Peter & Paul Sunday 27th June
AMAZING GRACE
Acts 12:1-11; 2 Tim. 4:8,17-18; Mtt. 16:13-19
Called to preach on today's readings for the Feast of St Peter and St Paul has filled me with even greater than usual trepidation. I am in awe of those ‘Twin Towers’ of the early Church, the two ‘anointed ones’. And then, 2 Timothy warns that, in seeking to bridge the gap between the first and twenty-first centuries, rather than just sticking verbatim to what they taught, a preacher risks stretching theTruth unacceptably. I am, however, emboldened by the example of the Syro- Phoenician woman who pleaded with Jesus to heal her non-Jewish daughter, reasoning persuasively that even the dogs ate the scraps from the master’s table. I take comfort, also, from the catholic monk, Thomas Merton’s assertion that, although he couldn’t know that what he was doing was God’s will, he was certain that his desire to please Him did just that. Right or wrong, we too can rely on God’s amazing Grace. And it is through that lens that we can best appreciate both Peter and Paul, who both sometimes got it wrong in their desire to please God.
Jesus’ response to Peter’s startled confession of faith - “You are the Christ, the son of the living God” - was to declare that he would build his Church on the rock of that inspired but barely understood faith, and that peter would be given the metaphorical keys of heaven and the authority to bind or loose sins on earth. It soon seemed that Jesus’ confidence in Peter was misplaced. Following Pentecost, however, a rehabilitated Peter was given a vision at Joppa, repeated three times, which convinced him, a pious Jew, that as far as God is concerned no food is unclean and no person is beyond the pale. I early Old Testament times, eunuchs were considered first an abomination, and later accepted as ‘better than sons and daughters’ in the Temple: later again, an Ethiopian eunuch was an early Christian convert. Peter ws able to persuade the embryo Churh to accept Gentiles unreservedly, once they saw that they, too, had received the Holy Spirit. After the Council in Jerusalem, the apostles and elders wrote ‘It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us’ to do so. later Peter himself experienced being literally bound and loosed, when he was miraculously sprung from Herod’s jail by an angel. He eventually died as a martyr in Rome, having, by Grace, overcome his tendency to be a fair-weather follower of his Master.
Paul, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, was initially a passionate persecutor of Christians. After his dramatic conversion experience on the Damascus road, he became indefatigable in spreading the Gospel to the Gentiles, preaching Christ crucified, in season and out. Enduring beatings, imprisonments and shipwrecks, he also wrote urgent letters to the Churches he had founded, to correct, rebuke and encourage. The teaching in these epistles was not always consistent, as it was very much work in progress. Like Peter, Paul ended up in Rome; completely spent he could rightly claim to have fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith. He taught essentially that ‘we have all fallen short of the glory of God’ and looked on himself as ‘the chief of sinners’. Despite his inability always to walk the talk, he never fell into despair - ‘For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ’. God is able to use the less than perfect creatively and so we need to recognise his Grace at work in situations which may be less than ideal. An ideal can become an idol. ‘The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath’!
Dispensing Grace is the central mission of the Church and it remains some considerable way off being ‘mission accomplished’. Jesus did not cancel the hallowing principle, which separates clean from unclean: rather he changed it source. As Christians we are called upon to be conveyers of Grace, not avoided of contagion.Paul talked about the church as ‘the Body of Christ’, using an inclusive metaphor that stresses the importance and interdependence of every member. The pastoral epistles, some of which were most likely written by those who came after him, tend to talk of ‘the household of faith’, which is more suggestive of a hierarchy. the tradition position is that the water vision, ‘the ‘household’, supersedes the former, ‘the body’. Charismatic Christians, however would regard the Magisterium of the Roman Church as a potentially harmful fossilisation of a dynamic tradition. Hans Kung, a major theologian, died recently, still a Catholic priest. He had, however, has his licence to teach withdrawn because he pressed for a reconsideration of priestly celibacy, of the ordination of women, of remarriage after divorce and of homosexuality as being ‘intrinsically disordered’. The Church of Englan, with its bishops and synods, seeks to heal the two metaphors in tension, since at various times one or the other requires more emphasis. At present it is asking us all to engage with its’ Living in Love and Faith’ project and to provide feed back by November.
