Third Sunday of Easter
April 18, 2010
Acts 19:1-20; John 21:1-19

Road to Conversion

Back in the 1800’s, when London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral was in need of repair, the powers that were managed to fund the project by an act of creative bookkeeping. They took money held in trust for Westminster Abbey and used it to fix up St. Paul’s. Now the official name for Westminster Abbey is the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, Westminster. Those fellows in knee britches and powdered wigs "robbed Peter to pay Paul."

The Florida State Legislature does much the same when it raids trust funds set up to educate children about the dangers of smoking or to build affordable housing, and uses those funds to balance the state budget. These days we don’t call this "robbing Peter to pay Paul." We call it "fiscal responsibility." Apparently it’s not actual larceny unless you’re wearing knee britches and powdered wigs.

The lectionary this morning puts you and me in an similarly awkward situation. We are presented with two wonderfully rich and winsome stories, one about Peter and the other about Paul. I’d like to preach about Peter, but I don’t want to rob Paul. I’d like to preach about Paul, but I don’t want to rob Peter.

So, let’s live dangerously. Let’s take on both. If the sermon crashes, it won’t be the first time, and if it lands safely, we might discover that, different as their stories are, Peter and Paul have a lot in common.

We start with Peter – headstrong, impulsive, always the first to act. He’s the kid in class whose always waving his hand, saying, "Teacher, teacher, call on me." He is, as you recall, the guy who stepped out of the pack at Caesarea Philippi when Jesus asked, "Who do you say that I am?"

"You are the Messiah (the Christ)," Peter pipes up, "the Son of the living God." Jesus promises to build his church on that confession, which means that you and I are standing upon it right now.

Peter is also the apostle who tells Jesus at the meal before his arrest. "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.(Luke). "Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you" (Mark).

Then Jesus goes to the Garden of Gethsemane where the temple gendarmes arrest him and haul him away. Peter’s solemn promise lasts as long as it takes for him to warm his hands in the courtyard of the High Priest, and to get a taste of what would be in store for him should he stick to his vow.

"Say, aren’t you one of his disciples?"

"Me? Jesus? I do not know the man." Peter denies Jesus three times. Then, as we all remember, the cock crowed.

For all intents and purposes, the Gospel of John ends with chapter 20, but somebody – perhaps John, perhaps someone else – couldn’t let Peter’s story end that way. And so we have this strange tale of fishing through the night, of a huge catch, of Peter throwing on his clothes and diving in, (a very Peter-ish thing to do) because he realizes that the risen Christ is on the shore.

After a breakfast of fish and bread – the alternative menu for Eucharist – Jesus asks, "Simon Peter, do you love me more than these?"

"Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."

Jesus replies, "Feed my sheep."

Jesus asks Peter this question three times, and Peter responds three times, and by the time you hear those questions asked and answered, you get the feeling that something powerful and profound has been happening between the lines of their conversation.

Peter never asks for forgiveness, and Jesus never explicitly grants it – not in so many words. Peter never says to Jesus, "I let you down. I left you in the lurch. I told the people in the courtyard I never knew you."

And Jesus never says to Peter, "I know you did. I looked around and you weren’t there anymore. You said you’d stick with me, but you didn’t."

Jesus never says, "I forgive you," is so many words. Perhaps that’s because he’s already said it on the cross. Those ruined hands that prepared breakfast say "I forgive you." That ugly scar in his side says "I forgive you." That charcoal fire, the bread, the fish, the invitation, "Come and have breakfast" -- they all say, "I forgive you."

What Jesus does say out loud is, "Feed my sheep," "Tend my lambs." He gives Peter an assignment, a mission to carry out. And then he speaks of risk. Peter will not have an easy time of it. He will be taken where he does not wish to go. Nevertheless, Jesus says, "Follow me."

Forgiveness, mission, risk. These are the elements in Peter’s story I’d like you to keep in mind as we move on to Paul.

Now, Paul is chalk to Peter’s cheese. Peter is coarse and uneducated, Paul (or Saul, as he was first called) is refined and erudite. When we first meet him, Paul is a persecutor of the church. What’s more, he’s good at it.

