When I came up from the Diocese of Wakefield, where I was ordained, to become Rector of Cupar & Ladybank, 11 years ago, I actually moved in to the Rectory just one week after the General Election of 1997. You'll perhaps remember some of the excitement of that Election, a fresh & exciting new government, a fresh & exciting young Prime Minister! I won't go into what happened to the newness & the excitement, nor to the young Prime Minister!
Any priest arriving in a new town will know that people have been talking about him before he arrives! One of the consequences of arriving in Cupar just one week after that Election was that things got a little confused - for some of our younger members. One of our congregation had, very properly, been explaining to her son about the result of the Election & he also knew about the new arrival in town. Imagine my surprise as I walked up their garden path to hear a little voice shout, "Mum, it's the Prime Minister!"
I later presented that young man to the Bishop for Confirmation here in St. Andrews!
No, it wasn't the Prime Minister, just another new Rector! But you could certainly make out a case for calling St. Peter "The Prime Minister." - first among the disciples &, for many of our Christian friends, the beginning point of authority in the world-wide church - all that in the Gospels about the Keys of the Kingdom & the 'Rock on which I will build my church.'
If I ever had to take a kind of celestial Highers Exam on the conduct of my priesthood, or even on my Christian life, I'd sooner it was conducted by St. Peter rather than by St. Paul. I've never felt comfortable with St. Paul! Nowadays it seems that the Church wants to keep the Feast of these two Saints together. But today for me really is Peter's Day - Paul has a full day to himself on 25 January! So, I'm concentrating on Peter - Prime Minister?
Two thousand years on, Peter's warmth & humanity spill out from the pages of the New Testament. He was impetuous, not just on a very rare occasion like some of us can be, but over & over again. In the way he was called; in trying to walk on water; in trying to defend Jesus with a sword; in leaping into the lake when he saw the risen Jesus on the shore. In speech he was unguarded, blurting out questions & ambitions like a six-year old. Even on the Mount of Transfiguration he could not hold his tongue.
Rash as Peter was, he held fast to one marvellous insight with a clarity & conviction that redeemed all his blundering. He worked out who Jesus was; he perceived the identity of Jesus - not entirely, but with a deep wisdom & knowledge that fired his whole being - from today's Gospel (Matthew 16: 16) - "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." And he loved as artlessly & as openly as a child.
Like all children, he had to work at the painful achievement of maturity & it cost him everything he had. Nothing in his previous life had prepared him for the ease with which warm, loving emotions can dissolve under the impact of fear. Like all naturally kind & decent people, like us in fact, he could not imagine the world of sanctioned violence - of interrogation, beating, threats & torture - that in Christ's day, as so often in our own, lay buried beneath the smooth surface of official `law & order.'
The sudden crashing entry of such violence into the dream of the Kingdom was traumatic. Peter recoiled in terror & vehemently denied the human being he loved most in the world. It's impossible to read the story of Peter cowering by the fire in the courtyard, verbally tormented by the servant girl, without recognising ourselves & the betrayals that we too have made.
Yet the greatness of Peter still shines through this darkest moment of his life. We might have indulged in self-justification as a way of relieving the agony of such guilt. Not Peter. He made no attempt to defend himself, even in his own eyes. Judas, feeling remorse but not the penitence which might have saved him, took refuge in suicide. Not Peter. He had learned that eternity offers no such refuge so he wept as a child weeps when life becomes unbearable.
But they were not childish tears. In Christian tradition, Peter wept blood - not as bizarre or as miraculous as it sounds since very prolonged crying can cause sores on the face that do eventually bleed - so that the blood mingles with the tears.
With a humility almost unbearable to contemplate Peter remained the devoted follower of the man he had betrayed & was among the first to meet the risen Christ. True lover that he was, he went on loving, even in the wreck of his own self-esteem.
It always moves me that it was Peter, who in his understanding about `unclean' food & his baptising of Cornelius, saw that the world could not be divided up into Jews & Gentiles; us & them; the in crowd & the outsiders.
One of our responsibilities, as disciples, is to prevent the church becoming an exclusive club concerned only for its own spiritual welfare. Even, & perhaps especially, is that true of a church in the kind of minority position that we are in as Scottish Episcopalians. We are called, like Peter, to see the wider scene, to have the wider vision & to be ready to speak the unpopular word of warning. We may be called on to be the voice of the voiceless & advocate for the weak. We know that the God with whom Christians have to do is the God who inspired the prophets & demanded social justice for God's people, all the people!
That God still calls us to discern the signs of the Kingdom in the world, to identify where God is already working well outside the agencies of the church & to use the resources of the Gospel to support & strengthen those encouraging movements of the human spirit wherever they are found.
As we try to follow Jesus, the same question is asked of us as John's Gospel tells us that Jesus asked of Peter, after breakfast on that day a short time after the Resurrection - 'Do you love me? Our answer, of course, comes immediately to hand -'Yes, we love Jesus, week after week, we have been taught to do so, it is part of our tradition. God has been good to us ...'
But Jesus asks again, 'Do you love me?' & the question starts to hurt us, as it hurt Peter, because it slowly dawns on us that it is not a question about our loyalty to our glorious Christian heritage or about our religious observances nor even about our personal prayer lives. It is a searching question about our ability to love as human beings, to meet human needs, about cost & risk & sacrifice, about being taken to the Rock-bottom, that zero-point where we would rather not go - that zero-point beyond which we can just glimpse the tip of the shadow cast by the man nailed to the Cross - that point where we discover that our hope & humanity rests on the question - 'Do you love me?'
The answer to the question is inevitably 'Yes!' but the response of Jesus to our 'Yes' remains the same -'Feed my sheep.' Prove that you love me - 'feed my sheep' - accept the cost of feeding Christ's sheep - all his sheep, the poor, the oppressed, the outcast, the criminal, as well as the rich & the happy, & the apathetic!
There is a strange & ancient legend about the Risen Christ meeting Peter on the road outside Rome. Peter was running away from Rome & Christ was going toward Rome. Peter asks Christ, "Quo Vadis?" Where are you going? Christ replies, "I am going - to be crucified - again." Peter turns back & is martyred.
Quo Vadis? - Where are you going? Amen?
Sermon by: Malcolm Aldcroft