Sermon Acts 9 and John 21-Peter and Paul, transformed, and on the road to transformation

Here is my sermon from this Sunday.
Every once in a while I preach a sermon that I didn't really get much out of writing, and I don't feel good about preaching, but Sunday waits for no one, and I just present what I have. And usually when that happens, it's 'just a sermon' (not to suggest that any sermon is 'just' a sermon, because we have gathered, and worshiped, and read the text, and at the very least my words are on the scripture, and come from a place of study and prayer, but people say thanks, and we move on with the week). This week, however, while I struggled with this sermon, and never quite felt like I got it where I wanted it, I've had at least 5 people mention that they particularly appreciated it. It is one of those humbling reminders-this work is not about me and my work, not about my internal experience, but about the connection between people and God, and it is my job not to get in the way.

Acts 9:1-20

John 21:1-19

Good morning friends! It is good to gather with all of you in worship this morning. Between the adventures of Holy Week, Easter, and Holy Humor Sunday, we've had some good adventures the last month, and I'm looking forward to continuing our journey towards Pentecost today with a couple of classic stories of Christ's presence in the early church.

The stories we have this morning, about Peter and Paul, focus on two men who were the two most important figures in the early church (with argument only from the Gospel writers themselves). Peter is the rock on which Jesus built the church, the first leader after the crucifixion, the first Pope. He helped decide the council of Jerusalem, and preached and taught throughout Palestine.

Yet even so, it is easy to argue that Paul's significance is even greater. I remember back in High School being introduced to Michael Hart's list of the 100 most influential people in history. Now, Michael Hart's just a random historian, but the idea got some traction, since it's one of the best late night arguments I can think of. Hart put the Apostle Paul at number 6 on his list-making the claim that spreading Christianity to the Gentiles changed the world almost as much as Jesus' original teaching (Jesus was number 3).

These parallel apostles were co-leaders of the church, a dynamic duo who were foundational in turning Christianity from a small band of Jewish heretics into a new religion, with a structure, theology, and creed.

But what I find so fascinating is how dramatically different their stories are, both in our texts today, and in the bigger picture.
Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, the one who translated the Jewish Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth into the Greek vernacular. He helped a new culture see Jesus as Christ, the son of God. He was educated, sophisticated, theologically dynamic and a writer of powerful letters.

Peter, on the other hand, was the foundation of the church in Jerusalem, the one who knew Jesus the longest, a fisherman, from the country. He, along with James and John formed the triumvirate leadership in the home country, but never grew the church like Paul.

And their stories reflect these differences. The story of the Damascus Road is the quintessential conversion story.

Saul, A young Jewish leader, well versed in the text of the law, was convinced that this new sect of followers of the Way were leading the community into destruction. So he took it upon himself to end the influence of this false Messiah, this Jesus of Nazareth. He arrested and had killed members of the church around Jerusalem, and had developed the reputation as someone to watch out for, a fierce villain. Our story this morning finds him on the road to Damascus, bringing with him a warrant to do the same cleansing to the people of the way in Syria, since worried that this new heresy was spreading into other parts of the Near East.

And it was on that road that Saul met God-he heard the lighting from the skies, the voice from the cloud, the moment of transcendence, and he was left shaken and blinded, uncertain what to do next.

It is a dramatic tale, that of the Damascus road. We see the skillful enemy, converted into the lasting friend, the righteous persecutor hoisted on his own petard, the persistant and powerful proponent of the faith, turned around into a new Way, to become the greatest champion of his reborn community. It's a story I think that we'd all like to own-we were sinners, and became champions, we gave up who we were to follow Christ who called our names.
But I expect that Peter's story resonates more closely in the hearts of most of us-we are more familiar with the story of getting invited in, and pushed in frustrating ways to become someone new. In some ways, this story of Jesus on the beach is also a conversion story. Of course, Peter was a long time disciple, he converted way back when Jesus was wandering the seashore, shouting follow me at everyone he saw.

