Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul—Proclaiming the Resurrection Even Unto Death
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
On this day, the Church celebrates with great joy the festival of Saints Peter and Paul, apostles and martyrs. Hear what our Lord Jesus had to say concerning what these men would suffer as witnesses of His life, death, and resurrection, who boldly preached repentance and the forgiveness of sins in His name.
When the resurrected Lord Jesus had eaten breakfast with Peter and the other disciples, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord, You know that I love You." He said to him, "Feed My lambs." He said to him again a second time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord, You know that I love You." He said to him, "Tend My sheep." He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?" Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, "Do you love Me?" And he said to Him, "Lord, You know all things, You know that I love You." Jesus said to him, "Feed My sheep" (John 21:15–17).
"Most assuredly, I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish." This He spoke signifying by what death he would glorify God. And when Jesus had spoken this, He said to Peter, "Follow Me" (John 21:18–19).
After Saul, the persecutor of the Church whom God would rename Paul, was blinded on the road to Damascus and called by the Lord Jesus to repentance, it happened that there was a certain disciple at Damascus named Ananias. And to him, the Lord said in a vision, "Ananias." And he said, "Here I am, Lord." So the Lord said to him, "Arise and go to the street called Straight and inquire at the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus, for behold, he is praying. And in a vision, he has seen a man named Ananias coming in and putting his hand on him so that he might receive his sight." Then Ananias answered, "Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he has done to Your saints in Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Your name." But the Lord said to him, "Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake" (Acts 9:10–16).
From Celebrating with the Saints, Pastor Whedon tells us this: "The festival of the saints Peter and Paul is one of the very oldest saints days in the church calendar. Christians have remembered these two on June 29th since at least AD 250. A very old tradition holds that both apostles were martyred the same day under orders from Emperor Nero in 68.
Peter, of course, during Christ’s passion had denied his Lord three times out of fear. When Christ restored Peter in John 21, as you just heard, He asked him if he loved Him three times. Three times Peter confessed that he loved Christ like a brother. He apparently hesitated to use the word for love, agape, that entails willingness to lay down one’s life. Christ charged him to feed His lambs and tend His flock. The Lord Jesus, however, did go on to tell Peter that the day would come when he will stretch out his hands, have another dress him, and lead him where he does not want to go. This He said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God and added the invitation, ‘Follow Me.’ Peter was thus given the promise that he would die a martyr for his Master.
When that time came, Peter was in Rome, called by the code name Babylon in 1 Peter 5:13. He had witnessed Christ’s resurrection to Jews and Gentiles for many years, confessing to one and all, ‘We believe that we will be saved through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Acts 15:11). He was arrested and sentenced to death by crucifixion. He reportedly begged only the favor of being crucified upside down. He did not feel worthy to die in the exact same manner as the one he had once denied.
Paul, when last heard of in Acts, was under house arrest in Rome. Tradition suggests that he may have been released from that initial imprisonment and fulfilled his desire to preach the good news in Spain, but under fickle Nero, the apostle landed in prison yet again a short while later and this time received the death sentence. Because he was a Roman citizen, Paul was not crucified but given a relatively merciful death through a swift beheading. He had long contemplated this final victory. ‘With full courage now, as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain’ (Philippians 1:20–21). Paul knew that the death that awaited him was already a vanquished enemy.
The remains of the two apostles are said to be interred beneath the original St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Together they await the joyous resurrection that they fearlessly proclaimed." (Celebrating the Saints)
This is a wonderful story. The apostles Peter and Paul were so convinced of the truth of Christ’s resurrection from the dead that they were willing to suffer death to have it proclaimed in Rome and to the ends of the earth. But one might ask, does that make what they proclaimed any more likely to be true? Aren’t there plenty of people who are willing to die for what they believe? Buddhist and Hindu militants, Islamic terrorists, Israeli soldiers that believe they have a God-given right to land but reject Jesus as their Messiah.
