Posted by Holly Ordway in Christian Life | 2 Comments
Are You a St Paul or a St Peter?
Saints Peter and Paul – the steady fisherman and the fiery Pharisee, the devoted disciple and the persecutor-turned-apostle. Every congregation is filled with Peters and Pauls – which one are you?
In Peter we see the Christian who has been raised in the church. Peter has no dramatic conversion experience, no abrupt shift from darkness to light; rather, he has spent a long time in the company of those who follow the Lord, and he has come to know that Jesus is the Messiah, the Anointed One of God. Peter’s faith is not dramatic, but it is solid – so much so that our Lord declares that the faith he shows, the acknowledgement that Jesus is the Christ, will be the rock upon which he will build the Church.
Not that the path has always been straight – definitely not! For only moments after he declares his faith, he tries to dissuade Jesus from the way of the Cross, only to be sternly rebuked. And though his protestations of eternal loyalty are loud, he fails Jesus in the end, and as our Lord goes to his death on the cross, Peter denies that he even knows him.
Peter follows, and stumbles, but he gets back up again, always with his eyes on our Lord. Better than any of the saints, perhaps, he knows the full experience of Christ’s forgiving grace.
I have friends who are almost wistful about not having a dramatic “conversion story.” Their journey seems almost boring: lots of ordinary faithfulness, mixed in with falling away and coming back, and carrying on. But wait! St Peter shows us that this “ordinary faithfulness” is anything but ordinary. It is to Peter that Jesus gives the great task of ministry: “Feed my sheep.”
In Paul we see those Christians who had a “Damascus Road” experience. Perhaps they were rebels against God, or contemptuous or hateful toward Christians (like me), embracing atheism with the zeal that Paul persecuted the early Christians. Or perhaps they were simply mired in indifference and apathy – until the season in their life when everything changed. Like Paul, headed to Damascus with other plans, until our Lord made an appearance and everything, absolutely everything changed.
Paul’s conversion is so sudden that the other Christians don’t even trust him at first; isn’t this the guy who was ordering us to be thrown into jail, or killed? But the same zeal that made him the greatest enemy of the faith also, when re-oriented by our Lord, made him its greatest missionary and theologian.
When it comes to the way that we came to our faith, each of us is either a Peter or a Paul… which makes me appreciate the wisdom of the Church in honoring these two saints equally. Their key moments of faith – the Confession of St Peter, and the Conversion of St Paul – are celebrated a week apart, on January 18 and January 25, respectively.
If we look ahead a little bit in the Church calendar, we are reminded of another great truth about these two aspects of the Christian life.
There is no separate day for St Peter and a different one for St Paul. Instead, June 29th is the combined Feast of St Peter and St Paul – always together, the two sides of the coin.
Because we are, all of us, both Peter and Paul.
Even a Peter, who has grown up in a Christian family and gone to church from the very beginning, must at some point make a conscious decision to accept Christ. No one inherits Christian faith; it is a personal choice. Do I follow Christ, or do I follow my own will? That moment is a Paul moment.
Even a Paul, who has made a clear, dramatic choice to follow Christ, must then learn what it means to actually live that out. The Damascus Road moment is just that – a moment. Following that is a lifetime of listening, learning, praying, obeying – making mistakes, repenting, being forgiven. Every Christian life is Peter’s life.
I am a Paul – learning how to be a Peter, with God’s help.
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Thanks for the thoughtful reflection, Holly. A couple of things came to mind, which I share in a good spirit of dialogue.
Firstly, my pastoral experience tells me your categories are spot on concerning the two types of paths to faith in Christ. For me, the Damascus path fits well my own experience.
With Peter, though, he definitely had dramatic encounters with Christ. There is the ‘away from me Lord, I a sinful man’ moment, the dramatic spiritual encounter of the Mount of Transfiguration, and then there is Pentecost. The last one was post-resurrection, but still a dramatic encounter. And then there is his being a witness of Jesus’ healings and powerful deeds and signs.
Paul was theologically and doctrinally steeped in the OT and had been an utterly devoted Jew his whole life. He grew up going to church, so to speak.
So in one sense, you could almost invert Paul and Peter to be examples of both the faith by osmosis (Peter) and the Damascus road moment (Paul).
For me they speak more of the role of the intellect and heart both being devoted and consecrated to God and Christ’s service. Too often those pursuing intellectual and academic theological studies can lose sight of the power of Christ and the Spirit, and rest in theoretical knowledge devoid of the wonder of worship and the ongoing personal encounter with the risen Christ.
On the other hand, some with dramatic spiritual encounters and experiences can fail to build solid biblical and theological foundations to that faith, and can become ‘storm-chasers’ of the supernatural as a means to bolster faith.
From a pastoral perspective, I would want to encourage the Peters’ to a greater faith and expectation in God’s power through the Spirit. Ongoing encounters with Christ through the Spirit are the norm for the disciple. For the Pauls’, I would want to encourage a deeper engagement with biblical theology, and teach that the most supernatural event is salvation, the transformation of the sinful human heart by the grace of God. And this leads us to mission, not just the seeking of supernatural experiences for their own sake.
Thanks for your reflection; it has encouraged me to look afresh at these two pioneers and leaders of our faith. Blessings to you in your ministry.
Nicholas, thank you for that very thoughtful response. Having these two saints as examples, especially with the church drawing our attention to them as a pair through the calendar, is really helpful as a reminder not to take either extreme as the one and only approach to following Christ. I’m glad you pointed out the intellect/heart connection – I agree completely.