The Beckoning of Christ (May 4)

Readings, Acts 9:1-6 and John 21:1-19
Image, The Conversion of Saint Paul, Luca Giordano, 1690
 
We know there are many ways to be beckoned for a task, that our name can be called in myriad tones. And the sound of the name and the nature of the task sometimes run in paradox. The saccharine sweet, upward intoned ‘heeeey Liam’ is usually a precursor of some arduous, inconvenient demand. On the other hand, the recourse to a formal greeting in a familial setting, such as a parent calling out your full name (‘Liam Andrew Miller’) is a sure sign that the task you’re being beckoned to do is one you ought to have already done.
 
In today’s readings, two people have their name called by Jesus, beckoned into an important task. But let’s situate ourselves a little first. Last week we noted how the upturning of the resurrection signalled the shift from the story of Jesus, to that of his followers taking up his work in the power of the Spirit. We are being moved, in this season of Easter, toward the Day of Pentecost and the birth of the church. Last week, Jesus breathed his spirit and bestowed his peace upon his followers. Today (though these stories are some time apart chronologically) Jesus appears to and commissions two pivotal figures in the story of the early church: Peter and Paul. Though their beckoning could not be more dissimilar.
 
Peter gets breakfast on the beach, a stroll at sunrise, and his commission is graciously bestowed in a threefold way which symbolically erases his earlier threefold denial. In contrast Jesus blinds Paul, confronts him with the truth, and sends him off to be dealt with by someone else.
 
Now this contrast is understandable – we might even say earnt. Peter is despondent. There’s almost a reversion to childhood at play in Peter’s decision to go fishing. After everything he has been through these last years with Christ, he is seeking comfort in the familiar of his former life. Perhaps feeling unworthy after his threefold denial of Christ, perhaps feeling unready for the responsibility laid upon him as an apostle, perhaps unsure as to how any of this is going to work if Jesus isn’t there with him, he does the thing he knows how to do. It is in this posture, this place of emotional and spiritual turmoil that Jesus finds Peter. And so Jesus helps them with their catch, cooks some breakfast, and allows Peter to say again and again I love thee, while hearing again and again you are the one I have chosen.
 
Paul, on the other hand, is far from despondent, far from feeling unready for the task ahead. Triumphant and focused, he knows exactly who he is and what is required of him, and he is out on the road attending to business. Of course, this is the business of harassing, arresting, and even executing Christians. And so, Jesus does not appear at the soft light of dawn, but as the blinding light of judgment. Saul, the name booms from heaven, why are you persecuting me? And then, upon revealing his identity, Jesus simply tells Paul to get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do. No pastoral walk, no restorative breakfast, just blinding light, get up, and I’m handing your case off to someone else.
 
Now, I won’t get too flippant. The rest of this story, when Ananais goes to meet the one who has been persecuting his friends, and calls him brother Saul, is one of the more moving in Scripture, further testament to shift of focus to Jesus’ followers taking up to work of Christ in calling the unlikely into the movement and breaking down dividing walls of hostility. But nonetheless the contrast between these two stories, between the treatment of Peter (who had denied) and Paul (who had persecuted) is stark.
 
But perhaps we recognise that sometimes this is what is required. That while of course we wish to be beckoned by Christ in a manner similar to Peter’s – filled with tenderness and patience – if we are honest, there are times we need to be beckoned like Paul. Times when we need an indelicate wake up call to change our ways before we go on causing harm. These are, in their own ways, loving responses, both aimed to lead someone off a destructive path and into meaning and truth.
 
And just as these are both, in their ways, loving responses, it is also important to grasp, that despite the variance in tone and approach, Paul sees no distinction in these appearances. When he writes to churches defending his apostleship, he lists all the people Jesus appeared to (Peter among them) and then, in the same list, he names himself. The appearance of Christ might have been different; indeed we might question whether “appearance” is even the right word, but Paul sees no distinction. Jesus appeared to him and called him to be an apostle. He is not of another category, or a second-class, he simply is among those Jesus beckoned and commissioned. Which is not just a claim Paul invents for his own ends, it is consistent with Jesus’ own words spoken to Thomas: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.
 
And this is where it comes to us, where the contrasting stories of Peter and Paul converge with our own. Some of us heard the beckoning call of Jesus in the dulcet tones of our parents and grandparents, or in Sunday school songs and household hymns. Some of us heard the urgent call of Jesus at our lowest points, a radical interruption of our self-destruction and self-loathing. Some can pinpoint the moment and recall the sound of his voice, for others it is more life a wave in the ocean – we can’t pick where it started we just know that at some point we were being carried by its momentum. There are no distinctions or hierarchies in the ways we were beckoned, and thus no ground for boasting or shrinking based on how and when Jesus called our name and led us into life. All that matters is that having been called we are now, all of us, disciples. Christ has made us his own and entrusted us with the work of the kingdom and the heralding of the gospel. We have one Lord, we have received one baptism and have become one priesthood. As we heard last week, when Jesus appeared to John on Patmos, he who loves us and freed us from our sins… made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father. And as a body of priests beckoned and commissioned by Christ, we are invited to the one table, to the one bread and one cup. For you and me, and all other Christians however we come to the table of grace come because of grace, come because of the invitation of Christ, which might meet us in radically different ways, but comes only ever from one source, Jesus Christ the living one.