Second Sunday of Easter

March 30, 2008

Acts of the Apostles 2 :14-32

I Peter 1 :3-9

John 20 :19-31

 

 

We don’t get much of a three-dimensional picture of the Apostles in the Gospel narratives.  They all blend together in our imaginations and the only ones we remember are the ones with whom some sort of incident is associated.  We can probably remember ‘doubting’ Thomas.  We can picture to ourselves the disciple John – “the one whom Jesus loved”.  And of course, Judas, who is after all more notorious than famous.  The one disciple who emerges from the Gospels in full three dimensions is the disciple Peter.   We meet him for the first time by the Sea of Galilee, sorting out his fishing nets.  He witnesses Christ’s Transfiguration on Mount Hermon, and then is rebuked by Jesus because he doesn’t want Jesus to go to Jerusalem.  He sleeps in the garden of Gethsemane while Jesus is praying; and then tires to defend Jesus with a sword when soldiers come to arrest him.  We see him in the courtyard of the High Priest’s house, denying Jesus three times.   We see him running to the tomb to see if it is really empty.  We see him once again by the Sea of Galilee, forgiven and restored by the risen Jesus.  He emerges as rather a tempestuous character – perhaps not one hundred percent stable.  If he asked you to write a job reference for him, you might find it necessary to think hard about how you would focus on his strong points without making him sound rather difficult to work with.  All of this sometimes makes me wonder if the disciples would have recognized themselves from the portraits drawn of them by the Gospel writers.  

 

But it is not only in the Gospels that Peter makes his appearance.  He is the main character at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles.  In chapter two, Peter delivers the first recorded sermon in Christian history.   And what a sermon!  It is delivered before more than three thousand people of many different nationalities, all gathered together in the City of Jerusalem.  This is the same man who – just one day before – had been hiding in a locked room with the other disciples because they were afraid of the crowds.

 

There seems to be a world of difference between the scared disciple who denied Jesus three times, and the bold disciple who goes out into the streets in front of a huge crowd to proclaim Jesus’ name.  But just like the rest of us, Peter contained in himself a world of contradictions.  Sometimes he was brave, and sometimes fearful.  Sometimes he was wise, and sometimes he was foolish.  All of these character traits were aspects of Peter’s personality, and each one of them is touched and transformed by the power of the resurrection. 

 

When Christ comes, when the power of the resurrection dawns in our hearts, we are called to meet our true selves – in all their contradictions.  Part of that meeting will involve facing up to our worst fears.  Perhaps it’s true that God in his grace has made us incapable of seeing ourselves as He Himself sees us – whether such insight should be into our good or our bad sides.  If such knowledge came all at once, it would be too much for us to bear.  That is why Paul says that only in Heaven shall we know ourselves as God already knows us.  In the meantime, the death and resurrection of Christ are a sort of window into that realization.  We have to pass through the worst and the best that the world can do; through illness or depression or bereavement; though love or passion or joy, and the passion of Christ will help us to face our worst demons, and allow the resurrection to happen in the very place where the darkness is at its most profound.

 

We are tempted to believe that the resurrection has nothing to do with the darker side of ourselves; it is all about accentuating the positive and ‘looking on the bright side’.  But the power of the resurrection resides precisely in the fact that it transforms every part of our personalities – just as it did for Peter.  The resurrection makes the most terrible experiences of our lives into places where love is able to reign supreme.  This is the only real and enduring response to what God has done for us in Christ.    

The Revd. Nigel Massey