SERMON PREACHED BY JULIA CARR

AT CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH

PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

THE THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER, YOUTH SUNDAY

18 APRIL 2010

He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you.”

              We all face serious decisions and changes throughout our lifetime, constantly pushed in multiple directions by various people and events; changing to become leaders or followers, social or withdrawn, arrogant or humble, happy or depressed, rich or poor. Today, as you probably already know is Youth Sunday. Placed at the forefront of Church today are the kids, children, and teens of the church that are all in the process of making decisions and setting their path for the life they have ahead. The choices and decisions that we make will have serious effects on our potential future; deciding where we go to school, how we act around other people, and what relationships we can maintain for the future.

              Yet it is not merely the youth who still have to shape the path ahead of them. I believe that each person’s ‘path’ is one of constant change, one with many forks and bumps in the road. And as Chaos Theory describes, each action, decision, and choice that is made can have significant effects, as how one beat of the wings of a butterfly can set off a chain of events that results in a Tsunami somewhere else. Every single person here has an infinite number of decisions to make, many of which are near impossible to predict the outcome. As you grow older, your own personal path (having followed a very indirect and bumpy route to get to the point you’re at) still can deviate from ‘the beaten path’. The children may have the most dramatic opportunities to create brand new paths – the opportunity to push the envelope. But all of us face the question: so how have you decided? Where are you going?

              There was one line that really jumped out at me as I was reading today’s gospel. Jesus indicates to Peter the type of death by which he will ‘glorify god’. “When you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” This rather cryptic warning can apply to the rest of us as well. As a young child, opportunities and potential futures are limitless. As we grow older, our paths begin to diverge, as people make decisions about schools, activities, and as unpredictable events such as accidents, deaths, and other crises affect everyone differently. It is in this divergence that people often split humanity into a dichotomous system: good people and bad people. But as we learned from Severus Snape in Harry Potter – there are no absolute lines separating these two groups once and for all. The prospect of the good may be in everyone. The choice how to act is constantly before us.

               I would like to take a deeper look at Saul. When we first encounter Saul in the lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, he is a nasty piece of work. He goes about persecuting the people that belonged to Jesus’s Way. Though what he is doing is clearly wrong by our accounts – no one now would argue that imprisoning people for their beliefs is a good thing – it’s important to think about his behavior in context of his position and duties of the time. Saul believes that he is in the right. Perhaps he sees Jesus’s followers as a threat to himself and his friends. Or perhaps he sees them as a threat to his ideals, his religion. As a Jew, he could be attempting to protect his people from those whom he thinks of as idolatrous, worshipping a false God. All we know for sure is that his passionate persecution is halted by the very man whom he is persecuting. Striking him blind, Jesus teaches him the Way. Struck blind, Saul is able to see.

               Saul’s transformation from Saul the persecutor to Paul the preacher and teacher whose writings we know so well is one that is hard to fathom. How can a person undergo such change? Lewis Thomas, in his book, The Medusa and the Snail, describes how each person is born with multiple selves. For a majority of people, these versions of the self lie dormant, showing themselves one at a time. After all, most of us recognize that we are not the same person we were even two years ago. For example– some of you will remember that I used to be shy?!? Thomas argues that the “number of different selves is in itself not all that pathological.” He writes: “Eight strikes me personally as a reasonably small and easily manageable number. It is the simultaneity of their appearance that is the real problem, And I should think psychiatry would do better by simply persuading them to queue up and wait their turn, as happens in the normal rest of us. Couldn’t they be conditioned some way, by offering rewards or holding out gently threatening sanctions? ‘How do you do, I’m absolutely delighted to see you here and I have exactly fifty-five minutes, after which I very much regret to say someone else will be dropping in, but could I see you again tomorrow at this same time, do have a chocolate mint and let’s just talk, just the two of us.’”

               Both the lesson and gospel for today talk about changes in selves that are more lasting and of more consequence, a change that is less a cordial social gathering of potential selves and instead a conversion.  Saul’s case required being struck blind and then baptized into the way of Christ. Most of us don’t need to make such a drastic shift. Our changes are usually on a smaller scale, the decisions of a moment not a complete transformation.  We don’t necessarily need a cataclysmic event to provoke change in our selves.  But it remains for us, like Saul, to figure out: how do we ‘get on track’ to follow Christ?

              I think that an important way to do this is through help from others. Saul makes his transformation with help from God through the discipline Ananias. When the Lord in a vision calls Ananias to go to Saul, Ananias is initially reluctant to intervene. He feels Saul is a lost cause, a man who has done “much evil … in Jerusalem.” He gives up on Saul, thinks he is beyond change. But when he goes to Saul’s house, and touches him, Saul’s better self comes forward. The “scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored.” Saul’s conversion gives us all hope that such change is possible, that we can with the help of others – and of God – be restored to ourselves.

