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Thought
for the Week Sunday 28 June – Saints Peter & Paul
Given
that Simon and Saul are the two most important apostles in the early Church,
and really only second to our Lord Himself in the shaping of our faith, it
seems a bit unkind that they should have to share a feast day. Nearly all the other Saints get one to
themselves. Besides, you could hardly
imagine two more differing backgrounds within Judaism. Simon
came from humble beginnings. He was a
country boy, living in the land of his fathers. He was poor but married, following a poor
trade, fishing, from a poor area, Galilee, of a poor country, Judea. He and his family lived pretty much
hand-to-mouth, eating what he could catch, and what they could grow, and, if
the catch was particularly good, they might have some spare fish to sell, to
earn a bit of money to pay their taxes, and buy things they couldn’t make for
themselves, perhaps a knife, or an earthenware pot. No doubt Simon attended the Synagogue, and
he could certainly read and write, as all Jews could, but he probably
couldn’t afford to be away from the fishing too long, and so if he ever
visited the Temple at all, it certainly wouldn’t have been for the three
Pilgrim Festivals each year, which every Jew was supposed to keep. Fishermen dealt with water, the chaos out
of which God brought creation, and water was always a bit suspect in Jewish
theology, and so were fishermen.
According to the Jewish religious leaders, the Pharisees and the
Sadducees, by their standards, Simon was not a good Jew. Saul
was a city boy, an ex-pat. He was
single, reasonably well off, and he lived in the prosperous city of Tarsus in
Cilicia, modern day Turkey, and carried on a good middle-class trade as a
tent maker. Saul was part of the
Diaspora, the dispersion of the Jews throughout the world, after succeeding
waves of exile and emigration from the Holy Land. Saul’s family had not assimilated into
Cilician society, but had remained faithful, devout Jews. Of course, many
Jews, like Saul’s family did well in the Diaspora; they were clean-living,
hard-working, and always ready to help out a fellow Jew in difficulty. Tent-making was a good trade. Tarsus, near the mouth of the River Cydnus,
was a major port and trading hub, with ships arriving and caravans passing
through all the time, and all the traders needed tents. Tent-making was also a very respectable
trade for a Jew. During the Exodus
from Egypt, the Children of Israel lived in tents for their many years
wandering in the wilderness, and God lived among them in a special tent
usually called the Tabernacle. When
the third King of Israel, Solomon, built a proper Temple for God, in
Jerusalem, at its heart was the Holy of Holies, shaped like a tent, and
separated from the rest of the temple by a veil, like the side of a
tent. To keep alive their wandering
origins, every year, Jews would pitch little tents, often called booths or
tabernacles, on their roofs or in their gardens to live in for the week of
the Festival of Booths. No doubt, as
well as traders’ tents Saul’s family made these little tents for religious
use too. At any rate, they did well
enough to send young Saul to Jerusalem to study under the great Rabbi
Gamaliel. Gamaliel was a Pharisee and
a member of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Jerusalem Temple, and
thus of Judaism itself, and with Rabbi Hillel, is still regarded as one of
the two greatest Rabbis of all time.
