Till We Have Faces (or Actually, You Can Go Home Again)
Because he is risen, Christ makes it possible for us to become ourselves.
NOTE: I tried to record these reflections several times for the podcast, but unfortunately the audio was too glitchy/scratchy to use. Hopefully, I can figure out the problem before next week.
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The texts this week give us the stories of two crucial conversions—the conversions of the apostles Peter and Paul in their conversations with Jesus. The texts also give us language for the delight that the risen Christ leaves in his wake.
These conversions—for now, let’s stay with that term, although it’s all-too-easily misunderstood by those of us who’ve been shaped in “Evangelical” circles—are not only made possible but actually created by the coming-near of the resurrected Jesus. And his resurrection, which is fulfilled in his ascension, creates the possibility of that coming-near. As Luther says, he goes away to come closer to us.
In other words, it is just as the risen one that Jesus brings about truly sanctifying—deifying, theandric—conversions in his followers. He can and does have this effect on Peter and Paul, as well as on you and me, because he has passed through death into the mystery of God’s life and in the process has transfigured what it means for us to die and to live.
For that reason, we, in this Easter season, hear the end of Psalm 30 as a hymn sung to Jesus (and a hymn sung with Jesus to the Father through the Spirit):
You have turned my wailing into dancing;
you have put off my sack-cloth and clothed me with joy.Therefore my heart sings to you without ceasing;
O Lord my God, I will give you thanks for ever.
John the Revelator (in Rev. 5:11-14) testifies of having heard the entire cosmos singing this hymn:
I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice,
"Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!"
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing,
"To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!"
And the four living creatures said, "Amen!" And the elders fell down and worshiped.
Together, Psalms 30 and Revelation 5 bring to bear on us the truth we so easily forget (primarily because there are forces bent on keeping us from remembering it): whatever God does—or does not do—is always only for our joy. Jesus is rightly lauded and adored as LORD because he is the one who cares for us in ways that free us to be who and how we truly want to be. Thus, when we yield to what God asks or demands of us, and only then, we find we can be true to ourselves. Where God’s will is done, and only there, life is most lively and we are most alive, living life to its fullest. As the Scriptures teach us (Gal. 5:22-26), the culmination of the Spirit’s work in our life is the unbidden care for others that alone calms our spirit, strengthens our resolve, and empowers us to possess ourselves wisely and graciously. Only insofar as we understand this can we respond gladly, whole-heartedly, unstintingly to God’s will for our lives, for our shared life.
All to say, the “conversions” represented in these stories, stories which happened for our sake (1 Cor. 10:6) and which were written for our sake (Rom. 15;4), mark moments of life-giving change in the lives of these two men. After what happens to him outside the gates of Damascus, Paul begins for the first time to understand what it means for him to be Paul. And after what happens to him by the Sea of Tiberias, Peter’s past opens up to him in a way that allows him to walk into his future bound to hope. After his conversation with Jesus, painful as it was, he recognizes, perhaps for the first time, his own face.
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Paul’s conversion, narrated in Acts 9, seems to come out of nowhere. It is a dramatic conversion brought about not so much in conversation as in confrontation. Paul was, Luke tells us, “breathing out” threats against Jesus’ disciples. We can be sure, however, that the young Pharisee would not have accepted the charge that his threats were “murderous.” We know from his letter to the Philippians that he imagined himself as the heir of Phinehas (Num. 25; Ps. 106), the zealot who in his righteous outrage saved the sanctuary from desecration and Israel from the wrath of God. Hence, hunting down these sectarians and stamping out their heresies was not to Paul’s mind in any sense oppressive. He had a clear legal mandate from the authorities. He was driven by a sense of moral and religious obligation. So, as he neared Damascus, he had no qualms about what he had done or what he intended to do to these apostates. His conscience was clear and his spirit was settled. Yet—“suddenly a light…”
Compared to Paul’s, Peter’s conversion, narrated in John 21, is relatively slow-developing and anti-climactic. Six disciples, two of whom remain for some reason anonymous, stupefied by what they have seen and heard in the days leading up to and following Jesus’ crucifixion, have returned with Peter to the sea. They fish all night; they catch nothing. Right as the day is breaking, Jesus appears to them, not walking on the water but waiting on the shore. He holds his distance and calls out to them, and although they do not recognize him, they follow his suggestion and cast the net on the right side of the boat. “So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish” (Jn 21:6).