But Peter was in as much need of conversion that morning as Paul was on the road to Damascus. For on the night that Judas betrayed Jesus, Peter too turned his back on his savior. Having proclaimed his willingness to die with Christ, when the soldiers came to arrest Jesus he took out his sword to defend his teacher, and was rebuked, “No more of this” the voice that we claim today as we set aside our guns and our war. Next, as he creeped behind to see what happened, three times he was offered the opportunity to testify about his faith-to acknowledge that he was a disciple of Jesus of Nazarath, and three times before the cock crowed, he denied that he knew the man.

So when Peter and the other disciples on the boat discovered that it was the Lord who stood on the seashore again, calling to them to once more cast their nets on the other side, Peter's joy was very appropriate, but Jesus' persistent question-Peter, do you love me? Was also timely-for it invited a reversal of the denial Peter had offered so shortly before, and the calling “feed my sheep” offered a path of redemption and conversion that matches that of Saul's on the Damascus Road.

So what might me learn from these very different men, and their very different stories? Well, of course there is the reminder that it is our differences that make us dynamic and strong-that we should not impose one story on anyone, but rather acknowledge that we all have different ways of encountering God, and understanding the divine.

There is also a reminder I love to hear in the text when I think of my own stumbling walk towards faithfulness-the reminder that Paul and Peter were still pretty much the same guys they were before even after God broke into their lives, and transformed their world.

What? You might ask-aren't they totally different? They turned themselves around, they became new creations!

And obviously, at some level that's true-because our orientation matters a lot-the way we put our energy and our time shapes our souls, our minds, and the world around us. Even so, consider: Saul-the Pharisee's Pharisee, a zealot, someone willing to do anything for his faith, even to go out hunting his enemies. After his experience on the Damascus road, he became an enthusiastic follower of Christ, someone who was willing to run the good race wherever it took him, who was willing to call everything rubbish for the sake of Christ crucified, who was willing to battle his fellow Apostles, to break relationships with churches he helped found, to say things like “I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.” as he did in 2^nd Corinthians 11.

It's not that he was necessarily wrong, but that he was willing to go to any length to wrestle people into what he saw as the right shape,
to keep things in order and proper and right, in line with the vision of God.

Conversion did not make him gentler, or less of a shark, it changed what he thought about Jesus.

Similarly so with Peter-conversion did not mean he had all the right answers, or that his tendency to put his foot in his mouth and stumble in his walk was any less pronounced. The story of him walking halfway on water is emblematic-Peter was always willing to take a risk, but he wasn't always able to follow through.

There is one Biblical story of Peter and Paul interacting. It comes in Galatians 2. I think it demonstrates my point nicely.

Paul writes “When Cephas (Peter) came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?

Here we have both Peter, not quite able to stand on the courage of his convictions, and Paul berating a fellow believer in public for falling short of the vision of God.

We do not come to God to become completely different people-to fix our foibles and our personality. We come to God as the fully human, broken creations that we are, and hope to use the gifts we have in the service of the kingdom nevertheless. Which brings me to my last reflection. Because while these are very different visions of conversion, in many ways, they are stories of the same journey. Because while the big and flashy moment on the road to Damascus may be the first step on the Christian journey (not always, but sometimes) there are always countless opportunities to enter into the deeper journey of conversion, the long slow process of being reminded by Christ again and again that it is OK to come back to the table, to eat breakfast on the seashore with friends, to recognize Jesus in a new stranger, to reaffirm that we love the Lord, and recommit to feed Christ's sheep, and follow Jesus' way. After conversion Peter and Paul still needed to be transformed again and again, because they were still flawed people-sometimes mean, sometimes foolish, always real.

Next Sunday, we celebrate baptism. We will have the opportunity to celebrate with her a commitment to Christ and a significant milestone on the Christian journey. But as she receives the water, she will just be beginning the journey. Like Peter and Paul, there will be mistakes to be made, lessons to be learned, and new steps to travel in the pathway of Christ.

Amen.