Peter Chapman sermon on April 18

Peter and Paul
Acts 9: 1-19 and John 21:1-19
April 18, 2010

Could there be two more different personalities than St. Peter and St. Paul. It is worth considering who they were, along with James, the brother of Jesus, because these three men were central figures in the establishment and growth of the early church.
Peter
St. Peter was a fisherman along with his brother Andrew and the sons of Zebedee, James and John. He ran his own fishing business in Bethsaida and he was named Simon. He was the son of Jonah or John, and we are told that Jesus healed Peter’s mother in law, so Peter was either married or a widower.
He had some wonderful attributes:
1. He was probably not that well educated, but he was capable of great spiritual insight. In a dialogue with Jesus, Jesus asks, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The disciples give various answers. When he asks Peter, "Who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." In turn, Jesus declared Peter to be "blessed" for having recognized Jesus' true identity and he attributed this recognition to a divine revelation.
2. He had the character of a leader. He is always mentioned first in the list of the twelve apostles and is often depicted as their spokesman.
3. He clearly loved the Lord passionately. In our Gospel reading this morning we are told that when he realized that it was Jesus standing on the shore, he jumped out of the boat and swam to him. He just couldn’t wait to get to Jesus.
But Peter also had his flaws:
a. The incident in our gospel reading, and events in a number of other places in the Gospels, show that he was impulsive, and sometimes spoke or acted before he thought things through.
b. While he was one of the first disciples called and served as the spokesman for the group, Peter is also the example of "little faith" in Matthew 14, and would soon be called "Satan" by Jesus for saying that Jesus must not die on the cross.
c. He demonstrated a lack of courage after the arrest of Jesus at one of the most important events of his life.
Paul
Paul, whose earlier Hebrew name was Saul, Acts identifies Paul as being from the Mediterranean city of Tarsus (in present-day south-central Turkey), and this city was well-known for its intellectual environment. He was very pious. According to Philippians 3:5, he was "of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee.” Acts also quotes Paul (in verse 23:6) as saying the he was "a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee”.
Paul confessed to having “violently persecuted” the “church of God” (followers of Jesus) prior to his conversion to Christianity. He was well respected in the Jewish community and was advancing in stature within the Temple leadership before he came to believe that Jesus Christ, by his resurrection from the dead, was actually Lord and the Messiah.
After his conversion, he was tireless and fearless in preaching the good news. He counted his relationship with God through Jesus as the only important thing in his life.
James
It is also worthwhile to consider James, the brother of Jesus. He was referred to as “James the Just” and apparently lived an acetic lifestyle. In one of his books, Jerome, quotes Hegesippus' account of James from the fifth book of Hegesippus' lost Commentaries:

“After the apostles, James the brother of the Lord surnamed the Just was made head of the Church at Jerusalem. Many indeed are called James. This one was holy from his mother's womb. He drank neither wine nor strong drink, ate no flesh, never shaved or anointed himself with ointment or bathed. He alone had the privilege of entering the Holy of Holies, since indeed he did not use woolen vestments but linen and went alone into the temple and prayed in behalf of the people, insomuch that his knees were reputed to have acquired the hardness of camels' knees.”

These three men had such different personalities and backgrounds, but they also had some similarities:
A. They all had devastating experiences involving Jesus and these experiences brought them to very low points in their lives:
- Peter had spent three years with Jesus and was part of his inner circle. Jesus had told him in advance that his faith would be tested and at the crucial moment, Peter would betray him. Peter confidently said that this simply would not happen. And then it did, and Peter’s entire world disintegrated.
- Paul had devoted his life to the Jewish faith and to destroying those who were enemies of that faith. And then, on the road to Damascus, he realized that what he believed had been completely wrong and that he had been acting in direct opposition to God’s plans.
- We are not told about this specifically, but I believe that James must have had a huge amount of anger and resentment toward Jesus and felt fear and embarrassment that his older brother had been arrested and executed by the Romans. In Matthew 12 we are told that while Jesus was talking to the crowd, someone told him that his mother and brothers stood outside waiting to talk to him. Jesus replied “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Imagine how James felt.
Imagine how he felt, as a priest of the Temple, when Jesus called the Jewish religious leaders hypocrites and whitewashed tombs. Imagine how he felt when Jesus on was dying on the cross and Jesus asked John to look after his mother, Mary, rather than James, his own brother.
Many people would never recover from this kind of anger and resentment. It would poison the rest of their lives.
B. But Peter, Paul and James all had encounters with Jesus after his death and resurrection and after these encounters, they simply became different men. We are specifically told about Paul’s encounter on the road to Damascus and about the times that Jesus appeared to Peter. Paul also tells us in I Corinthians 15 that Jesus appeared to James as well.
C. For these men, the encounter with Jesus after his death and resurrection completely altered their world. They emerged from the experience deeply and profoundly changed. Whatever baggage from their past was weighing them down – guilt or anger or resentment - they very obviously made the choice to let that go, they submitted to Jesus authority and they allowed God to transform them. And this enabled God to use them in very important ways:
- James, as leader of the Church in Jerusalem;
- Peter as another key leader in the early church and eventually bishop of the Church in Rome, from which Christianity could spread throughout the empire;
- Paul as the apostle chosen to bring the good news to the Gentiles.
All of these men could have chosen to hold on to the past; or refused to submit to Jesus authority. And, if they had, I believe that God simply would not have been able to use them in the way that he did.
I draw the following message from the lives of Peter, Paul and James:
Being Christian is not a guarantee that we will be spared disappointment and hardship. It is simply part of life that these things will happen to us. But often the very things that seem the most difficult to bear become an essential event in our Christian development. Real maturity often comes from hardship. Why is that?
Although there may be exceptions, I don’t believe that God specifically sends us disappointment and hardship. However, he certainly can use these events to carry out His plans. Often, He seems to follow a familiar pattern in dealing with people:
- first he will use hardship to make them sensitive to their need for him; to bring them back to their “first love”; to get their priorities in order;
- then, when they respond, he will renew them;
- then he will put them to work.
When we are at a low point in our lives; when we feel oppressed and fearful; when the things that we value and that make us comfortable have been stripped away - that is often the point at which we meet God face to face; the pont where we deeply and profoundly experience the truth that Jesus did rise from the grave and he is alive. That is the place where we are finally willing to deal with the real issues in our lives and recognize what is important and what is not. And that is when God’s Spirit is able to renew and refresh our spirits.
And having been renewed, that is often the point at which new doors open and we can join God in his work in a new way.
We have some decisions to make over the next few months. Your decision may be different from mine. But I sincerely believe that this is an opportunity for all of us to let go of anything from the past that is bothering us and be refreshed and renewed.  This is a time to recommit our lives to God’s purposes and to allow God to perhaps use us in new and unexpected ways.

I don’t know what the future will bring, but I do know that the Lord will be with us there and that he has much for us to do.
Amen
© Peter Chapman