Fr. David Wettstein
All Saints Church
Acts 9.1-6, Psalm 30, John 21.1-19
Places You Would Not Choose
The journey with God is never, never a straight line. When reading the stories of saints and folks like you and me, no one wakes up one morning and says I am going to live a saintly life until the day I die. There are myriads of missteps, bad decisions and outright sin, mixed with all that makes us who we are and desire to be; that leads us to God. Some of the path with God we choose and gets baptized along the way. Some comes to us out of grace filled longing, the spirit breathing with-in us. And some out of loss. It is generally loss that has the deepest lessons, drawing us to God.
Two of the most well-known people of our Christian faith are Paul and Peter, part of whose stories were read this morning. These two stories have a common thread of humility, surrender, acceptance to what has come and will come in life.
The recounting of Paul’s story is told to give us the basic story of Paul’s conversion, his coming to know God in Christ. For the most part Paul is known as a missionary church planter, whose fire and boldness win souls and creates enemies. Often overlooked is the initial encounter with God, he was struck blind “led by the hand, and brought to Damascus.” In my own estimation this is probably how God could get through to Paul – giving him some humility.
If we have not been struck down and made blind, some of us can tell stories of humility and being led by the hand in coming to know God more fully like Paul. We may have had a new call in our life but we had to wait until the time had dropped the scales from our eyes. We did not choose this way of conversion, there is nothing heroic, from our own strength and faith, but God worked through what was at hand in our lives to reveal in us more of the divine image planted in us at birth.
This part of the spiritual life is called kenosis, emptying out of all our “stuff” – assumed strength, position, virtues, whatever – RC Fr. Thomas Keating calls this the “false self.” This false self has a need for power and control which prevents God from working through us. Every once in a while we have our Damascus Road experience, conversion through kenosis, emptying out, making room for God.
Read John 21.18-19
- 153 fish (v.11); according to Jerome, the Greek zoologists said there were 153 kinds of fish – using this number is pointing to the universality of Christ’s call.
If you don’t have the Damascus Road conversion in your life an alternative to such sudden and dramatic change is life itself. Sometimes the simple living of year after year converts us and changes us, and changes us again.
Peter is given by Christ some vision into the future, as they finished breakfast. The bold and cowardly disciple is restored from his denial of Jesus before the crucifixion with the three-fold questioning of feeding and tending sheep (see John 18.25-27). There is your life’s work, day in and day out. Chop the wood and carry water.
When you are old Peter, you won’t have any say and control, you will have to let go of yourself. You won’t be able to dress yourself. Yet in this empty, seemingly weak position “he (Peter)would glorify God.”
Again the lesson comes around, to receive things as they are and let them teach us. Out mistakes, are what Richard Rohr calls falling upward. We grow sometimes by no other way. We fear grief and loss as a diminishment of who we are, we may loose our security and esteem with those we love and want respect from. In our losses we follow Christ to the cross, he who seemed to have lost everything but gave us freedom over all powerful death. That is the power that does not diminish others, take, or oppress but sets others free.
- Crucifix or a plain cross
- Legend of Peter’s death in Rome as a witness to Christ
At the beginning, at the end and places in between we are called. Not to be successful, powerful, rich or famous. Rather time makes us students, prophets and beggars for God’s spirit in our lives.
“Hear O Lord, and have mercy upon me, O Lord be my helper.” Psalm 30.11 This life with God is not a straight line, if it were, I could package this all up and sell for a few hundred bucks and we could be done with it. To follow, to let go of our glittering image of ourselves, and open our eyes to what is before us and our minds and hearts to God in part this is a call to a holy life.