Homily Sunday 5th October
HOMILY
“On this rock I will build my church.”
Matthew 16:18
A boy called Adnan grows up in Afghanistan. When he is fifteen years old, his big brother is killed. His mother is desperate to keep Adnan safe. She tells him he must leave the country, and hands him over to the people smugglers. For five months he travels – through Iran, Turkey and Europe – being beaten and bullied. Finally, he arrives in Preston, Lancashire, in the back of a lorry, and is granted asylum. His foster parents help him to settle in by taking him along to a local cricket club, where the captain spots his potential. Then he has a further stroke of luck. Local cricketing legend Freddie Flintoff comes looking for young players for his TV show Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams, and spots Adnan. Adnan is now studying for a diploma in sport and has recently scored a winning sixty-six runs for Lancashire under-eighteens against Yorkshire. He has found his calling. Expect to see him in the England side in the future!
Cricketing heroes and saints can come from unlikely beginnings, and that is true of the two apostles we celebrate and give thanks for today. In their different ways, each was unsuitable for their task, but they were spotted. And when it is God doing the spotting, miracles can truly happen.
Peter was a fisherman – a family man, a respected man with a place in the community among his friends, earning a secure living on the Sea of Galilee. But then Jesus came along and spotted something in him – some potential. Perhaps it was the respect he naturally earned, or perhaps it was his determination, or his outspokenness, or even his occasional tendency to recklessness, or his willingness to admit to his mistakes. For whatever reason, Jesus spotted Peter, and from then onhe was destined to be a leader of the community of faith that Jesus would create and leave in his care.
And Paul. He was a fervent believer and an educated man, a scholar, an interpreter of the Jewish scriptures. He was a speaker of Latin and Greek, able to communicate with representatives of the powers who ruled Palestine. He was all set for a distinguished career involving, among other things, stamping out the new radical movement that was threatening to lure Jews away from their faith. But God has spotted his potential. Perhaps it’s because of his seriousness, his willingness to make sacrifices for his faith, his devotion to God, his energy and his extraordinarily creative mind. Perhaps it’s even owing to his tendency to extremism. For whatever reason, God spotted Paul, and from then on he was destined to be the one who created a theology for Christianity, who linked the new faith back into Judaism and took it forward into the whole world.
If Peter is the rock, the solid century-builder of the early Church, Paul is its fast bowler, dashing round the Mediterranean, countering all attacks on Christianity with his preaching and his letters, bowling out the doubters and opponents.
God needed both Peter and Paul, and so do we. Without Peter’s courage and steadiness, without his wisdom and ability to attract respect, without his willingness to adapt to new circumstances, without his absolute, wholehearted faith in Jesus, the Christian Church might have disappeared almost as soon as it began.
Without Paul’s fervour, his ability with words, his knowledge of philosophy and theology, the Christian Gospel might not have been able to convince the Gentile world of its truth. God spotted well.
God has spotted us, unlikely and unqualified though we may be. God has called us into the Christian team. We are all saints. Not all leaders, but each of us has a part to play. We bring our hearts, our minds, our skills and our weaknesses, and we offer them to God. And we follow in the footsteps of the saints of old, until God’s victory over the enemies of sin and death is complete, on earth as it is in heaven.
Illustration: El Greco, St Paul and St Peter, 1595, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), Barcelona, Spain.