Feature picture: Peter and Paul, El Greco

The collect for today begins: Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you….

This collect comes on the Sunday closest to the joint commemoration of Peter and Paul on June 29th. While each have their own individual commemorations, it has always struck me as an important statement by the Church that they are additionally commemorated together on June 29^th.

Peter, entrusted by Jesus as the leader among the apostles – whose symbol is the crossed keys of the kingdom – ended his days in Rome, where he became its first bishop. Paul, the dramatic covert, whose encounter with the Spirit of Jesus on the road to Damascus transformed him from persecutor to apostle, also ended his days in Rome. It was in Rome that both Peter and Paul were martyred during the persecution of Nero between 64-67 AD. Peter was crucified upside down – feeling unworthy to die in the same way as his Lord. As a Roman citizen Paul had the privileged of beheading by sword. Thus, Peter is depicted by the crossed keys, while Paul is depicted with crossed swords.

In the English Church, the commemoration of Peter and Paul on June 29^th is known as Petertide. The Saturday closest to June 29th is the customary date for ordinations to the diaconate and presbyterate. In cathedrals up and down the land, as many as between 900 to a 1000 women and men in any given year are ordained. It’s a massively festive time in the Church.

Petertide is a very personal commemoration for me. This Petertide marks my 38th anniversary as a Clerk in Holy Orders – as the clergy of the Church of England are officially known. My ministry has been characterized by remarkable twists and turns – each completely unanticipated by me. One of the things I have learned is that the door that opens is never the door we’ve had our sights on.  The trick is to notice and have the courage to walk through the door -that though unlooked for – is actually the one opening. This has guided me well navigating the twist and turns of my ministerial path and of my life more generally.

Two different men one could not imagine. Could the church in Rome have been big enough for both at the same time? I suspect the answer was yes and no. Yes, because each understood the charism with which he had been entrusted by the Lord. Peter’s mission was to the circumcised and Paul’s to the uncircumcised. But nothing could have disguised the personal friction between them – largely based on temperaments as different as chalk from cheese.

Paul records an interesting incident in Galatians 2 where he tells us of the difficulties encountered among the Gentiles because of the interference from the circumcised (Jewish) followers of the way. This continued to be a serious issue and helps account for Paul’s preoccupation with the relationship between Gentile and Jewish converts – a major theme in his Letter to the Romans which we’ve been hearing about in the epistle readings over several Sundays.

Paul writes in Galatians 2:11 about Peter’s visit to Antioch where he says:  I opposed him to his face – for he stood self-condemned.  On arrival Peter seems to have been living it up – enjoying the dispensations from the restrictions of the law accorded to the Gentile converts. Paul writes:

for until certain people came from James, Peter used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. Other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas (Peter) before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at that encounter!

Yet, in commemorating Peter & Paul together, the Church is making a statement not only about the acceptance of difference but the need for diversity in how we approach and understand the Tradition. The Church is making a clear statement in bringing Peter and Paul together that one approach does not meet the needs of every situation.

Let’s consider the following questions:

• Are you a rule keeper or a rule breaker?
• Do you value time honored traditions and rely on them as a guide in new situations, or do you recognize that new situations might need completely novel responses?

Taking the last point first. Peter – hot headed and quick on the draw. Exuberant and fun-loving.  Always speaking before thinking – but undoubtedly possessing a gravitas that others recognize in his leadership. While Paul is the one who burns at a low simmer – the one you might worry about – fearing the possibility of going from slow burn to combustion in a matter of nano seconds. Paul the introverted scholar – given to building his case through long winded legalistic argument before suddenly – his hidden passion – his love for Christ sears everyone to the quick. With Paul you could be in little doubt whether he thought you were for or against him.

But temperament is not the main issue here but simply a recognition that temperament equips each for the nature of the work Christ calls us to. Peter was essentially a rule follower, a trusty pair of hands to whom the future of the Church had been entrusted. Peter’s approach was to rely on the time-tested tradition to respond to the challenge of new situations. 

Paul, had been a disciple of the great Pharisee teacher Gamaliel, and so we might expect him to be a pillar of orthodoxy. At first, he was – as Saul he was the chief prosecutor of the followers of the way. But his life had been dramatically changed when its course took a hard left. All his certainties were challenged and collapsed in a searing encounter with the Spirit of the risen Christ on the Damascus Road. Once an advocate of implacable tradition, Paul became the one to think outside the box – reinterpreting and reshaping tradition to meet the challenges of situations requiring completely new responses. Peter stays home and solidifies the base while Paul is the bold adventurer – striking out into uncharted waters.

Like Peter, Episcopalians greatly value the Tradition – the teaching and practice inherited from former generations of Christians. Like Paul we also believe that applying former interpretation to new situations is doomed to failure. We accept that each new generation must find itself in the inevitable place of tension between what has been handed on to us and the challenges we face in the lives we are actually living.

We live in an age in which change moves at unprecedented speed. Our civic as well as religious institutions are facing challenges to their fitness for purpose in a rapidly changing world. Jesus teaching about new wine needing new wineskins is the point.

We face the challenge to regulate AI armed with 19^th-century legal principles and 20^th-century legislative tools no-longer fit for purpose. The tech companies motivated by good old capitalist greed are poorly equipped to build AI programs other than in their own self-image. Hence, we will have AI programs -devoid of the moral and spiritual frameworks that will enable them to truly serve humanity. We will need AI that is not just cleaver but also possessing the essential spiritual qualities of humanity. AI must be better than many of its creators.

A conservative Supreme Court majority seeks to apply a fundamentalist doctrine that imprisons the Constitution – confining its inherent wisdom to guide instead of thwart change in American life. The conservative Justices claim to infallibly intuit the Founder’s intentions- while ignoring the Founder’s overriding intention – which was to create a document sufficiently clear and yet more importantly, sufficiently vague enough to allow for evolving interpretation in response to the issues of the time. Their espousal of a fundamentalist doctrine of originalism would be the stuff of standup comedy – if that is -the consequences affecting the lives of women, LGBTQ+ persons, the young and educationally indebted, and now people of color were not so serious.

The Church faces a demographic and cultural shift of enormous significance for the survival of the tradition’s embodiment of centuries of human wisdom honed from the human-divine journey together. We see all around us frantic attempts to plug the cracks appearing in the vessel of Tradition with 19^th-century mortar – sealed over with 1st and 2^nd -century veneer – the most recent example being the decision of the Southern Baptists to inhibit women from positions of authority.

What is our response to be as the cracks in the vessel of tradition multiply and expand? Is our response to be one of patching and filling – or can we come to see in the cracks the light of new solutions shining through?

Perhaps Peter and Paul despite their difference or even because of it might agree that tradition is a poor cudgel but a brilliant searchlight. A searchlight illumining new pathways into the future – a future glimpsed through the cracks – because without the cracks how else will the light get in?