LLF asks what it means for us, as disciples of Jesus and so life-long learners, to walk in love, faith and holiness today. All around us we see changing understandings of human identity, changing patterns in relationships and families, changing sexual attitudes and activity. In the UK, Civil Partnerships are now available to everyone and same-sex couples can be married in a civil ceremony, and also in some denominations. This is our lived reality and, even if it does not touch us personally, it affects the lives of a significant and valued minority. Jesus came so that we might all enjoy life in all its fullness, so we cannot be indifferent to their well-being. We are called to love our neighbour as ourselves.
But why should we reconsider what the Church has always taught about intimate relationships, especially when there are so many other pressing issues? President Lyndon Johnson commendably wanted to focus on poverty and was quite irate when Martin Luther King pressed him to enforce the implementation of Civil Rights. He acted swiftly, however, to redress that injustice after a determined and peaceful march at Selma. Today we have the Gay Pride marches.
Jesus said that he had more to teach his disciples than they were then ready to hear. He promised to send the Holy Spirit to guide them into all Truth. LLF is an opportunity for us to reconsider traditional teaching and to go beyond the Bible biblically, recognising some texts as staging posts in a ‘redemptive movement’ or drive found throughout all the Scriptures that leads to a fuller redemption than was envisaged even in the New Testament. The abolition of slavery, the dismantling of Apartheid and the emancipation of women were all hard won and are still not secure.
LLf provides in depth material both online and in hard copy and also offers a five session course so that people of differing views, backgrounds and experience, can meet in a brave, safe space where they can relate honestly, graciously and lovingly to each other. The material seeks to address ignorance, to acknowledge prejudice, to admit hypocrisy, to cast out fear, to unmute and to pay attention to our attempts to control others. It reminds us the God’s Spirit alone can bring transformation into our lives and the lives of others.
Reconsideration, of course, an never lead to ‘anything goes’. It must always be controlled by the Gospel and by minds that have been shaped by it. It is truly amazing that Paul, who once gave thanks that he was not born a slave, a woman or a Gentile, would eventually teach that ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’. Today, an increasing number os Christians would add ‘neither gay nor straight’. Christians, gay and straight, are united by one baptism and by the one bread. One spirit underpins the Olympic Games, with their ancient roots, and the relatively new Paralympics, making them different but equal.
Over many years, the Gloucester Diocese from which I came has benefitted from its links with an evangelical conservative Diocese in Africa and a more catholic, liberal one in California. This encouraged a generosity of attitude that does not always require our fellow Christians to see everything as we do but to recognise that there is more than one path through Christ to the Father. His house has many rooms. Tensions within the Angican Communion, let alone the universal Church, are inevitable, for it lives out the Christian Gospel in such widely differing contexts. Unity and Truth sometimes seem to pull us in two directions and we simply have to hold that tension creatively and lovingly. It is possible, though not ideal, for a practising Christian to live long term with an unbelieving spouse. ‘Sleeping with the enemy’ is not so hard if one bears in mind Jesus’ command that we would love our enemies. We need to live creatively with our differences, bearing in mind the old saying ‘There’s nowt so queer as folk’. As Philip Yancy says in his book ‘What’s so Amazing About Grace’ ‘We are all oddballs but God loves us anyway’.
When it comes to facing up to change, the philosopher Isaih Berlin divided people into hedgehogs and foxes. Both attitudes involve risk, whether ending up as bad-kill or being brought down by hounds. The worldwide Church is on the horns of a dilemma today over a radical acceptance of LGBTQI people, as recently called for by the Archbishop of Canterbury. If a mountain is to be climbed, you must maintain a strong basecamp but you should also support the people who are prepared to go out on a limb to attempt a new ascent on a summit still wreathed in clouds. In a divided Church, it may be the vocation of one pat of the Church to innovate in response to the Spirit’s guiding and thus to model to the rest of the Chursh a development that later others may also embrace. Or not, for Amish Christians, excellent folk, have chosen to resist the modern world. At present, we all see but ‘in a glass darkly’
The domes of St Peter’s and St Paul’s may seem architecturally to put a cap on doctrinal development, whereas the spire of Salisbury Cathedral suggests otherwise. It reminds us the doctrine is provisional and functions as appointed only to an unfathomable mystery. The closing of the canon of Scripture is not incompatible with the non-closing of the interpretation of the canon. as the Puritan Jhn Robinson said’ The Lord hath yet more truth and light to break forth from his holy Word’, As R.S. Thomas, priest and poet, its it ‘Out God is such a fast God. Always ahead of us and waiting for us to arrive’. It is important that we should consider prayerfully what ‘Living in Love and Faith’ means for us all today. And we can hold on to Jesus’ promise that he would be with us ‘to the end of the age’. Thanks be to God!