Yes, it is true that many people die for lies, and their being willing to die for a lie that they firmly believe to be true can sometimes be compelling. But it really only tells us that they may have personally believed very firmly that what they were dying for was the absolute truth. But that’s it. They may have truly believed it to be true, but truly believing something is true doesn’t make it true in fact. We must take that into account when we consider the claim that Jesus of Nazareth really died by crucifixion for our sins, really rose from the dead for our justification, and is coming again to judge the living and the dead (Romans 4:25; Acts 1:11; 2 Timothy 4:1).
Listen to this list of minimal facts considered to be widely accepted among believing and unbelieving scholars of the ancient world. There’s six of them here, widely accepted even by unbelievers. One, Jesus died by crucifixion (Mark 15:24–25). Two, disciples had experiences they believed were appearances of the risen Jesus (Luke 24:36–43). Three, disciples lived lives that were transformed. They had cowered and ran away and then all of a sudden they were courageously preaching that Jesus rose from the dead (Acts 2:14–36). The resurrection proclamation was taught very early, right off the bat in Jerusalem where it happened (Acts 2:22–24). Five, James, a skeptic, the brother of Jesus, converted after believing he saw the resurrected Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:7). And six, Paul, a persecutor of the Church, converted after believing he saw the resurrected Jesus (Acts 9:1–19). These are generally accepted by unbelieving scholars, even unbelieving scholars.
As I said, they’re accepted today because they are supported by multiple independent sources, not just the Bible, and are not easily explained by alternative hypotheses. But again, notice that besides the fact that Jesus died by crucifixion, the rest of the facts that are generally accepted have to do with what the disciples believed, including the skeptic James, the brother of Jesus, and Paul, the persecutor of the Church. It has to do with what they believed they saw. And yes, they suffered death for their bold proclamation for which we celebrate Peter and Paul today. But don’t people die for things they believe are true all the time that contradict what others have died for believing to be true?
It might be compelling to ask, who would die for a lie? That’s a compelling question to ask, who would die for a lie? But then a challenger of the Christian faith might give you a long list of all sorts of people that have died for lies. Muhammad, Osama bin Laden, other Islamic terrorists, even those that perpetrated 9-11, Joseph Smith and his brother Hiram that died at the hands of a mob for their Mormon faith. But they died shooting guns, but they died at the hands of a mob. Countless martyrs of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and other faiths that contradict one another and contradict the claims of Christianity, for which many martyrs also have died. Sincere belief doesn’t establish truth.
The world isn’t like the voodoo movie, The Skeleton Key. Something doesn’t become true and work only if the target of the voodoo starts to believe it’s real. Something is either true or false, and it doesn’t matter what people believe about it. It is either true or false. Yes, we’ve all seen or heard about people dying for sincerely held beliefs that, if Christianity is true, are beliefs that they may have had but are actually false, because they can’t both be true. Not all of these claims people die for.
What confidence can we have that the deaths of Saints Peter and Paul are different? Confidence that their deaths were for sincerely held beliefs that were, in fact, true. That their deaths can actually impact and strengthen us in our own Christian faith and witness. We have confidence, first of all, because they, Saints Peter and Paul, are not removed from the truth claims for which they died by centuries of time, like the martyrs of our day. They also weren’t the only witnesses to these things, like Joseph Smith and the original golden tablets that he lost and was still miraculously able to get a second chance and then translate this book of Mormon that sounds just like a King James Bible with a few weird alterations.
Peter walked with the Lord Jesus after He rose from the dead. He didn’t hear about it from a really winsome public speaker. He walked with the Lord Jesus after He rose from the dead. He spoke with Him, ate meals with Him, He touched the risen Lord’s body (Luke 24:42–43; John 20:27).
As Saint John tells us in his first letter, and this is something where he speaks for all the apostles that beheld and touched the risen Lord, he opens up his first letter: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life—the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:1–3).
Saints Peter and Paul gave witness that was also different from other martyrs of false religions, because their experiences of the risen Lord Jesus converted them from drastically different paths, drastically different paths. Peter had denied his Lord three times. He ran away in fear and went away and wept bitterly (Matthew 26:75). He was hiding away with the other disciples for fear of the Jews, but then something happened, and all of a sudden, this man who had ran away from the Lord and denied Him three times after He was arrested and then finally murdered, all of a sudden, this man of God began proclaiming boldly the death and resurrection of Jesus.
