SS. Peter and Paul, Westminster Towers

 

Message: Ss. Peter and Paul 2021

Thank you for welcoming me and my wife Mary Pat today. We have driven by your home so many times in the last 7 years that I couldn't begin to count them. But I've never been inside.

The feast day today is very ancient. Saints Peter and Paul.

The feast is particularly important for the church in Rome in as much as both of these pillars of the church were martyred in Rome -- at about the same time.

I can remember a time when what I knew about the two of them was not very much. It was approximately this:

  • Peter had tried to walk on water, following his teacher, Jesus. He didn't have sufficient faith and required saving by Jesus. I used to dream that I would follow Peter. I wanted to have sufficient faith to walk on water. Sometimes I thought I was almost there.
  • Paul had been zapped and blinded while he was on the road to Damascus. That's an account that Luke told about Paul, and, of course, Paul wrote a considerable amount of the New Testament in the form of letters.

When I first began to get serious about trying to be a Christian, one of the things that I tried to do was read -- and understand! -- the Bible. I made a common mistake for beginners. I started at the beginning and plowed myself through the whole thing. One book after another.

It was exceedingly perplexing and left me bewildered. But I persisted. I attended a course for interested lay people and was first exposed to Paul's writing. I quickly found out that there was a whole lot more than meets the eye at first glance.

I'm still learning -- almost 50 years later.

Along the way I've come to realize how these two ancient founders of the Christian church and faith are two sides of the same coin.

They are so different in some striking ways, they're almost like Republicans and Democrats in our country today. The way I think of them it's a little bit like Peter represents Catholics and Paul represents Protestants.

But that's not what interests me about them is, as the old saying goes: "it takes two to tango." And sometimes one of them tangos like you've never seen before. And sometimes they tango like I would tango. You don't want to see that.

Each of them, Peter and Paul, is flawed. It's not just that Peter sank on the water. At the end of Jesus' life Peter denied even knowing him. He was a traitor. And yet one of the central pillars of the church.

Paul was quite explicit about how he had a character flaw that he prayed over and over again to be rid of -- but it never left him. He is the most eloquent and powerful defender of the proposition that all life is Grace!

What ends up being wonderful and important about these two saints, celebrated on the 29th of June, is that the church is built on the foundation of people who are a lot like you and me. They are flawed. They are courageous. They sincerely want to follow Jesus. They often are more aware of the ways they fall short. God, however, has shown awesome favor on these two.

God has shown us awesome favor. We wouldn't be here if it were not so.

Thanks be to God.

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