Unlike Peter, Paul doesn’t act on impulse. He acts on principle. One of those principles is that the Messiah cannot possibly be a person who has died on a cross. "Cursed be anyone who dies on a cross," went the saying. The notion of a crucified Messiah is an insult to everything Paul has been taught to believe, everything he stands for. People who believe this heresy about Jesus are a threat to God as well as to the faith of Israel.

So, Paul’s story doesn’t start on the road to Damascus. It starts with the stoning of a man named Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Stephen had been preaching Christ and him crucified. For this he was seized and dragged before the Jerusalem council, the same council that had condemned Jesus. After hearing his sermon, the council sentenced Stephen to death by stoning.

Paul was there. Luke says he approved of the whole affair. He no doubt felt honored when asked to hold the cloaks of those who threw the stones. It was the least he could do to preserve God’s good name.

You will no doubt remember that as the nails were being driven into his flesh, Jesus had prayed, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). Stephen does much the same thing as the stones are hailing down on him. "Lord," he prays, "Do not hold this sin against them" (Acts 7:60).

The way I read Luke, Paul’s story begins right here, even though he’s not aware of it. It begins with Stephen’s prayer that Jesus will forgive him. Before Paul organizes a posse to go Damascus and round up more Christians to be dragged before the council, before he sees the light from heaven, before he falls to the ground, before he hears the voice of the risen Christ, before he loses his physical sight, Paul and Jesus had already been introduced.

Stephen does the honors. He introduces Paul to Jesus with the last words out of his mouth. Paul met Jesus for the first time when the man he was helping to kill prayed for his forgiveness.

That puts the Damascus road encounter in a rather different light, doesn’t it? It’s often called "Paul’s conversion experience," and some people will tell you that you’re not a real Christian until you have a "conversion experience," just like Paul’s.

But it’s nothing of the kind. There’s no conversion in this story, but there is a diversion. The risen Christ himself diverts Paul from the road of persecution and sets him on the road toward association with the very people he had planned to arrest. He sends him to the house of a man named Judas, who lives in the street called Straight, and summons another Christian brother, a man named Ananias, to straighten Paul out.

"Are you sure you’ve got the right man?" Ananias wants to know.

"Oh yes," the Lord replies. "I’ve got plans for this one. "Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before the Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel." Paul is indeed a man on a mission. He just doesn’t know yet what his true mission is.

After spending a few days with the disciples in Damascus, Paul shows up in the synagogues of that same city proclaiming the risen Christ. " . . . he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, Luke writes, "saying ‘He is the Son of God.’"

There’s no question that conversion is taking place somewhere in Paul’s story, but it doesn’t happen all at once, and it doesn’t happen on the Damascus road. It happens along another road, the road between forgiveness and mission. Conversion is a process, not a one-time event. For most of us, it begins with baptism, and doesn’t end until our baptism is complete in death.

Paul will one day write about the challenges he faced along that road. Shipwrecks, floggings, danger from Gentiles, danger from his own people, danger in the wilderness, danger in the city – he has quite a long list (2Cor. 11:25-27). Once he was let down in a basket through a window in the city wall. All of that on the road toward fuller conversion. For all his daring-do, Paul always considered himself the least of the apostles because he had been a persecutor of the church.

So it turns out that Peter and Paul, different as they are, have a lot in common. They both know what means to be forgiven by the risen Christ, even before you are aware of the harm that you have done. They know what it’s like to be accepted and received into a community that has every right to turn you away. They both are given a job do to before they feel qualified to do it, and they both take terrible risks in order to fulfill the mission Jesus gives them.

Truth be told, we don’t have to rob Peter to pay Paul, or Paul to pay Peter. Jesus marked the debts of both of them, "Paid in full."

Jesus does the same for us. He forgives us before we know enough to ask for forgiveness, and even while we’re too ashamed to form the words to ask. He welcomes us to a meal which he prepares, fully aware that we are not worthy to dine with him. He sets us in a community of forgiven sinners all on the road to conversion.

And every now and then, he takes us aside and asks, "Do you love me?" Sometimes the question is, "Why are you persecuting me?"

Ask Peter. For that matter, ask Paul. They will tell you. Living the forgiven life is a long and risky road. It’s the road to conversion and on it with us is the risen Christ.

 

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