He said such things as this to the same men responsible for the arrest and murder of Jesus, spoke it to the face of men like Caiaphas: "Rulers of the people and elders of Israel: If we this day are judged for a good deed done to a helpless man, by what means he has been made well, let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole. This is the ‘stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.’ Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:8–12).
How does that happen? How do you go from denying a man and abandoning Him in fear to saying that to the people that could kill you, that killed Him? Saint Paul stood by and watched Saint Stephen be murdered for proclaiming our Lord (Acts 7:58–8:1) and was zealous to wipe out what he believed in his bones was a wicked aberration of the true Israelite faith, this new Christian sect. But then our risen Lord stopped him on the road to Damascus and called him to repentance and grafted him back into the true vine of Israel, the one holy Christian Church (Acts 9:3–19).
And even after suffering countless beatings, stonings, riots, betrayals by brothers, shipwreck, arrest, and many other afflictions (2 Corinthians 11:23–28), Saint Paul boldly stood before the rulers of this world, even Agrippa, and preached the same thing that Saint Peter preached to the authorities of this world (Acts 26:19–23). How does that happen? They didn’t lead a cult that benefited themselves with money, prestige, pleasure, or any such thing.
After all, I might be okay with going to my death even if it’s quick, if the rest of my life can be a riot. That was not how it was for Peter and Paul. They lived lives filled with rejection, suffering, tears, betrayal. They died in Rome for a religion that would remain practiced in secret for hundreds of more years.
The men that murdered them in Rome went home, washed the blood off their clothes and their hands, and went on with their lives. But Saints Peter and Paul died proclaiming Him whom they had heard with their own ears, seen with their own eyes, touched with their own hands (1 John 1:1). They proclaimed Him who continued to preach to them directly through the Spirit, and in the preaching heard in the divine service even then. They proclaimed Him who had washed their sins away in baptism, same as He’s done it for you (Acts 22:16). They proclaimed Him who strengthened them with the medicine of immortality, His own body and blood (John 6:54–56). They proclaimed Him not just in the face of one day of suffering and death, but decades of suffering and the threat of death. 33 AD around to 68. Not an easy life, not a life full of pleasure.
Who would die for a lie? Plenty of people. The better question is, who would die for a lie that only brought them decades of hardship and a violent death in virtual anonymity? Who would die for someone they abandoned and denied when arrested and murdered? For one whose followers they had sought to destroy and had every earthly reason for continuing in that pursuit.
Saint Peter was led to that place his Lord had told him so many years ago, and he boldly gave the good confession to his last dying breath. As he breathed his last, hanging upside down, nailed to a cross, he knew where he was going. And who would be waiting to embrace him in the resurrection of all flesh? As the sword came down on the neck of Saint Paul, he had the same certainty. Both of them from their own true eyewitness of the Lord Jesus believed to the end these words that we still hear spoken in the Church today, even while the names of their murderers are lost to history.
"Beloved, do not think it a strange thing concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy" (1 Peter 4:12–13). They knew that in their bones to their last dying breath, and they are the rock on which Christ built His Church that still stands to this very day, and what they spoke on earth concerning our Lord Jesus and the blood of Him who washes away all of our sins, that is bound in heaven forever for each of us.
Thanks be to God for their true witness.
Let us pray. Lord Jesus Christ, at all times in the world and among the people, manifold and detestable sayings go forth about You, Your beloved preaching office, and the use of the most worthy Sacrament, whereby Your honor, omnipotence, and name are greatly diminished, and the world reveals its folly. We beseech You: Preserve the true, saving knowledge of Your Word and name purely and clearly; may Your Christendom and congregation—which, with Peter and Paul, regards You as the Christ, that is, King, Savior, Mediator, and Son of the living God—firmly withstand all the gates of hell; and grant that we, together with our little children, may be and remain true and elect members of Your little fold. Do not divide or separate us from You and Your congregation. Preserve us also by Your mighty arm—in Your protection and safekeeping—against the power and might of the devil and all error; for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
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