Sunday June 29, 2025
Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Servants in silence
In those days, King Herod laid hands upon some members of the Church to harm them. Big James, killed by the sword, and now Peter arrested, sleeping between two soldiers, secured by double chains.
This Jewish king “pleased the Jews” with his unprovoked violence. On Herod’s throne, lifted higher than usual, he pranced and preened, although inside his heart of hearts he missed those special conversations he’d had with John the Baptist. He couldn’t say so, of course. He must keep his visions of grandeur in front of him at all times. But those memories and visions invaded his solitude and his sleep, and now in the dark of another ugly night, one more nightmare unfolds around him.
On the very night before Herod was to bring Peter to trial
while outside the door guards kept watch on the prison,
in an instant the angel of the Lord stood by Peter
and a light shone in the cell.
This guardian tapped Peter on the side and awakened him, saying,
“Get up quickly.”
The chains fell from Peter’s wrists.
“Put on your belt and sandals,”the angel said.
“Now put on your cloak and follow me.”
Herod slept unawakened, fitfully, knowing nothing. His city’s iron gates opened of themselves, and Peter walked through behind the angel. Then the angel left him, and Peter remembered the psalm of security and salvation he had memorized as a child so many years before:
The angel of the LORD encamps
around those who fear him, and delivers them.
O! Taste and see that the Lord is good, and
blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.
Peter had been practicing his preaching. Peter would soon launch a campaign of salvation through Christ marked by baptism in the Holy Spirit, and Paul would follow immediately in his footsteps. But now in pre-dawn silence, staring up at the sky full of stars falling around his head, I can imagine a poem like this Sunday poem by Wendell Berry falling from his lips …
Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.
Within the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight.
The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite.
What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest, even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
falling, and is pleased. – Wendell Berry
Jesus named Peter the “rock” upon which he would build his church. Paul’s revelation on the road to Damascus seconded that motion. Bill Jackson wrote Nothin’s Gonna Stop It about the story from its creative beginnings in Genesis, through this new beginning in Acts and on to its apocalyptic conclusion in the book of Revelation.
Well done, good and faithful servants.
The Lord stood by me and gave me strength,
The crown of righteousness awaits me
which the Lord, the just judge,
will award me on that day, and not only to me,
but to all who have longed for his appearance.
(Acts 12, Psalm 34, 2 Timothy 4, Matthew 16)
(posted at davesandel.net)
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