Even after finishing his studies in Jerusalem, Saul certainly came to
the temple for all three pilgrim festivals, perhaps selling tents for the
festival of booths. By any standards,
Jews did not come much more devout than Saul. The
fifth vision of Zechariah presents a bit of a puzzle. The word Zechariah uses for “anointed”,
when he speaks of the two olive trees beside the lampstand is not the normal
one “Messias” from which we get the word “Messiah”, but “Veney
hayiseyhar-ha’adim”, which translates literally as “sons of the fresh
juice”. Most scholars agree that
Zechariah’s two anointed ones refer to the two main characters in his book,
Joshua and Zerrubabel, but his choice of words implies not just a
continuation of the old order of anointing priests and kings, but the coming
of a new age in the future, with two new anointed ones. Naturally, Christians understand that
Zechariah was pointing to Saints Peter and Paul. Before we leave Zechariah, it’s worth
briefly reflecting on his lamp stand and the two olives. Light is a sign of God. At the beginning of creation, He said “Let
their be light”, and there was. Ever
since, light has been associated with God illuminating the world, and
darkness, as dominating the places we do not allow Him to reach. Jesus picks this idea up, when He says, “I
am the light of the world”. In the
temple at Jerusalem, a lamp was always burning, signifying the illuminating
presence of God, and the oil burning in the lamp was olive oil. Olive oil had been used to anoint kings and
priests long before the Jews used it for that purpose. In Zechariah’s vision, we see the two
concepts of light and anointing joined together by the olive trees. At their baptism, Christians are anointed
with holy oil, symbolising their anointing with the Holy Spirit, in order to
reflect God’s light and love in the world. Apart
from Zechariah, at least three other things united Simon and Saul. First
they were called other names. Jesus
gave Simon his new name. “You are
Peter,” He said, “and on this rock, I will build my church.” Peter, or Cephas in Greek, means rock. Saul
was known also by the Latin name of Paul, and from the time of his first
mission to Cyprus, he was always called by his Latin name. It made sense, because he was sent not to
Jews, but to the rest of us, and a Latin name would be more use in the Roman
Empire. Second,
there was the missionary work. Peter was
by and large an Apostle to those living in Judea, though he certainly worked
with non-Jews. Paul on the other hand
worked almost exclusively with those outside Judea, people who like him, were
part of the Diaspora, and non-Jews.
Both of them were sent to do this work, by the Holy Spirit and by the
Church. The very word Apostle means
“one who is sent out”. However, Peter
was always regarded as the leader of the Apostles, even though it was Jesus’
brother James who made the Apostolic decree that we mentioned earlier. Paul, on the other hand, regarded himself
as the least of the Apostles, because he had persecuted the Church before his
conversion, sending many Christians to prison and possibly death, and also
because he was the last Apostle to have seen Jesus, during his conversion on
the Damascus road. Strictly speaking,
Paul didn’t really qualify as an Apostle at all, because, according to the
criteria they used when choosing a replacement for Judas Iscariot, because he
had not been, as S. Peter put it, “With us the whole time the Lord Jesus went
in and out among us, beginning from John’s Baptism to the time when He was
taken from us.” Third,
both of them had pretty shaky starts.
Peter accepted that Jesus was the Messiah, but simply refused to believe
that Jesus, his Messiah, upon whom all the hopes and aspirations of the
Children of Israel rested, should be crucified. “Get behind me, Satan,” said Jesus to
him. Then, he had denied that he even
knew Jesus three times during the night of Jesus’ trial. Paul
had done worse. He denied that Jesus
was the Messiah at all, and persecuted those who said He was. Being too holy for such actions himself,
Paul had even been holding the coats of those who stoned Saint Stephen, the
first Christian martyr, to death. The
fourth thing was the most important.
Peter and Paul both loved, served and followed our Lord Jesus Christ
unswervingly, and sacrificially. They
gave their whole lives in his service.
The Romans weren’t particularly bothered about just another prisoner
or two executed in the arena for the entertainment of the masses, so no
records of their deaths were kept.
Paul, having been born in Tarsus was a Roman citizen, and was entitled
to the more merciful execution by beheading with a sword, but Peter, a mere
foreign prisoner, was crucified like a slave.
Even so, there is a strong tradition that they were martyred at the
same time in Rome, during the first great persecution under Emperor Nero. They died united in the faith. Peter
and Paul, two very different sorts of Christian, with entirely different
backgrounds, expectations, education and experiences were united in the
service of our Lord. If we can keep
their festivals on the same day, recognising the huge but different
contributions they made to the development of our faith, cannot we also
recognise other Christians as being genuine Christians, no matter how
different they may seem from us? Father Charles Howard: Anglican
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