God knows all about me

John 21: 15-19; Acts 9: 1-6
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
April 10, 2016

             
         They started out meeting in a church basement every Friday night. Folding chairs are set up in a circle. Someone always puts the coffee pot on and lays out the sugar, cups, and creamers. Everyone takes a turn bringing something to munch on. There are posters on the walls: “Using our lives for faith-filled service”; “Jesus didn’t reject people, neither do we”; “Great things never came from comfort zones”. It’s an open meeting so there are a healthy handful of first-timers coming to check things out and hear what the group is all about. After everyone is seated, the meeting gets started with whoever signed up to tell their story. Tonight the two who got it all going in the first place decide to share.

            “Hi, my name’s Peter, and, uh, God knows all about me.  My name means ‘rock’ but I’m really a lot more squidgy than I’d like to admit.  I confess, there are times I wish I had stuck to my fishing nets and my boat, stayed with my wife and family, and just played it safe.  Why I said yes to Jesus, I couldn’t really tell you.  I mean, I’m hardly a scholar of the Torah or anything else for that matter.  I tend to jump in without thinking, lead with my heart, speak before I know what’s coming out of my mouth.  

“Which I guess explains why I’m here.  All he said was ‘Follow me, and you’ll be fishing for people’.  Before I knew it, I was dropping everything to follow him.  No goodbye, no see you later, no nothing.  I just left.  And right away things got crazy.  It doesn’t matter which version of the story you know.  He was healing people—blind people seeing, lame people walking, possessed people in their right minds, lepers whole again—and the crowds!  We couldn’t get away from them.  So what did Jesus do?  He told us to get them all something to eat.  Me and the guys, we were as broke as anyone else; what was he thinking?  So what happened next?  He fed them, all of them!  

“He turned water in wine, and not just a few cupfuls but gallons of it—best stuff you ever tasted.  He told wicked good stories, ones that made us laugh and cry and got us thinking.  Some of the stories really ticked off a lot of the Pharisees and scribes, but there were a few who listened and wanted to hear more.

“Jesus had that effect on people.  He drew you in and before you knew it, you were on the road with him and a whole bunch of us.  We never knew where our next meal was coming from or where we would sleep, but it didn’t seem to matter much.  We were just glad being together.

“Sometimes, though, it got a little scary.  There were times it looked like he knew what he was doing and other times like he was flying by the seat of his pants.  You never knew what was going to happen.  Once we were in a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee and a squall picked up.  Tossed us around something awful, and Jesus was sleeping through it!  But one word from him and the water was smooth as glass.  One time he actually walked on the water.  If there were stones under his feet, he didn’t tell me where they were ‘cause when I tried to do it too, I sank like a you-know-what.  Like I said, I jump in without thinking.

“After a while he started talking about getting arrested, then tortured and killed, but then rise again on the third day.  I chalked it up to crazy talk; maybe he was feeling a little paranoid because he had a way of getting on people’s nerves.  He told me to get behind him, that I sounded like the Accuser, and that I wasn’t thinking about the big picture, just about my own scared self.  And he was right.

“But that wasn’t even the worst of what I did.  Yeah, they came and got him, and I got so angry, so riled up, I grabbed a sword and nearly killed one of the guards.  Jesus told me I would disown him, not just once but three times.  Now I could make some excuse, say I was saving myself for some higher purpose, but I just did not want to die beside him.  So yeah, when someone pointed at me, said, ‘Aren’t you one of his disciples?’, I turned tail and ran.  And I don’t know if it was three times or twenty that that happened, but when that awful night ended and I heard that damn rooster crowing, I felt like I was dog crap on the bottom of someone’s shoe.  Me, a rock?  I wanted to go and hide under a rock.  Yeah, God knows all about me.

