totally incomprehensible faith

 

SERMON PREACHED AT St PAUL’S, ARROWTOWN

and St Peter’s, Queenstown
THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER
(May 3^rd) 2025
 

Readings

Revelation 5: 11-14

Psalm 30

John 21: 1-19

 

 

You may or may not recall, but during the reading of the passion, On both Good Friday and the Sunday before Easter, there is that moment when Peter denies Jesus for the third time, and the cock crows. Every year as I read that passage this is a moment at which I feel a shiver down my spine. This is probably because I know my own capacity to deny my faith under duress, and history demonstrates that however strong a believer a person is sometimes the sheer psychological trauma of persecution and threats defeats their expectations of faith.

Would I be brave enough when Hitler's brown shirts came marching to my house in the middle of the night, or indeed when Mr. Trump’s goons arrived on the flimsiest of evidence and against the law of the land to drag American residents and refugees off to a Peruvian prison, would I be brave enough to stand up for them? And indeed in the United States where Christianity is being defined as legitimate only when it places trump and his agenda, and for that matter the American flag into a place of higher priority then the cross of Jesus Christ, would I be strong enough to stand up against the tyranny. If I were told that only believers in Trump's alleged form of Christianity were allowed to worship and all others were traitors and subverters, would I be brave enough to hold fast?

The question is more relevant today in the Europeanized world than it has been at any time since the mid 1940s. Never did I expect that I would be preaching at a time when belief in the compassionate and justice seeking Christ put fellow believers in a western nation at risk of their freedom. So the shiver that runs down my spine when I encounter Peter’s denial of Jesus is deeply visceral. We have probably all seen the meme that reads this is so and so, be like so and so. We have in the scriptures the potential meme this is Peter, do not be like Peter.

And I say all this because the scene today is a powerful moment of reconciliation between the disciples, all the males of whom fled from Jesus in his most poignant time of need, reconciliation between them and there is and but absolutely the same Jesus.

Aha, you might say, but was he the same, for no one recognised him? And yet the gospel writers, Matthew, Luke and John are determined to make it clear that in all matters of what we might call mind and spirit, this is one and the same person. Furthermore they are adamant that we are dealing not with some immortal soul but the Risen One, as able as you and I to chomp on a piece of fish. It is a strange detail, but not one to be ignored.

Leaving aside however Jesus with a hungry belly – after all death and resurrection are an exhausting business – the remarkable dimension in this moment is the profound reconciliation between Jesus and his betrayers. We generally refer to Judas as the betrayer, but the desertion committed by all 2018 02 24 1038athe men (And seemingly not the powerless women) was equally betrayal. These betrayers and deserters are here reconciled to their victim. 

For a moment I imagined myself in the shoes of the disciples, mystified by the resurrection appearance, and deeply worried as to how this their friend would treat them after their desertion. And at the risk of becoming a bit mystical and speculative I begin to get a glimpse of what we call heaven. I don't believe we won't see into this mystery that lies beyond our graves nonchalantly demanding our place at the table. But I do believe, with Paul, that's beyond all understanding, beyond all rationality this is the moment that we are reconciled not only with our God in Christ, but with all who we have let down, even betrayed. Reconciled not with an airy wave of the hand, box with those deep piercing eyes and a gesture of welcome so well portrayed in the Narnia stories as Aslan greets the resurrected children.

And beyond that mystical imagining I can say little. The gospel writers found that it was beyond their capacity to explain the encounters with the risen Lord. It is equally beyond our capacity to understand what on earth this resurrection business is, or better still what in heaven’s name this resurrection business is. Yet I stand solidly with St Paul, for without this incomprehensible mystery we are simply wasting time, and we all might find better things to do on a Sunday morning. But because of this incomprehensible mystery we can stumble through the deaths of our loved ones and indeed our own dying, and we can reach out our hands to receive these strange elements of bread and wine, as Jesus taught us, and then go out into the world strengthened and reawakened in our totally incomprehensible faith.