Sermon ideas

• Don’t forget PostScript: up-to-the-minute comment available on Thursday morning.
• More movement this week, with close connections expressed in both readings between physical and spiritual/emotional journeys. Paul and Peter, the main protagonists of the Acts cycle, share in this dynamic, and the journeys of both are in their own ways dramatic. (You may wish to draw attention to the Peter & Paul: factfile sheets) that demonstrate the parallels between their stories.) Saul/Paul sets out as a member of the ‘Temple police’ (from last week’s Acts reading) with the intention of continuing the persecution of those on the Way. Something happens, which Luke explains as an encounter with the risen Lord. The effect is so profound that when Paul comes back to himself he has made the complete U-turn, affirming the identity of Jesus as Son of God.
• Peter’s literal journey is shorter, in and out of the fishing boat, and with the rather dramatic leap into the sea to greet Jesus on the beach. His emotional and spiritual journey is different from Paul’s but just as profound. Peter had denied and betrayed Jesus before his death, but none of this stops the huge enthusiasm to meet Jesus again: in other words, Peter himself effects a kind of turning round, perhaps based on his experience at the tomb or in the upper room. Jesus’ response, while searching and maybe even teasing, is to heal the hurt and failure of the courtyard scene, and to affirm Peter’s identity in the cohort of disciples. The narrative ends in an image that mirrors the disempowerment of Paul. It is in the recognition of our vulnerability that the journey to follow Christ is enabled to start.
• Recalling our own experience of vulnerability or disempowerment is relatively easy if rather uncomfortable, but consider imaginatively what else we rely on to lead perfectly ‘normal’ lives: the power in our cars, the power to heat our homes, the power to run computers, mobile phones, iPads, and so on. Feel the disruption of what it’s like to lose one of these even for a short time. And how do we learn from this?
• One of the leitmotifs that threads its way through both these accounts is the change of heart, or U-turn, as politicians describe it unfavourably. Paul’s transition from sight to blindness to new sight is both physical and spiritual. Paul had been spiritually blind, and the likely vigorous man who began the journey is now led like a child, recalling lines from John Henry Newman’s poem Lead, Kindly Light: ‘one step enough for me’. The second transition is from temple policeman to new missionary, from gamekeeper to poacher, reversing the normal order. Paul is like the spy who has been ‘turned’, about which John le Carré writes so evocatively. But note that his underlying character has not changed that much. His energy for ‘threats and murder’ is now transposed to proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues.