June 29, 2025
When I teach confirmation, I ask those who are about to affirm their baptism to engage in a little project. I ask they choose a favorite saint. Together, we look at the calendar of lesser festivals and commemorations to explore the lives of the saints. The lesser festivals are for biblical people or biblical events and the commemorations are set aside to remember notable Christians through the centuries. They are usually commemorated on the date of their death.
When the confirmation students chooses a person who captures their attention, they are given time to learn more about their saint. Over the years, the selection of people by the confirmation students has been wide and varied: Mary, the mother of Jesus, Joan of Arc, Patrick of Ireland, Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther, Sojourner Truth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero and many more.
To have a favorite saint is one way to guide a person in their journey of following Jesus. A saint can never be an idol. The sun neither rises nor sets on any one person. The saint, though, can serve as a guide, someone from the vast communion of saints from all times and all places to provide inspiration and encouragement. Such a saint may help us learn what it means to follow Jesus. We also discover that saints are not so different from us. They were vulnerable to the same sufferings, changes and chances of life as we are. Still, God chose to work through them because God works in the lives of real people. God refuses to be known through abstractions, but prefers to be seen and known in real flesh and blood humans.
Today we remember two saints from the calendar. St. Peter and St. Paul are arguably the most important apostles in the early church. They had tremendous gifts and tremendous flaws and Christ was made known through their lives and ministries.
Now, say I gave you an assignment similar to the ones I usually give to our young confirmation students? Who would you choose as a favorite saint? Let’s say that I narrowed it down to just two options. Peter or Paul. Who would you choose?
Which would be your favorite saint?
Would you choose Peter for his fidelity to Jesus?
Peter was, after all, the disciple who confessed that Jesus is the Messiah and Jesus made him the rock on which he would build his church. After the Resurrection, Jesus commands Peter to feed the sheep. Peter becomes pastor and leader of the flock.
Or … maybe you would choose Peter because of his human nature, flaws and all.
Peter’s faithfulness was mixed up with his doubts. Peter was fickle, impetuous, and easily cowed. Soon after his proclamation that Jesus is the messiah, he was offended by Jesus’ plans to die and rise again. “God forbid!” he said. To which Jesus said, “Get behind me Satan!” Sadly, before Jesus’ death Peter denied knowing anything about Jesus.
Maybe choosing Peter might assure you that no follower of Jesus is pure, even those we name saints. Peter gives us a realistic portrayal of how we are both saint and sinner.
Would you choose Paul?
Distinguished by his radical conversion, Paul is the poster-boy for God’s work of transformation. The law abiding Pharisee who persecuted Christians became one of those whom he persecuted. Few of us have as dramatic an experience of conversion as Paul. Still, to choose him is to remember that God does indeed change people’s lives, including your own.
You may choose Paul because you are inspired by his evangelism. He was on the move and planted more churches that Johnny Appleseed planted trees. The man had a mission!
Then again, you may lean back into Peter for his incredible experience of transformation when it was revealed to him that God makes no distinctions. This led Peter to proclaim: “truly God shows no partiality.”
On the other hand, you may choose Paul because his teachings are a great treasure. His letters to churches fill up much of the New Testament. Paul is a favorite of Lutherans because he said in a hundred different ways that we are saved by God’s grace.
So, who would you choose? Peter or Paul?
There’s no right answer. I suspect that your choice would be a reflection of your gifts, interests, and passions for ministry.
Each of us uses the gifts God has bestowed upon in unique ways. The church is wonderfully diverse. Just so with these two apostles. They differed from one another. In fact, at one point Peter and Paul clashed over whether the Gentiles who became Christians should be expected to adhere to Jewish laws. Still, they served the same Lord.
So, what do these two apostles share in common so that they would be remembered together? Why do we celebrate these two today?
Because of their martyrdom. They were martyrs.
This day was chosen by our Christian forebears as a day to remember the martyrdom of both saints. Tradition says that though they died in different years, each of them were martyred on this day. Their deaths echo the death of Jesus. It is said that Paul was beheaded in Rome and that Peter was crucified upside down in Rome. Jesus hints at this in today’s Gospel when he tells Peter that he will be taken to where he did not want him to go.
Martyrs die for their faith. They die because they will not bow to any other ruler than Jesus.
In life and in death Peter and Paul were witnesses to Jesus. If you look closely at the etymology of the word “martyr” you see that the word means “witness.”
It may seem a little strange that we should remember the cruel death of two beloved apostles. It is counter-intuitive. After all, we prefer to celebrate heroes. We love to celebrate people who win, not those who lose. But Jesus calls us to lose our lives to truly find them. Now, that doesn’t mean everyone dies as a martyr, but it does mean that in our faith journey God pries open our firm grip on idols and when we die to them and “lose our lives” we actually discover true life. Peter and Paul spent their time as leaders in the church by pointing beyond themselves to someone greater.
Peter and Paul were witnesses and so are you!
I once had the experience of testifying in a court case. It wasn’t my favorite experience. I was called to the witness stand to speak to what I knew to be true before the judge and a smooth talking attorney. I don’t know if my word carried any weight, but I spoke of what I knew to be true. That’s all. The results were not in my hands.
We are witnesses to what we know to be true, that Jesus is Lord. God will use such a witness to fill people’s hearts and even change them and sometimes our witness falls on deaf ears. That witness may or may not be accepted, but the results are not in our hands.
I had a preaching professor who counseled us to enter the pulpit, not as experts, but as witnesses. I’ve discovered that makes all the difference in the world. The preacher is to bear witness to the Gospel. To presumptuously enter the pulpit as an expert carries with it the danger of being too puffed up to speak God’s word.
I think we can say the same thing about the all Christians in whatever vocation you’ve been called to serve. We are witnesses. The Christian journey is not about us. We are witnesses to someone other than ourselves. We witness to the merciful acts of God finally and fully made known in Jesus Christ.
And this is what both Paul and Peter do throughout their lives and in their death.
What is it that they witness to in particular?
When writing to Timothy, Paul says that God rescued him from the Lion’s mouth. It is a way of saying that in spite of all his trials, arrests, jailing, and beatings, God was with him, even when other people abandoned him. In the Bible, God has a good track record of rescuing – rescuing Israel from captivity, rescuing Daniel from the Lion’s Den, rescuing Jonah form the belly of the fish. Paul testifies the God who rescues us and brings freedom.
The story of Peter being released from prison led him to say: “Now I know, without a doubt, that God sent an angel to rescue me from the clutches of Herod.” Peter, too, witnesses to God the rescuer.
Our lives may not be as dramatic as the lives of Peter and Paul, but we know God to be the rescuer.
Who could say it any clearer than Luther in his remarks form the Small Catechism:
At great cost Jesus has saved me, a lost and condemned person. He has freed me from sin, death, and the power of the devil – not with silver or gold, but with his holy and precious blood and his innocent suffering and death.
This is our witness. Christ has rescued us.
Once rescued we are set free. I cannot think of any better news in the world, especially when most of the news is pretty bad. We’ve been rescued and are forever free. Sins forgiven. Love poured out upon the world. We are witnesses to this great good news.
There’s a danger here. The danger is that we may shun witnessing and merely sit back and enjoy the sunshine of God’s grace. The danger is to use our freedom as a way of escaping the world. Remember, friends in Christ, that we are free from the power of death and evil but we are also set free for something … to be rescued is to be set free in a way that brings freedom to others.
Friends in Christ, as we follow Jesus and live in the security of Christ’s love, we are given opportunity to let our lives echo the freedom we’ve been given. We have been set free to tell others the amazing good news of forgiveness, to serve all people who are caught in a world of hurt, and to seek the kingdom of God by speaking on behalf of those who are not free. So, God bids us to love those on the margin and to welcome the stranger, the immigrant, the hungry neighbor, and the neighbor without shelter. God bids us to love one another. God bids us to serve all people not just those we like. And God bids us to say in what we do and in what we say that God is in love with the world he has created.
We are free to love as extravagantly and as generously as God.
Such love is a joy and such love is costly because courageous acts of love often met with great resistance, but dear fellow saints of God, along with Paul and Peter and all apostles and saints throughout the ages, we are free to bear witness to saving love and grace of God. It will likely cost us our lives in some way, but remember, in losing our lives we find them.
Be free! Amen.