Acts 9:1-20
John 21:1-19
The last time I was in prison was April last year. I was on a week long placement with the chaplaincy at Whitemoor Prison. It was an experience that affected me very deeply, and one of the things that has stayed with me most is the restorative justice programme that they run there.
In this scheme, the inmate undergoes a rigorous and demanding programme of self-awareness training, sessions on victim awareness, on how crime affects its victims, and how it affects society as a whole. Right at the end of the programme, after several months, there is a chance for those who have stayed the course to meet – face to face - a victim of a similar crime to the crime they themselves committed. The courage of both the victims and the perpetrators absolutely astounded me. But the healing that was possible through these encounters was even more astounding. To plumb the depths of your own sinfulness like that, and then come face to face with the people you have most hurt is possibly the hardest thing in the world to do, but also can result in the most amazing sense of healing, of redemption, of reconciliation. It is life-changing not only for the criminal, but also for the victim.
I was reminded of the prisoners I met in Whitemoor when I started looking at today’s readings from Acts and from John. In these readings, we hear about two pivotal, life-changing moments: one for St Peter and one for St Paul. In many ways these stories are very different from each other, but they also share some important features. I also believe that they can help us, during this sermon series on healing and wholeness as signs of resurrection life, to expand our understanding of what it means to be made whole.
Today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles relates the story of the conversion of Saul to St Paul. Conversion, for Paul, requires humility. The forceful man, so sure of himself, is blinded by the light from God, and has to be led by the hand in order to be healed. The persecutor of Christians has to accept the healing ministry of a Christian man in order to regain his sight. He has to put himself at the mercy of those who once feared him. Paul, in his dramatic way, comes face to face with the ultimate victim of his sins, when the ascended Christ speaks to him and says ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting’, and then differently, but just as profoundly, when he encounters his healer Ananias. When confronted with his sin, Paul seizes the chance to repent, with fasting and prayer, and to begin again, with baptism.
Really to convert involves a whole new worldview, and so it is not just Paul who converts in this story, it is also Ananias, the man sent to heal him. He too has to be healed of his anger and his fear towards Paul, and be willing to approach him and address him as ‘brother’. You can see why I was reminded of my experiences at Whitemoor.
St Peter, in a much less dramatic way, is also enabled to come face to face with his sin. Jesus asks him three times, ‘Do you love me’, and three times Peter is able to reply ‘Yes Lord, you know that I love you’. It’s no coincidence, I think, that this conversation happens gathered round a charcoal fire; think back, and recall that it was gathered round another charcoal fire only a few days before that Peter had denied Jesus three times. It’s as if Jesus staged this re-run exactly in order to take Peter back to the scene of his sin, and give him the chance to redeem it – perhaps Jesus knew that Peter needed that.
In this kind of healing and in reconciliation we have to confront the truth about ourselves. Paul also had to confront his cruelty as a persecutor of Christians in order to accept the healing that God was offering. True healing, conversion, salvation - these are never a whitewash, an easy sweeping of the past under the carpet. If Jesus is the way the truth and the life – when we truly encounter him, we encounter the truth. So it’s when God helps us – either dramatically like with Paul, or privately, like Peter – when God helps us to face the truth about ourselves; then we can be made whole.
When we know that God has looked all the way into the depths of our souls, seen all that is worst in us, all that is most in dire need of healing, and still can still love us and forgive us, that’s when we, just like Peter and Paul can go forward and embrace all that God has in store for us.
Paul’s change of direction is profound – so much so that in the church’s calendar we don’t celebrate the Feast of St Paul, we celebrate the feast of the conversion of St Paul. His experience of coming face to face with Christ and with Ananias changes him so completely that he even changes his name – it’s as if he is born again as a different person.
But St Peter also experiences a conversion, of sorts. All through the gospels he is the one who is mostly likely to misunderstand, to get the wrong end of the stick. He’s the one who sees first that Jesus is the Messiah, and then doesn’t understand what that will really mean. Peter needed to be converted from seeing things in his own terms, to seeing things in Jesus’ terms. And then at the very end of John’s gospel, in this wonderful, intimate conversation on the seashore, Jesus gently helps Peter to understand what following him will really mean. Just as the blinded Paul is led by the hand, so Peter will also be taken where he does not want to go. St Peter, just like Jesus, has a mission that involves great suffering, and he needs to be reminded of that – converted, if you like, from his own ideas of what the future will hold, to a better understanding of God’s purpose for him. A hard lesson indeed.
The stories of Peter and Paul are ultimately about vocation, the call to take part in God’s mission to the world. Through their repentance, their facing up to who they really are, and what is stopping them becoming who they should be – through this demanding process, St Paul and St Peter are each enabled to undertake the mission that God has for them. For when we are open to God’s healing and converting power, we lay bare our souls before God, confident that he can see the very worst in us – all that is most in need of healing – and say to us – as he said to Peter and to Paul - that we still have a part in his purposes for the world. The encounters we’ve heard this morning between Paul and Peter and Christ tell us that God seen all their failings, temptations, inadequacies, and still considered that these were people who he could use as his agents in the world. Peter and Paul are healed, redeemed, converted, if you like, because God took them, and then gave them the opportunity to redeem their weaknesses and failings in service to God.
And their vocations are quite different: Peter’s call seems to be to witness to God as a martyr, Paul is to ‘bring the name of Jesus before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel’. Discerning our own call, what our place is within God’s purposes, is about opening ourselves up to conversion: conversion away from our own idea of where we should be going, and towards God’s way.
As Pat will no doubt attest, this is not an easy thing to do. The struggle to recognise a calling from God, and building up the courage to follow it, are demanding processes, and sometimes they are painful. But we can also see that for Pat, the process of becoming a Reader in God’s church has ultimately been life-giving for her, and for us, who are already benefiting from her ministry among us.
In the stories of St Peter and St Paul, we see two of the great leaders of the early church discover their true selves at last. We see the persecutor Saul discover that he can become the tireless and inspiring apostle Paul. We see the unreliable Peter being charged with the care of Christ’s own flock, and learning to accept the sacrificial calling of the good shepherd.
In various different ways God also asks each of us to look back, to see the truth about where we have come from and what we have done. He asks us to accept his healing and forgiveness. And then he asks us to look forwards – moving on to embrace his future.
All this takes place in the light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Peter’s encounter with Jesus, the darkness of Maundy Thursday and his threefold denial is transformed by the resurrection light of dawn. St Paul is dazzled into blindness by the resurrection light of Christ. The light of the resurrection shows things for how they are, and for how they should be, and the resurrection of Jesus gives us all the chance of a new beginning, a new life. As we are helped to face up to all that has stopped us being who we are meant to be, we can finally start to become who we really are – converted, healed, and whole.