St Peter and St Paul : Homily / Sermon (2015)

Peter: ‘You are the Christ,’ he said ‘the Son of the living God.’ (Matthew 16)

Paul: I have fought the good fight to the end; I have run the race to the finish; I have kept the faith (2 Tim 4:7)

 

We keep today the Solemnity of Ss Peter and Paul. It is counted by the Church as so important a day that it pushes out the normal Sunday. And Peter and Paul are the only Saints - with the exception of Our Lady and St John the Baptist - whose day can take the place of the normal Sunday. And their individual Saints’ days do not have this privilege: only the day in which they are celebrated together. 

 

I guess we can all think of many pairings of people in many different walks of life, who seem more important and indeed greater, when they are together than when they are apart. 

Rattling off some of the names from the world of entertainment may bring back happy memories. 

Do you remember Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, Morecambe and Wise (the greatest!), Mike and Bernie Winters, Fry and Laurie, Smith and Jones, and more recently Ant and Dec … 

And not just comedians, but musicians - Simon and Garfunkel, Lennon and McCartney … 

Or performers - Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers … 

Or fictional characters - Randall and Hopkirk, Cagney and Lacey, Starsky and Hutch

And in sport - Clough and Taylor, Hudson and Greenhoff … 

And there are some in public life too … Blair and Brown, perhaps even Cameron and Osborne … 

And of course, best of all … Batman and Robin, and … Tom and Jerry

 

Some of them, as they would say in show business “made it on their own” - but others, probably most, relied upon their partner, their foil - good cop, bad cop - straight man, funny man - each relied on the other. Great they may have been on their own .. But together they excelled. 

 

And in Peter and Paul, so it may seem, the Church has its own Double Act. 

Certainly they had important things in common - both were Jews, both ended their lives as martyrs in Rome, both were towering figures for the very first Christians, both stand head and shoulders above other figures in the New Testament, especially in the first book of history of the Church, the Acts of the Apostles. Both were known by a Hebrew and a Greek name - Peter was also known as Simon, Paul also known as Saul. The two names show they both spanned the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. 

Simon’s Greek name, Peter, was given by Christ himself: he is the Rock on which the Church is built. He is its centre. Its source of authority. Its home and its foundation. He is our leader in the faith, chosen by Christ for this vital role. 

Paul’s Greek name reminds us that he was the missionary. The convert sent out to convert others. He is the fearless preacher of the Gospel: he brought the call of Christ to the nations and he became the teacher of the world. 

Paul was a great writer and a great traveller. While Peter features frequently in the Gospels, and tradition tells us that he was a major source for the Gospel of Mark, he seems to have written very little himself - but Paul wrote most of the books and letters of what we know as the New Testament. He was the greatest missionary of the faith in the first generation of Christianity, and also its greatest teacher and thinker. 

The one was a man of stability and leadership, the other a thinker and activist. 

They certainly provided complimentary skills and expertise (as people would say nowadays) and indicate to us, even today, different aspects of the work of the Church - both of its ordained ministers and religious, and also of its ordinary members: stability and authority  alongside teaching and mission. 

A double act? Perhaps - except Peter and Paul never seem to have worked together … and when they did meet it does not seem that they saw eye to eye. There are hints in the Acts of the Apostles and in Paul’s letters, that the atmosphere between them could be highly charged. 

We remember them together not because they were close in life, not because they shared a deep friendship, nor even a creative working relationship, but because both provided vital and complimentary drive and leadership for the Church in New Testament times; both were unshakeable in their faith in Christ and in his Resurrection from the Dead; both were resolute in their preaching of the Gospel and both were united, finally, in their martyrdom for the Faith. 

Saints Peter and Paul - pray for us!

11th Sunday of the Year (B) : Bidding Prayers / Intercessions / Prayer of the Faithful

What can we say the kingdom of God is like? What parable can we find for it? (Mark 4: 30)

 

Jesus preaches often, frequently about the Kingdom of God. In fact most of his parables begin with the words “The Kingdom of God is like …”.  Yet despite this, preachers and scholars have debated and argued about just what he meant by “The Kingdom of God”. 

 

Does it perhaps relate simply to the Church - the Church on earth - when it lives as it should. After all, he did appoint 12 apostles, 12 being the number of the tribes of the Kingdom of Israel. And St Peter did speak of the Church as a “royal priesthood, a holy nation”. Is the Kingdom of God more or less the Church on earth. Pope, Bishops and of course the people? 

 

But on the other hand, is he rather talking about Heaven, - not the way things are or should be now, but our ultimate destiny at the end of time? Well, He does talk about the wheat being gathered into the Kingdom and the tares cast in the fire, and we do have the magnificent account of the final judgment, when the King separates the people as the Shepherd separates the sheep and the goats?

