, I will never fall away’ he says ‘even if I must die with you, I will not deny you’. But he does. And then in the garden dropping off when all he had to do was stay awake and watch with the sons of Zebedee, yet Jesus’ finds them slumbering. ‘Could you not watch with me one hour?’ And after Jesus is arrested - that haunting scene: Peter following at a distance, keeping out of sight, furtively warming himself at the fire, until he is spotted as a follower of the Galilean. ‘Surely, you were with him’, they say.
Yet, despite Peter being so recognisably human, it is Peter upon whom Jesus founds the church against which the gates of hell will not prevail, it is Peter whom Jesus in John’s gospel instructs to tend his sheep, to feed his flock. It is this most human of disciples upon whom Jesus places such huge trust and to whom he gives such authority.
This is not an invitation to us to follow Peter in his betrayal of Jesus, but it is a sure indication that the church which Jesus founds upon him is to be made up of sinful failing humans who through the mystery of God’s presence and direction enable the proclamation of the kingdom to be heard in the world. It is a sure sign that the church - though made up of those sinful failing humans - is also a divine body, one that is given authority as Peter is given authority. As members of that body we also are invested with authority and responsibility to tend the sheep and to feed the flock, like Peter there will be times in our own lives when we deny our Lord, times when we follow at a distance keeping out of sight in case we are identified as his followers, and times when - try as we might - we end up slumbering instead of watching. Peter’s role should give us encouragement in those times that though we are inconstant, Jesus is constant, though we turn aside, he does not, though we forsake him he will not forsake us. In times when we feel we have performed so poorly that all we want to do is go out and weep bitterly like St Peter, we should remember Jesus’ words to Peter in Luke’s gospel ‘Simon, Simon, behold Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren’.
Blessed be Jesus Christ in his angels and saints! Praise God for calling the all too human Peter to follow Jesus, may we learn from his example that Our Lord will never turn us away because of our failings. And maybe you need to revise your opinion of how many living saints you know – you are probably sitting right next to one just now.