               Another character who is set straight on his path– albeit with recurring help – is Peter, who is one of my – and the rector’s – favorite biblical characters. As we have heard in past sermons, Peter is the disciple who doesn’t immediately quite ‘get it’. He is one of the most vocal disciples, causing trouble when he doesn’t immediately accept the challenges presented by Jesus. We’ve seen Peter confront Jesus about his imminent death – not comprehending the significance. We’ve seen him almost drown when he faces the miracle of walking on water. And most recently, we have witnessed Peter’s attempt to maintain his respect for his teacher by openly questioning Jesus about the washing of his feet during the last supper. As Jesus says after Peter insists in Mark’s Gospel that Jesus cannot die for humanity, Peter has it all wrong. He sets his mind “not on divine things but on human things.” Yet it’s because of this that Peter is the disciple with whom we can relate. He’s flawed for sure, but has excellent motives and ethics. He’s not afraid to look the fool. Above all, he is inquisitive, curious, vocal, and keeps trying to make sense of the world.  Our ways of trying to reconcile our selves and figure out our way are more likely to be like Peter’s confused and rather clumsy efforts, needing constant repetition and intervention, than like Saul’s radical transformation on the road to Damascus.

               This week, I took a trip to Providence, Rhode Island to visit Brown University. One of the first things that the program leaders did was to welcome the visiting ‘prefrosh’ to the Brown University Class of 2014, and boost our egos, telling us that we were the best incoming freshmen class to ever come to Brown in its 246 years of existence (I would imagine that that line has been used approximately 245 times…) They then proceeded to tell us even more about what made Brown students special, enlightening us about the awesome group of people that would make up the student body – a group of people that would be inquisitive, curious, vocal, and always trying to make sense of the world. Clearly Peter is Brown material! As the world of college admission – speak suggests, today we value those who, like Peter, openly question their understandings and direction in the world. We don’t want to let others decide for us who we are going to be, where we’re going to go, what we’re going to do. Peter’s display of doubts and anxieties fits well into our modern valuing of vast choice, constant questioning and remaking of ourselves. It is because Peter is so imperfect and his imperfection is so often narrated that we can identify with him.

               In today’s gospel, before Jesus ascends, he leaves Peter the responsibility of ‘feeding his lambs’ and ‘tending his sheep’.  Jesus probes Peter, asking him 3 times if he loves him.  Perhaps this was to draw a parallel to Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus during the Passion. Jesus could be testing him – using this as an opportunity for Peter to redeem himself. Or perhaps Jesus was truly unsure of Peter’s answer. After all, we have all given a flippant answer to a question that seems too complicated.  The answer to ‘Is your room clean?’ for example is always ‘Sure’ only to be later amended – if we were to be honest –  with ‘well… I’m working on it…’.  The answer to “Who do you want to be?” is often “I don’t know,” but perhaps the more honest version is, “well… I’m working on it.”  Peter is eager to get back into his teacher’s good graces. The question seems rather straightforward – “Do you love me?” Peter knows that he should respond positively – but Jesus wants more than that. He asks again, receiving Peter’s confusion – as if Peter is not sure if his answer is the correct one. He asks a third time, and Peter responds with confidence, perhaps confirming the hope that Jesus holds for this complicated disciple. 

               The question is how we find our own path and who shapes it for us. Will we, like Saul, be so radically transformed that we lose all of our flaws and issues in the transformation? Will we, like Peter, make our own path through stubbornness, mistakes, and constant questioning? Jesus transformed the lives of these men, making them leaders of his church. Will everyone be changed to be leaders? In our hierarchical minds, we instantly assume that IF Jesus picked a leader, he would pick us – the congregation of his church. But Jesus doesn’t pick his leaders in that way. He picks Saul, the man who seems most hopeless to change, who has the farthest to go to be one of his disciples. He picks Peter, the man who is clumsily uncertain and all too human to ‘tend his sheep.’ For his rock on which to build his future church, he picks the person who needs the most guidance, who makes the most mistakes, who does not know himself or his way in the world.  Peter, like most of us, is unsure about how to answer Jesus’ question, “Do you love me?” It takes him three tries to say it with sufficient confidence or commitment. 

               We, like Peter, aren’t expected to get it right on the first try. We make decisions all the time – some impulsive, and some thoughtfully. The choices that we make govern who our own ‘self’ is. Mistakes are inevitable. We hope, like Peter, that God knows we love him, and will abide with all of us, the good and the bad,  no matter what.

               From the 14th chapter of John

                               If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.

                               If ye love me, keep my commandments.

                               And I will pray the Father,

                              and he shall give you another Comforter,

                              that he may abide with you for ever

                                             Amen.