After the miraculous haul of fish, John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, realizes who it is who’s standing on the shore, and Peter, thanks to John, realizes it, too. He throws on his robe and dives into the sea. (An odd detail, to be sure, but perhaps a sign that he comes to shore ready for whatever Jesus might require of him.) The other six come in the boat behind him, dragging the net full of fish. This is how John tells the rest of the story:
When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there with fish on it, and bread. [Again, these details matter, not least because they remind us of the moment of Peter’s denial, which the Gospel reports took place beside a charcoal fire (Jn 18:18)]. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn [Peter does for them what Jesus asked them to do. And he finds he can haul in the net, because Jesus’ word has changed the possibilities.] Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” [Again, we’re reminded of Peter’s denials in John 18.] Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”
At the beginning of John’s Gospel, at their first meeting, Jesus had said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas (which is translated Peter)” (Jn 1:42). But in this final meeting, which ends the Gospel, Jesus refers to him only as Simon, son of John. Why? Because he was never meant to be Cephas instead of Simon or the son of God instead of the son of John. He had to be called Cephas so he could become Simon. In conversation with Jesus, Peter, like Paul, has his past reintegrated into his present in such a way that his future opens for him. He is converted, yet again, not only to God but also to himself.
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Unfortunately, the way we (“Evangelicals”) have talked about conversion leaves everyone in confusion about what God wants from us and for us. We’ve talked about Paul’s conversion as if it were a shift away from Judaism to Christianity. (It wasn’t.) And we’ve talked about Peter’s conversions as if those were the moments in which he bit by bit ceased to be Simon and became Cephas. (They weren’t.)
We’ve made those mistakes because (under the spell of the decisionist model Billy Graham made famous) we’ve dogmatized conversion as the means of “getting saved.” As a result, we’re likely to think conversion refers to a one-time change in our relationship with God, a change initiated by our own own “free will” decision for God. We’re also likely to think of conversion as a moment of breaking decisively with our past and with those people with whom we shared that past. We’re almost certainly going to imagine that God requires conversion of us because God needs us to prove our loyalty to him by loving him in a way that lessens and subordinates all our other loves and loyalties.
But salvation is not something we accomplish for ourselves. And making choices is something we’re saved from not by. God’s work does not require us to put our past behind us. Instead, it allows us to present that past to God and to be present to our past in a way that opens it to God for redemption. Most of all, God is more concerned for us and our good than God is concerned with Godself. Read Philippians 2 again. God does nothing from selfish ambition but always acts in the best interests of others because God in humility considers us before he considers himself.
In his autobiography, With Head and Heart, Howard Thurman explains how his grandmother saved him from diseased notions of conversion and salvation.
“I was twelve years old when I joined the church. It was the custom to present oneself to the deacons, which I did. They examined me, and I answered their questions. When they had finished, the chairman asked, “Howard, why do you come before us?” I said, “I want to be a Christian.” Then the chairman said, “But you must come before us after you have been converted and have already become a Christian. Come back when you can tell us of your conversion.”
I went straight home and told my grandmother that the deacons had refused to take me into the church. She took me by the hand—I can still see her rocking along beside me—and together we went back to the meeting, arriving before they adjourned. Addressing Mose Wright, who was the chairman, she said, “How dare you turn this boy down? He is a Christian and was one long before he came to you today. “Maybe you did not understand his words, but shame on you if you do not know his heart. Now you take this boy into the church right now—before you close this meeting!” And they did. I was baptized in the Halifax River.”
Thurman’s grandmother, thankfully, did not forget what the Mose Wrights of the world struggle to keep in mind: no one needs a conversion or the story of a conversion in order to be deemed worthy of belonging. We do need to change, of course, and to be changed. Not once, but often. But it is God’s decision for us, embodied in the church’s hospitality and care, that makes it so we can become ourselves. Sometimes, these changes cannot come if they do not come suddenly and dramatically. But most of the time, they cannot come if they do not come slowly and anti-climactically.
However they come, these “watershed moments,” we know they have happened because we feel what Thurman calls a “raw sanction” to live the life we recognize is ours to live. We find ourselves just that much more confident in our own voice and just that much more comfortable in our own skin. This is the lesson Thurman’s life teaches us: it is precisely as we become comfortable in our own skin that we begin to be for others a temple of the Spirit, a site of God’s non-anxious, healing presence.
Do you recall the old sayings, “You can’t go home again” and “No one steps in the same river twice”? Obviously, what’s assumed in these proverbs is that people change and that these changes lead to irreversible loss, disintegration, and estrangement. But those of us who’ve been initiated into the mystery of the resurrection believe that change is not only the way in which we suffer loss and estrangement but also the way in which what has been lost can be found and those who have been estranged can be reconciled. We believe we have been baptized (once!) in living water precisely so we can be changed again and again over time. Not only can we go home again, as Naomi did, but in truth home is made to be home by our return with those we once feared as strangers.