         
         “So it’s a few days after Mary said she had seen Jesus alive again.  And the rest of us, we knew he was with us so powerfully, so vividly, it was like we could see and touch his scars, even like he was eating breakfast with us, like old times.  So there I am, sitting by the water, and I can feel Jesus right there beside me, like he’s looking right at me, right through me.  He knows I love him; I’d do anything for him.  Then I feel this incredible guilt rise up in the back of my throat.  Even so, it felt like Jesus still had something for me to do for him.  I couldn’t believe it.  Why would he ever trust me again?  Like I keep saying, I’m no rock.  But then, Jesus never did give up on anyone.  So, I decided I wouldn’t give up on Jesus.  It was time to start forgiving seven times seventy, starting with me.”
 

“Thanks, Peter.  Always good to hear your story.  Hi, I’m Paul, and God knows all about me.  Well, I might as well get right to the point:  I was not only self-righteous but downright bloodthirsty.  I really thought I was on the side of God, doing God’s work, searching out those who perverted the Torah and preached heresy.  It was such a different life from the one I live now.  I even had a different name: Saul, like the old king who loved David but felt threatened by him at the same time.  My relationship with God?  Let’s just say it’s complicated.  Well, okay, maybe it’s me that’s complicated.  Without a doubt, God knows all about me.

“I know Torah like any good Jew, as good as a Pharisee.  Gamaliel was my teacher—a level-headed man if ever there was one.  Yet I took to persecuting these people of the Way, these followers of Jesus, as though I was Roman tribune hunting down zealots.  I witnessed the stoning of Stephen; the men there laid their coats at my feet.  I entered house after house, hauling away women and men and throwing them into prison.  You’ve probably read that I ‘breathed threats and murder’.  Which really meant that I had no room in me for the breath of God.

"I had asked for letters from the high priest in Jerusalem so that I could hunt down these followers of the Way in Damascus.  I was a vigilante for God’s cause, a bounty hunter for the Almighty.  How self-righteous can you get?  As I’m walking toward Damascus, this light, as bright as a thousand suns, blinds me, knocks me down, and this voice thunders in my ears:  ‘Saul, Saul, why are you bullying, hounding, torturing me?’  

“It was the voice of every person I had thrown in jail, every person I had torn from their home—no trial, no defense.  It was the voice of Jesus crying out through every one of their lives—lives that ended because of me and my rapacious zeal.  I was already blind before that light hit me.  Nevertheless, I knew in my bones that I would be taking the place of these men and women, that I would now be taking my stubborn, thick head and giving it to Jesus.  Ha, literally!  Now I would be risking my life for the sake of God’s kingdom.

“God knows all about me, and yet God still gives me another chance to see differently, to open my mind, unhinge my heart.  And I still don’t always get it right.  Sometimes I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.  God knows that too and yet God doesn’t give up on me.  That’s why I can stand before you and tell you exactly who I am, without shame, without fear.  That’s what I want for you too.”

Others could have been called to start what would be the Church.  Mary Magdalene would’ve been an obvious choice.  She stayed with Jesus at the cross, and she was the first witness of the resurrection, the first apostle of the good news.  Instead it was two stubborn, bull-headed, slow-to-change rivals who shaped the early beginnings of the Church.  Maybe that was so we could see our vulnerable selves in them, not measure ourselves or others too harshly, shine some light into our own lives.  God knows all about us.  But we also need to trust that God knows all about them too, whoever they are.  Each of us is on our own journey, with our own lessons to learn.  Our own journey is sufficient for each of us.  And so thank God we have each other as we travel on the Way.

God knows all about you and me: the stuff we try to hide, the hurt we’ve inflicted and absorbed, what we try to forget, what we hold onto, where we keep our misery, what gives us joy, what we breathe in and what we breathe out.  When life is not what we want or even what we need, God is our soft place to land, the unhinged heart of the universe.  When we don’t get it right, when we don’t have a clue what we’re doing, God has our backs.  

I believe there is a force called Love in this world, and when it’s incarnated, enfleshed, embodied in you and me, it looks like compassion, it looks like justice restored, it looks like challenge and courage, it looks like risk, it looks like vulnerability, it looks like forgiveness, it looks like a soft place for others and us to land.  What it looks like is relationship, covenant, discipleship.  God knows all about us, and calls us to be the Church anyway.  Thanks be to God.