Sermon preached by The Rev’d Neil Fernyhough, Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul (June 29, 2008 )
Readings: Ezek 34:11-16; Ps 87; 2 Tim 4:1-8; Jn 21:15-19
“Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you.” – Jn 21:17
The theme of today’s Gospel, as it is with the whole contemplative tenor of our worship today is, “Follow me.” Hyperbole, that is to say, exaggeration, is a familiar literary technique in the Bible, but nowhere does the cudgel of driving a point home come down quite so repeatedly as it does in Jesus’ threefold interrogation of Peter in the closing verses of John’s Gospel. “Do you love me?” Jesus implores the disciple, who is by turns mystified and hurt by the repeated questioning. “Lord, you know everything – You know that I love you.” “Feed my sheep,” Jesus responds, and prophesizes the consequences of that commission – Peter’s eventual torture and death. Then Jesus utters a two word invitation to Peter, perhaps the most eloquent summation of our Christian avocation – “Follow me.” Despite it all, “follow me.” Come what may, be it hard or even lethal, “Follow me.” And, as the story unfolds in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Letters of Peter and Paul, we discover that is exactly what Peter did.
This is the story of contemplation, as well. It is this Gospel imperative enacted. When we walk the labyrinth or when we mark the beads of a rosary or when we chant a prayer or draw a Celtic knot, we are following a pathway. We love the life-giver, the pain-bearer, the Spirit-bringer – this ineffable yet all too real force which opens our eyes every morning and beats our heart every second and inflates and deflates our lungs and fires the neurons of our brains. We love the One who is Love, without whom community is impossible, though the world does not know it. We love the One who is Life, without whom we would merely survive, in a world of hurt of abandonment. We walk the labyrinth, we pray the prayers, we sanctify the sacraments because they are passageways we walk to follow the beloved who captivates our hearts in the flight of a bird, in the tender touch of a loved one, in a simple act of compassion to one unknown.
Today we celebrate contemplation as a way of being people of faith – as the nutritional building block of faith itself. As we walk the labyrinth, or pursue other passageways, the veil falls from our eyes, and we make a journey to see God face to face in a theophany of prayer. It was in pursuing such a passageway that the scales fell from the eyes of Saul the persecutor, transforming him into Paul the missionary. It was in pursuing such a passageway that Peter was transformed from an unlearned labourer who denied knowing Jesus to save his skin into the first, great bishop of the church, willingly martyred. The psychological, spiritual, and even physical pain of taking this path was enormous, but – as we heard Paul say a couple of weeks back – it was a pain that produced endurance, and an endurance that produced hope, and a hope that did not disappoint, because from within its small kernel burst forth a shaft of light that the darkness has never, will never, and can never overcome. That is the shaft of light that we seek when we walk a labyrinth, sing a Taizé chant, pray the rosary, or recite the daily office by a prayer shrine in our home. That shaft of light is love, and that love is God.
My prayer is that today we inaugurate a commitment to live contemplatively, both privately and corporately. Beginning tomorrow, and continuing Monday through Thursday throughout summer, if I am here, the bell will ring at 9 am, and I invite anyone who wishes to join me in pursuing the particular passageway of our beautiful labyrinth. Amidst the stimulations inner and outer, those which soothe and delight and those which annoy and bring pain, we pursue our passageway to God, to fulfill the commission we share with Peter and Paul from the abundance of our love: “Follow me.” Amen.
© Richard Neil Fernyhough, 2008.
