Sermon for the Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul

Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul
29 June 2009
Chapel of the Apostles, Sewanee

✠ I speak to you in the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

No one wants to be a martyr.

Well, that’s not actually true. There are crazy people who want to be martyrs. But no sane person wants to be a martyr. The Lord Jesus was the sanest human being ever to live, for he was – and is – the perfect human being, leading a human life with an integrity and truth and fullness that reveals what all humanity should be, and what our humanity some day will be. But even the Lord Jesus did not want to die: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” Though there was for him no necessity of dying, but only his own will – for he had the power to lay down his life, and the power to take it up again – nonetheless, he shrank from death, that hateful enemy.

He did for love – for love of us, and for love of his Father – what otherwise no sane human being would venture to do.

Knowing, therefore, the death by which Peter would glorify God, Jesus asked Peter, not about Peter’s courage – which would have been an awkward question in light of recent events, and a pointless one in light of future events – but about his love: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”

Peter, too, did not want to be a martyr: “when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” Peter did for love – for love of Jesus, and for love of those for whom Jesus died – what otherwise no sane human being would venture to do. And so the Lord asks him three times, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” – and elicits three confessions, the pledges of Peter’s love, to set against those three denials, the fruit of Peter’s cowardice.

And with each confession, Jesus gives him a charge: “Feed my sheep.”

Just as Jesus before his departure gave a final charge to Peter, Paul before his departure gave a final charge to Timothy: “preach the word.” Preaching the word is feeding the sheep. Unfortunately, the sheep are finicky about their food, rejecting wholesome fare and gorging themselves on junk. Instead of heeding the word, they stockpile teachers who are more to their liking, enriching the authors of crappy and heretical books.

Nonetheless, Paul says, be alert for opportunities, whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; be urgent in season and out of season. The rhetoricians of the first century, like the marketing professionals of the twenty-first, teach that there are fitting times and unfitting times to convey one’s message. Paul will have none of this. The message is too pressing, the word is too important, to wait for the “right time.” Behold, now is the acceptable time. So go ahead and “preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching.”

Do you love me? Then feed my sheep.

Do we love him?

For me, as probably for many of you, the first time I put on a chasuble as a priest of the Church, it was red: red for Holy Spirit, but also red for blood, the blood of the martyrs. I am, needless to say, a consummately sane human being. I do not want to be a martyr, and I take no small comfort in the fact that it is exceedingly unlikely that God shall call upon me to be one. But I am still charged – we are still charged – with feeding the sheep for love of their Shepherd. And the sheep can be wayward and finicky and easily entranced by heretical crap – we know this because we are sheep ourselves. So even if we not asked to resist to the point of shedding our blood, there will still be much to be endured as we try, in the Spirit, to be unfailing in patience and in teaching.

And standing here as I do, clothed in the red of the martyrs, remembering the sacrifices of Peter and Paul – who did for love what otherwise no sane human being would venture to do – I wonder.

Do we love him?

Then we must feed his sheep.