“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”
St. Peter and St. Paul are the twin pillars of the Christian Church. Outstanding figures in the New Testament, their ministry and life are rather more amply set before us than many other New Testament figures. They require our consideration.
Peter is traditionally seen as the presiding authority at the Council of Jerusalem which legitimates the apostolic mission of Paul who will become the Apostle to the Gentiles. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles provides the conciliar decision in the form of a letter, the first ecclesiastical decree we might say, directed to the missions among the non-Jewish or gentile communities. Its claim is that “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things.” A most remarkable and potent statement. It does not mean that what seems good to us is what is simply and absolutely good to the Holy Spirit; such has been the problem of many a church gathering, especially in our own confused and troubled times. But it does suggest the nature of our participation and engagement with God; particularly, our thinking upon what God has made known to us. And yet the specified “necessary things” must give us pause. They are to “abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity.” What does that have to do with us?
These are moral directives that speak to the both the Hebraic world in its adamant and strong prohibition against idolatry and to the Hellenistic world of the great variety of pagan cults; they also include matters of sexual immorality. Both idolatry and immorality deny the absolute truth of God. That truth, now manifest in the humanity of Jesus Christ, suggests a further moral imperative, namely, a new sense of moral freedom and responsibility, and, most importantly, a call to holiness of life. What underlies these “necessary things” is the recognition that God’s will revealed through the law and the prophets of Israel now has its realization in the Lord Jesus Christ. What is of interest is that both Peter and Paul are present at this Council. It is the only time in the Scriptures that we see them together.
The Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, however, does not arise from their being together in Jerusalem but in Rome. The result of certain historical events, the fact of their both being martyred in Rome, albeit at different times and being originally buried, it seems, at different places, the actual occasion for this feast is the transfer of their remains to a common place of burial in Rome, at a later date, on June 29th, or thereabouts, in 258AD, during the Valerian persecution. Divine providence, it seems, so often emerges out of historical accident. Augustine, in the late fourth century, explains best, perhaps, the meaning of our celebration.
“Both apostles,” he writes, “share the same feast day, for these two were one; and even though they suffered on different days, they were as one. Peter went first, and Paul followed. And so we celebrate this day made holy for us by the apostles’ blood. Let us embrace what they believed, their life, their labors, their sufferings, their preaching, and their confession of faith” (Augustine, Sermon 295).
“They were as one.” What unites them? Similar personalities and similar stories? Not in the least. Peter is the fisherman, poor and simple, direct and often mistaken. Nothing could be more different from the life of Paul, a learned Jew, a Pharisee, one who went to College, if you will, one who sat at the feet of the learned rabbi, Gamaliel. He belongs to an entirely different social and religious class, it seems. And yet, as Augustine suggests, “they were as one.” Something unites them that goes beyond the social and economic differences between them and beyond just the common experiences of hardships in their ministry. It has to do with the principle of faith confessed by both in the face of controversy and conflict.
What is that confession? The epistle from 1 Peter tells us about what Peter preaches, as it were. The Gospel reading tells us about the Confession of Peter which explains what he teaches and preaches. What about Paul? The story of the Conversion of Paul celebrated way back in the bleak mid-winter but recalled for us in last Sunday’s lesson at Morning Prayer can be seen in relation to Peter’s Confession. At the heart of both are Peter’s words, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
For Paul, too, this is the great insight. Peter has come to it by grace as Jesus himself makes clear, “flesh and blood hath not revealed this to you, but my Father which is in heaven”. For Paul, too, it has been by grace in the drama on the Road to Damascus. He arrives at an insight into Christ through his persecution of the followers of the Way, his persecution, really, of the idea that the suffering and crucified Christ is the glorified saviour. He is blinded into sight by a vision of the risen Christ, seeing the glory in the sufferings. For both there is an encounter with Christ who confronts and draws out of each an understanding of who he is. It takes a kind of struggle and yet in ways that are proper to each of their personalities. Their unity in death is an image of their profounder unity in the faith of Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Christ. It makes all the difference to see in Christ the reality of the living God of all creation.
What does that mean? It means that the apostolic fellowship is grounded in the apostolic teaching about Jesus Christ as God made man, who, as Peter in his epistle so wonderfully puts it, “hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” In other words, what follows from the confession of faith is the life of faith in the apostolic fellowship of the faithful. Ultimately, we are united in a common confession of Faith and one which demands of us certain “necessary things,” the things that counter the easy and seductive idolatries of our lives, not least of which are the idolatries of re-imaging God and creation in the name and image of our own social constructs and agendas.
The apostolic faith shapes the apostolic fellowship, calling us out of the idolatries of human pride and self-love, out of the various “devices and desires of our hearts” which are simply the different ways in which we put ourselves in the place of God. They call us to Christ, so that what is known not by “flesh and blood,” and “not by the will of man,” “but of God,” in other words, by grace, can begin to take shape in us. Such is the apostolic fellowship in our life together sacramentally and sacrificially, morally and practically. To attend to this is everything. Our challenge is to “embrace what they believed,” to embrace “their life,” to embrace “their labours,” to embrace “their sufferings,” to embrace “their preaching,” and above all, to embrace “their confession of faith.”
We do so in difficult and confusing times where there is an overwhelming sense of uncertainty about institutions and their purpose and an impending sense of catastrophe about the destructive potentialities of our disordered humanity. But, as the Slovakian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek reminds us, “catastrophe is not our ecological ruin, but the loss of home-roots which renders possible the ruthless exploitation of the earth. Catastrophe is not that we are reduced to automata manipulated by biogenetics but the very approach which renders this prospect possible.” The catastrophe “is not the atomic self-destruction of humanity, but the relation to nature which reduces it to its techno-scientific exploitation.”[1] Such are our idolatries, the idolatries of our minds and imaginations. In short, we are the catastrophe. Our problems, our fears and worries, have entirely to do with how we think and see things. It is in that light that we are recalled to the deep and spiritual “home-roots” of our life in the fellowship of Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church and to the centrality of our confession of faith to which Peter and Paul bear witness.
“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church, Windsor
The Feast of SS. Peter & Paul
June 29th, 2014
[1] Slavoj Žižek, Event, Philosophy in Transit, (Penguin Books, London, 2014), pp. 31-32