Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Fr. Matthew Wright
Saint Peter and Saint Paul - June 29, 2022
And from the Acts of the Apostles: “[The people] became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen… and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. […] And Saul approved of their killing him.” (Acts 7:54-8:1)
These are, of course, accounts of Peter’s denial of Christ and of Paul’s participation in the violent persecution of the early Jesus movement. Peter and Paul, whom we celebrate today, were not always Saints Peter and Paul. One was a very poor example of discipleship, and the other was opposed to that discipleship entirely. This gives me hope, because together, these two men, who were once enemies, with the help of the Holy Spirit birthed one of the most radically inclusive spiritual visions our world has ever seen.
If I asked you, “Why are you here this morning?” there would be lots of ways we could each answer that question. “Because, as a child, a seed of faith was planted in my heart by my grandmother.” Or, “Because once, when I hit rock bottom, I was desperate and I wondered into a church.” We would all have different answers, and more than one answer, to that question. But one answer that is true for everyone here is, “We are here, all of us, because of Sts. Peter and Paul”—and not because it’s their feast day, but because of their work for the Gospel, and particularly because of the way each of them broke open, and were broken open by, the Gospel.
Peter and Paul, both of them Jewish followers of Jesus, a Jewish rabbi—both of these men had their hearts broken open to a universal vision—a Gospel that transcended race, ethnicity, and even religious boundaries, welcoming Gentiles (and therefore most or maybe all of us in this room) into the fold. It was Paul who wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28).
These are words that cut right to the heart of the three primary categories that human beings use to divide ourselves—race, class, and gender or sexuality. Human beings are always forming hierarchies along these lines—Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female; race, class, and sex. And Paul saw in all this—although not at first, only after he was shattered by Christ—the way the world assigns value based on either/or, us and them, in and out. We define our worth over and against someone else’s. “If they have worth equal to mine, if God loves them as much as God loves me, then my worth is diminished.”
These categories of division, separation, and hierarchy were deeply ingrained in the world that Peter and Paul moved in (and they are deeply ingrained in our world still today). The Greek philosopher Thales, who lived in the third century before Jesus, is remembered as thanking the gods for three things: “First, that I was born a human being and not one of the brutes [which was a way of referring to slaves]; next, that I was born a man and not a woman; thirdly, a Greek and not a barbarian.”
From the same time period, we also have a record of the following Jewish prayer, attributed to Rabbi Judah: “There are three blessings one must pray daily: Blessed art thou, who did not make me a Gentile; Blessed art thou, who did not make me a woman; Blessed art thou who did not make me uneducated.” Race, gender, class.
These divisions were so taken for granted that it’s astounding that the early Jesus movement said No; in Christ these hierarchies are abolished. In the kingdom of God, we are all of equal rank and value. The community we form in the way of Jesus will not play by these rules. Jesus has shattered all of that. It’s difficult for us to get our minds around just how radical this was. These words weren’t written during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s; they weren’t written during the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s; they weren’t written during the fight for LGBTQ equality in the 90s or now. They were written as our Christian charter 2,000 years ago—and we’re still trying to catch up with them.
Paul didn’t come by this vision easily. He underwent a sudden, blinding encounter with the Light of Christ that broke open his heart and rearranged his mind. And Peter, who walked with Jesus in his earthly life and ministry, struggled initially with this inclusive vision. We see Jesus, throughout the Gospels, working to break his disciples out of dualistic, “us vs. them” thinking. He uses outsiders like Samaritans and Romans—that is, heretics and pagans—as models of faith. He tells the story of the Good Samaritan—a Samaritan, who fell outside of Jewish orthodoxy—and says of a pagan Roman, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith” (Luke 7:9)—that is, “not even in my own religious tradition.” And neither story ends with either the Samaritan or the Roman converting to orthodox Judaism! And still Jesus points to them, telling us to look for the holy outside of boxes and boundaries.
But the full implications of this still had to be worked out in the early Jesus movement, and when Paul pushed to draw the circle wider to welcome in Gentiles who had not already converted to Judaism, Peter resisted such a wildly inclusive approach. Peter and Paul disagreed with each other vehemently, and Paul even writes in his Letter to the Galatians that “I opposed Peter to his face” (2:11)! But Scripture tells us that, in a trance, Peter received a vision telling him to go against his own religious training and eat with “unclean” Gentiles. He would later report to his companions, “The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us” (see Acts 11:1-18). In Christ, there can be no “them and us.”
Peter and Paul came to support each other in this new vision of radical inclusion, reconciling their hearts and visions, and in the Second Letter of Peter we find Paul referred to as “our beloved brother.” The fact that they are celebrated with a combined feast day is especially poignant. They show us that even enemies, even the most polarized people, with a little help from the Holy Spirit, can become the dearest of friends. We need that witness at this deeply polarized moment in our country and our world. Peter and Paul show us that one who persecuted a movement, and another who opposed inclusion in the same movement, can together become apostles of a love that transcends fear and boundaries.
Across the United States and the Episcopal Church we have been celebrating LGBTQ Pride month, and as many of you may know, it was fifty-three years ago yesterday, July 28 th , very early in the morning in Greenwich Village, that an uprising began. In the midst of a violent police raid on the gay community, a black trans woman, Marsha P. Johnson, resisted. The relationship between violence and movements of liberation is complicated, and I don’t want to go there now, but let’s just say that Marsha P. Johnson said, “No. You will not define my value and dignity over and against your own. I belong, we belong.” Others joined her in that resistance, and the modern movement for LGBTQ rights was born.
That current of justice and inclusion is not separate from Gospel vision that broke open Peter and Paul’s hearts. And Marsha P. Johnson’s reality as a queer person of color, as a trans woman, reminds us that our liberation, that the Gospel itself, is always intersectional—we are all bound up together. Women’s rights are not separate from the rights of people of color are not separate from the rights of LGBTQ lives are not separate from the rights of indigenous communities.
As Dr. King reminds us, summing up the essence of this dimension of the Gospel, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Or in the words of St. Paul, “all of you are one in Christ Jesus,” and in the words of St. Peter, “The Spirit told me… not to make a distinction between them and us.”
How do we continue to translate this movement of Gospel inclusion into our own time? How do we continue drawing the circle wider, softening our divided and polarized hearts? We might begin by meditating on the icon of Peter and Paul you saw as you entered the church—two enemies, now embracing and kissing as brothers and friends. How did they achieve this? Well, for one thing, they listened to each other. Each was willing to say, “I was wrong,” and to have their hearts opened to new insight and understanding. And each was willing to die for the vision of Gospel inclusion they grew together, and each of them did.
In these divided times, St. Peter and St. Paul, pray for us. Help us to carry the Gospel vision of justice, inclusion, and love further in our world, and ever more fully and deeply in our hearts. Amen.
