The Charge to Peter

1989 (Year C), 23 April /
Easter 5

St Peter de Beauvoir Town

Have you ever tried to tell somebody that you feel called by God to do the things that you do? You have to be quite careful or they start reaching for the telephone to call the men with white coats.

An incredibly impressive man I met at the conference I went on, the one where they assessed whether or not you might become ordained, told the selectors that he had been called by the Virgin Mary to become a priest – his hope for ordination ended right there -– it seems that the Church of England is not very keen on that sort of thing.

Yet hearing the call to love Christ and to follow him is the bedrock of any Christian life. Without it, everything is pointless and self – deception.

Even the selectors would have difficulty doubting the call and instructions given to Peter. After all there was Jesus sitting with his disciples having shared a meal. Jesus just leans across and asks him if he loves him. A great deal of the subtlety is lost in the conversation as we have it – in the original Jesus asks Peter if he loves him – Peter can’t actually bring himself to say yes – his reply is – you know I care for you Jesus keeps on asking – Peter keeps evading – yet the call is consistent – ‘Follow me’.

The call and request for our love is universal. It has been made to all of us and it is constant; how we are able to respond to it differs for each one of us. It’s unique to us – it even changes as we develop and mature – and the point is made beautifully in the gospel reading – ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will gird you and carry you to a place you do not wish to go.’

All are called uniquely and all glorify God if they love and follow Jesus.

And the call to follow is not a call to join the meek in slavery and subservience. The call is to liberation – to leave the old self and to discover what is really there. It happens all the time – just talk to some of the people who led the Lent Groups this year. You’ll soon find that people, just like the lager advertisements, discover parts of themselves which they never knew existed.

Hearing the call, being attentive to it, is difficult enough, but it’s as nothing compared to living it out. That’s where the pain can really begin. The call to ordination can be heard even obeyed. It can bring great joy and fulfilment – if you are a man. Not so if you are a woman.

The call to love and follow Jesus and in the process caring for the people, God in all graciousness puts in our way, can be pure bliss – it can also bring pain. It can open the door to unimagined creativity, and as the gospel foretells it can bring constraint and suffering.

The call to follow is the call to discipleship’ If I confess the truth, if I fight for righteousness, if I put myself on the side of the persecuted, then I myself shall be isolated. I shall have to put up with slights, and my children will have to suffer for it too; but we shall have the infinite joy of being able to walk upright with our heads held high. We have to choose. And we have to choose every minute. So let us be clear about the question: what have we to fear more, the consequences of discipleship or the consequences of non-discipleship?

Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. Fear him who has the power to cast into hell: yes I tell you fear him!

A story. Don Camillo is an imaginary priest in Italy who talks to the image of the crucified Christ hanging above the altar in his little village church – that may be surprising, but more so is the fact that the Lord talks back. Don Camillo is constantly at war with the local communists, one of them, Biondo, who because he killed a man, is deeply troubled. He comes to confess in the hope that the visions he keeps seeing will go away.

‘Don Camillo.’ said Biondo in a strange voice, ‘I am sick of seeing that fellow by my bed. There are only two ways for it either you absolve me or I shoot you’. The pistol shook slightly in his hand and Don Camillo turned rather pale and looked him straight in the eyes.

‘Lord,’ said Don Camillo mentally, ‘this is a mad dog and he will fire. An absolution given in such conditions is valueless. What do I do?’

‘If you are afraid, give him absolution,’ replied the Lord. Don Camillo folded his arms on his breast.

‘No, Biondo,’ said Don Camillo.

Biondo set his teeth. ‘Don Camillo, give me absolution or I fire.’

‘No.’

Biondo pulled the trigger and the trigger yielded, but there was no explosion.

And then Don Camillo struck, and his blow did not miss the mark, because Don Camillo’s punches never misfired.

Then he flung himself up the steps of the tower and rang the bells furiously for twenty minutes. And all the countryside declared that Don Camillo had gone mad, with the exception of the Lord above the altar who shook His head and smiled. And Biondo, who tearing across the fields like a lunatic, had reached the bank of the river and was about to throw himself into its dark waters. Then he heard the bells.

So Biondo turned back because he heard a Voice he had never known. And that was the real miracle, because a pistol that misfires is a material event, but a priest who begins to ring joy bells at eleven o’clock at night is quite another matter. AMEN