Peter and Paul, Second Sunday of Trinity 

Revd Caroline Risdon, Assistant Priest  30 June 2019 on her last day before maternity leave.

 James and I have obviously been thinking a lot about names recently – and it’s quite a responsibility trying to think of a suitable and meaningful name for a child. Names are important, they define us in some way. It’s a terrible burden if you don’t like your name or feel that it doesn’t represent you properly. Equally, many of us like to be known by a more formal name in work situations and may have a nickname within the family. Do you know what your name means? Of all the different words I’ve seen associated with my name, I like little and womanly the best! How did my parents know?

As we celebrate the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, it strikes me as worth considering this aspect of names. For neither of our Saints started life being called by the names we now use. When we first meet Peter in the Gospels, he is called Simon, a fisherman. And before his dramatic experience on the road to Damascus, Paul was of course Saul, the great persecutor of the early Christian communities.

We are used to thinking of Peter as the rock on which the Church was built. But the other translation for the word rock is more like ‘rocky’ meaning it describes something of his personality- like the words prickly or funny! Sometimes it’s hard for us to imagine the Saints as real people; after all thousands of years have passed and, as they died for their faith, we tend only to remember that aspect of their stories. But here we have Peter being called the rock as the foundation only after he has been known as the ‘rocky’ one. And we know Peter could blurt out what he saw and what he thought before thinking about it. He was fiery and passionate. He swears to be with Jesus always and then denies him. He leaps out of the boat to walk to Jesus on the water, only to sink into the depths and need saving. 

We are all the same. And thankfully in today’s Gospel reading we are reassured that God can use us too- even if we are impulsive, and put our foot in it. People like you and I, in all our wonderfulness; in all our ordinariness, will be used to build the Kingdom of God here on earth.


Paul is perhaps the best example of this. For he has variously been accused, because of his writings and their interpretation, as a misogynist and as homophobic and that’s just to start with. But Paul’s writings have also left us with some of the most beautiful testimony and witness to a life of faith. Surely, the real man is somewhere between these two. 

The journey each Saint takes to becoming Peter and becoming Paul starts however with this questions Jesus asks- who do you say that I am? That question is one for us today- who do you say that I am? Now we have all had to answer, or begin to answer, this question. For I guess most us wouldn’t be here if we had never considered it. It’s almost as though Jesus is reaching out of the gospels and across the centuries to ask us each directly, who do you say that I am? 

Do you say that Jesus is a friend, a brother, your Lord? Are you still working it all out, as most of us will do for the rest of our lives? And if we love God, or want to love God, then another name we could dare to give ourselves is Christian or even disciple.

Of course, the problem is that the fullness of our identities cannot be captured by a single characteristic; even a fundamental one like our names or our faith. There are many names we might use to describe ourselves- I am South African; I’m short; I used to be a Social Worker. And there are many other terms I could link to myself, which add to a fuller understanding of who I am. So, really, although my name is vitally important, although being a Christian is vitally important, it is also only one part of my full identity.

This is also worth considering because it seems to me that the question Jesus asks- who do you say that I am- is balanced with the next statement, which is in effect ‘This is who I say that you are.’ 

So, if we call ourselves Christian or say that we know and love God, what does this mean for the type of people we are or are becoming? This is where we can turn to the writings of Saint Paul for help- he says that the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That means that we can know we are the people of God when we behave in these ways. And even more so, when these characteristics become part of our identities; when they are words we can use to describe ourselves.

But what a list! How reassuring to know then that Peter and Paul were both fully human men- they fought with each other; they were temperamental and judgemental and yet they were the foundations on which the Church was built.

It is in knowing and loving and being in the company of Jesus that we grow into our full identity. Sometimes, like with Peter and Paul, Jesus renames someone in order for them to become who he has called them to be. But for most of us, the call to become fully yourself is a much slower and less dramatic life event. It takes place over years until we reach that time when we can say ‘You are the Messiah’ and with joy we hear Jesus respond, I have called you by name, you are mine.
AMEN.