 

And let’s be clear, this isn’t just a debate for university professors and Biblical studies specialists. At heart this is a matter of how we understand the role of Faith in our world. It has an effect on the way we understand the Church, and Society, and Politics and issues of justice. If the Church is God’s kingdom on earth then it says a great deal about the power and authority of the Church, and her role, her duty in political life. But if the Kingdom is only in heaven, in the next life, then it might suggest that the faith is entirely spiritual, and imply that Christians should leave the murky world around them, and let the politicians just get on with it. 

 

As always, it is best to go back to what Jesus actually says, and teaches. 

 

There is a clue to the answer in the prayer Jesus taught us all to say: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” 

 

In today’s Gospel, he says, the Kingdom is like crops which apparently grow all on their own - and like a tiny seed which amazing becomes a large and extensive plant. Today he tells us that God’s Kingdom is about the workings of his Grace: God involved in the world almost secretly, God’s kingdom growing and - we could say infusing or even infiltrating the world - with a power and a pervasiveness which takes us by surprise. 

The Kingdom is indeed from Heaven (God’s Kingdom, not Humanity’s Kingdom) yet through God’s action it is working, and growing, and appearing on earth. 

The Kingdom is in the world, yet not of the world. 

It is the Church on earth - yet much more than the Church on earth. 

It is the power of God, transforming creation, society, the world. The Kingdom brings love and forgiveness and peace, as Our Lady herself sang when she visited her cousin Elizabeth, it is “casting the mighty from their thrones, and exalting the humble and meek”. 

 

The Kingdom will never fit the easy simple models we would like to impose upon it - because God always challenges us. “The Kingdom of God” is amongst you, Jesus said - yet he warned us that it will be the way in which we treat others, the poor, the needy and the outcast, forgive those who have hurt us, pray for those who persecute us, that will determine whether we are counted amongst the sheep or the goats.

Pentecost : Homily / Sermon

If you love me you will keep my commandments … the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything. (John 14:15, 26)

The Death and Resurrection of Jesus - as I guess we all know - happened when Jerusalem was filled with pilgrims who were in the city for the great celebration of the Passover. The crowds gather to cheer Jesus into the city, on what we now call Palm Sunday. Pilgrims were buying and trading in the temple when he turned over the tables. They gathered there to listen to him preach. The Last Supper was a Passover Meal, and St John points out that Jesus sacrifice on the Cross coincided with the slaughter of Lambs in the temple for the Great Feast. When we celebrate Easter in the Mass of the vigil we recall the passover itself and the escape of the Hebrews through the Red Sea, which the Church sees as a foreshadowing of Baptism, our own share in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Indeed this great candle, which stands in pride of place, is the Paschal candle - the Candle of the Pascha, the Passover.

And now seven weeks later, on the 50th day after the Passover, the Jewish people celebrate another festival, the feast of Shavuot. Again the city of Jerusalem is full of pilgrims, pilgrims from all over the known world, the Roman empire. People of many home languages.
Parthians, Medes and Elamites; people from Mesopotamia, Judaea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya round Cyrene; as well as visitors from Rome – Jews and proselytes alike – Cretans and Arabs. (Acts 2:9-11)

The name Shavuot literally means “Weeks”, “The Feast of Weeks”, though in Greek it was named not after the seven weeks, but the 50 days, Pentecost. It was a festival of the Harvest, the thanksgiving for the Gifts of God, and came to be also for the Jews the day when God’s greatest gift to them was given, the gift of the Law, given to Moses on Mount Sinai.

Our Christian feasts are rooted in these Jewish celebrations, and this year Jews and Christians are celebrating these connected feasts at about the same time. For us Christians, these festivals have been transformed by Christ - his Passover from death to eternal life, and his greatest Gift, the Gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Remembering this connection, this origin, reminds us of what we shares with the chosen people, and also how Christ has fulfilled and transformed their heritage. For the Jews the Great Gift it the Law, set out in the five books of Law in what we call the Old Testament, and subject to centuries of interpretation: for us it is the Holy Spirit, who transforms our hearts, sustains us through the sacramentsm, and establishes, sustains and protects the Church.

The two feasts, the two Pentecosts may seem to us to present a clear contrast, between a document of Law, and a motive power in our hearts. But we must be careful. Both feasts, both Gifts, are beyond ourselves and remind us that God requires our submission our obedience and our love. Service of him is to accept and adopt his will. To follow his Law, to be guided by his Spirit. In neither case does the Gift make us our own source of authority and truth, but rather reminds us that we must follow him, for only in this way can we be led into all truth.

It is not that the Gift of the Spirit enables us to overrule the Law with our own whims, wishes and wilfulness - but by the Gift of the Spirit, God writes the Law into our hearts. And we must read his will, accept the authority of his Word and his Church. And follow him. And serve him. And call others to the same truth.