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God has made us to change, to be changed. But we cannot make any truly sanctifying conversion happen—for ourselves or for others. And we must not try. Still, the Spirit has given us in these Scriptures the stories of sudden and dramatic conversions, as well as slow and anti-climactic ones, so we can attend to them and can be sanctified in that attending. As we contemplate the ways in which Jesus’ nearness proved to be good for Peter and Paul, we posture ourselves for the work God intends to do and is already doing, readying our hearts for the shifts the Spirit has prepared for us from before the foundations of the world. We throw on our robes, in other words, and jump into the sea.
Bearing all that in mind, let’s return to Jesus’ seaside conversation with Simon. Consider this image for a moment.
Peter—blonde and anxious (these details are not accidental, believe me)—stands beside the fire, his hands clasped in front of him, as if bound. His face is anguished. He is haloed, as a saint should be, but his nimbus is the color of rust. His thoughts, like his expression, are cloudy—anything but luminous. He is looking at a seated Jesus who remains just out of our view. Why is he so anguished, so dis-eased? The Gospel tells us why. Jesus has questioned his love for a third time.
Peter and Paul, remember, are not only converted; they are also called. They find themselves in the same moment, the same movement, in which they learn that their lives are not their own. Both of them are promised a hard future. Both of them are assured they must suffer much for the sake of Jesus’ name. But their callings are not a contradiction of their conversions. This is why Jesus asks Peter repeatedly, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Not to shame or expose him but to draw him into knowing as he is known. Jesus does know that Peter loves him. But Peter needs to know that his love is known. So, Jesus leads Peter in this liturgy of affirmation in the presence of the other disciples—and in our presence. Not so much to restore him after his failure as to reassure him that that love that he feels is enough to carry him through, because that love that he feels is in fact God’s life blooming in him. As Acts 9 makes clear, Paul was led through a similar liturgy of blessing and affirmation.
Years ago, on a retreat, I had a vision in guided prayer of the scene described in John 21. I watched Peter reach the shore first. I saw the other disciples gather behind him after they landed the boat. And I realized I was offended and aggrieved for them. I was angry with Jesus for neglecting them. A resentful thought sprang to mind, which ran along these lines: “Why do you always give Peter your attention? There are others who need it, perhaps even more than he does. He’s just the squeaky wheel.” There was no resolve for me in the vision or after it. I’m still not entirely sure what to make of what I saw or why I saw it as I did. But last week, after I had read this story again, this image, which you see here, came to me—and I found I felt very differently about what happens in this scene, about what passes between Simon and Jesus.
As Peter confesses even in his grief, Jesus knows everything. We, of course, do not. But as we look at this Simon, the Simon in this painting—who is of course an image of me, and perhaps also an image of you—we do see something he does not: there is a bare branch over his head. And we know that that bare branch is a sign that he, unlike Judas, has chosen life. He has refused to hide in death. We can see that this Simon, like the Simon in the Gospel, is troubled. Yet, if we have read the Gospel, we know he feels he has no choice but to remain close to Jesus in spite of his troubledness, because no one else has the words of eternal life (Jn 6:68). And if we have understood the Gospel we also know that he can stay close to Jesus because Jesus has drawn near to him—but not too near.
Simon is brooding. But Jesus is also brooding in and over him. And so, as you can see, Peter’s past is not only behind him, it is also changing behind him. The rooster that crowed at the exact moment of his third denial (Jn 18:27) is not crowing now. What you know, which Simon does not yet know, is that when the rooster crowed on that day, it was heralding not his fall but Christ’s rising. Not his failure, but what Christ in his victory would make of that failing. That is the morning in which the joy comes (Ps. 30:6).
This, I believe, images a kind of conversion that Christ wants for us. It’s also a reminder that the changes he brings about in our lives are always—always—better than we could’ve wanted or would’ve dared to ask for. However he comes to us, whether forcefully or not, and whatever we do or do not feel in that nearness, we remain in the dark about most of the good he does for us.
In one way, we remain in the dark because God’s goodness is infinitely and infinitely-more-than-infinitely beyond our capacities. In another way, however, as CS Lewis knew, we remain in the dark because we are not yet able and willing to meet God face to face. The Psalmist says to his God, “While I felt secure, I said, ‘I shall never be disturbed. You, Lord, with your favor, made me as strong as the mountains. Then you hid your face, and I was filled with fear” (Ps. 30:7-8). Both Peter and Paul discover that God hides his face only because we have forgotten our own image (see James 1:22-24). They also find that God hides his face just so we can discover our own.
Till We Have Faces (or Actually, You Can Go Home Again)
It is hard to believe this is not a magnum opus but a weekly lectionary reflection. Bless you and thank you for this.
So comforting .