Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Eve of St Peter 2024

Arranged either side of the altar, behind me, is a set of four statues.  From left to right, stand Moses, St Peter, St Paul and King David.  They have been there for over a hundred and fifty years, and they have something to tell us.  The screen behind the altar was designed by George Gilbert Scott, but the statues are the work of Henry Hugh Armstead.  In the 1870s you could not work in the Abbey if you could not summon up moral purpose and at least three names –the Dean was Arthur Penrhyn Stanley.   The Abbey bustled with purpose and with names.

You will not be able to see the statues very well.  You should perhaps be a little glad.  They are pretty bracing company.  They are studies in moral purpose.  They stand moody, firm of jaw and beetling of brow.  All look away, intent on some higher destiny.  They frown, they concentrate, Moses is downright alarming.  All of them have urgent business and Paul has not one, but two things he really must tell you.  This is heroic faith.  They are men of destiny and, honestly, destiny does not stand a chance.

It is Paul and Peter who stand closest to the altar.  In Westminster Abbey tonight, in the Collegiate Church of St Peter in Westminster, we celebrate just our own St Peter.  In the wider church, though and indeed even in St Peter’s in Rome today is the feast day of St Peter and St Paul.  And there they are, two witnesses to faith, fit for tonight.

They look like witnesses to effort.  Theirs is a faith that is going places, it’s a summons… I go walking quite often with a friend, he is younger than me and he goes to the gym a lot.  From further up a hillside ahead of me, as I puff and pant, a voice floats down ‘O come on David, man up’.  It is a voice I dread.  And, despite that image behind me, I do not think it is the voice of St Peter.  Peter is not here to tell us we should try harder.

Preaching on for Peter and Paul, in Rome, a few years ago, Pope Francis observed that these men were serious.  Peter one of the first to follow Christ, Paul so zealous for faith.  Yet, said the Pope, we also remember that they were wrong.  Peter denied Christ three times, and was later asked, very deliberately, three times, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’  That is why, in The Golden Legend, Simon Peter is remembered as a man who had to carry a towel to soak up his tears.   Paul, of course, lay poleaxed on the ground also being questioned

"Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" Acts 9:4

The hard question, the one that identifies your fault and flaw.  Not so confident in that moment, not men of destiny after all.   They do not summon us to effort.  It is something else they say and we must name it.

Peter is, in fact, a Witness to our humanity.  He is not superhuman, not even a hero, he is a man who knew what it was to be wrong.  If you spend any time with the gospels, you will soon discover that the disciples were more baffled than brave, and more often wrong than wise.  Listen to this from U A Fanthorpe’s poem Getting it Across.  It is the voice of Jesus

I am tattoing God on their makeshift lives.
My Keystone Cops of disciples, always,
Running absurdly away, or lying ineptly,
Cutting off ears and falling into the water

The gospel is about human life and the presence of the living God.  Jesus lived out the gospel in his own flesh and it was always very human flesh that he worked with.  Little Zacchaeus half way up a tree.  James and John wanting the best seats in the house, and Peter… clambering out of boats and leaping forever into trouble.  The gospel is not addressed to those who have earned that privilege, but to those of us who need rescuing.  The gospel is not a handbook for success, it is a lifebelt.  It is a human faith to which Peter witnesses; it is his faith and ours.  Not a heroic faith, a possible faith.  Not effort, but human life.

Peter also stands before us as a Witness to Forgiveness.  We live more and more in a world of the unrepentant.  The people who will not back down and cannot be wrong, the ones who take a stand and are proud of their defiance.  Forgiveness is rarely the name of the game.  But forgiveness matters.  Any witness to the life of Christ and the existence of God knows that the foundation on which we rest is love.  Love is the explanation; love is the meaning.  We keep messing up and the only way back is through forgiveness.  Forgiveness is our route home.  And forgiveness is not heroic, not an effort.  You don’t achieve forgiveness; you just have to accept.  Forgiveness is the acceptance that we exist for and depend upon the love of God.  Peter is a Witness to Forgiveness.

And he is Witness to Grace.  We heard that in the gospel reading.  At Caesarea Philippi Peter makes the great confession,"You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."  It is one of those moments when you catch your breath.  Christ named and known in all our human confusions.  Peter sees and says what must be said.  Back comes Christ though

And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven…” Matthew 16:17

You see, it is not just that we need to know that the love of God is the foundation of life.  We need to recognise that the love is his, not ours.  We depend on God.  We are loved into existence and we are loved into glory.  Faith is not a work or an effort.  If we love, if we manage to name that love, if we are redeemed, it is not because we have done well, but it is because we have been been given that gift, sustained by grace.  Peter is Witness to Grace.

And finally, of course, Peter is Witness to Christ.  He follows Christ, he is an apostle of Christ.  Christ Lived our life as it should be lived.  Christ is what human life looks like; he is life itself.  Peter is Witness to Christ.

St Peter’s Day in the Collegiate Church of St Peter and he is our Witness to our humanity, Witness to Forgiveness, Witness to Grace, and Witness to Christ.  I love this place, it is a privilege to be one of Peter’s priests in this house.  There are though temptations here in the Stamp and Circumponce of Westminster Abbey.  It is a temptation to believe in our own publicity, to think we might be heroes, to wonder if it all depends on us.  Peter is our witness that our calling is to be human and forgiven, to know that grace is what sustains us and that we will never be in charge of great destiny because we are here to follow Christ.   Not names, not effort.  What does it mean to be Peter’s people today?  It is the reminder that we are human, loved, redeemed and here to become more like Christ.