Enduring in Charity

“By your endurance you will gain your souls,” we hear right at the end of our Gospel reading this morning. Endurance in what you might ask? In faith of course. Persisting in a core set of beliefs that utterly transforms the world, handed on to us as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:1-3: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve … then to billions more ….”

Why must we endure? Endurance implies that we have to wait with patience. But why? Why couldn’t God simply snap his fingers or wave a wand or drown the Earth and start anew with better people? Because God is love. Perfect love. Perfect love, revealed in Jesus’s relationship to his Father and the Holy Spirit, is a love that is freely given, received from the Father and returned to God by the Spirit as Jesus lived out his day-to-day relationship with those with whom he encountered. So when we look to God and we see God the Son receive God the Father’s love, accept it by coming into the world, endure its consequences by bearing our rejection that gets him killed, we can conclude that the definition of love cannot include force or coercion. It is freely given, but to remain perfect love, it must also be freely received and acted upon.

Here’s the difficulty: it’s hard for people to hear, understand and have the courage to trust and so receive God in a world that is often filled with broken acts of love: neglect, exclusion, coercion, cultural cleansing, slavery, and violence. God has known this of us from the start; so he has given us time and requires his faithful to exercise patience and endurance.

When Jesus asks Peter three times if Peter really loves him, and Peter replies, “yes, Lord, you know that I do,” Jesus is asking a question that extends well beyond Peter, to you and I. For three days, self-righteous Jonah spends in a whale, having sacrificed himself to save those on the ship he was on; three days, Jesus spends in the grave releasing the gates of hell so the dead might rise; three days Paul recounts, of Jesus’s death and resurrection, do the disciples have to wait before they are made aware he has risen. 

When you hold to this truth, Peter, when you really live it out and proclaim it, when you care for those whom I’ve given to you, Peter, you are going to turn the world upside down and they are going to despise you for it. They will turn their backs on you as they did on me; they will doubt; they will revile and exclude you. Peter, do not seek retribution. Be PATIENT with their ignorance as I am with yours. Turn your cheek; keep your sword in its sheath; do not enact evil but love as you have been loved. Forgive as you have been forgiven. Feed my sheep as you have been fed with my own body and blood, manna from heaven. Do not force, do not coerce, do not exclude, do not hate, do not destroy. Trust in the love you have received and return that love to me by bearing with even those who revile you. 

Do not get caught up in the beauty of your buildings, or in the wonderful systems you have put in place. These will come down just like the temple came down. Do not place your hope in possessing land, or power in this world, do not think that your system of civil or church government is here for all time, for these things will always be torn down and overturned. Do not get caught up with false prophets who come in my name - speaking with arrogance, ignorance, violence, and hatred. Many will come in my name saying Lord, Lord, and I will say I do not know them. For they condemned and ignored the sick, the poor, the stranger (one not like me), or the prisoner. Dear Peter, and to you and I, Jesus says, “feed them, they are my sheep.” Jesus continues: do not look around you and see things falling apart and think, “that’s it, Jesus is coming.” These things have happened from Jesus’s death, at least once a century to the present. Instead, endure, persevere in the faith; be patient while sharing this with others. Endure in loving - that is, in making sacrifices of yourself, your own desire for safety, control, power, righteousness - endure in patience, in self control, so that you might be able to share the faith you have received in a way that others can actually hear it and willingly seek it themselves. 

Notice here that persevering in faith includes two things: 1) receiving grace; 2) sharing that grace, which of course happened first amongst the disciples, and from them, to billions more around the world. For just as one man’s self-righteously arrogant choice to follow his own way rather than God’s perfect way, cascaded out across all of history, engulfing all of us in it, so one man’s faithful obedience - the perfect love of God and of us - has opened to everyone who desires it, reconciliation to God, or salvation. I leave you with the words of St. Ambrose: “[Jesus] foretold persecutions that He might make us patient, not fearful. And He gives His promise: ‘I will give you a mouth and wisdom.’ This was fulfilled when Peter spoke boldly before the council, when Stephen confounded his adversaries. It is not human wisdom but the Spirit’s grace that teaches what we should say. The world’s hatred is no cause of fear, but of glory. To suffer for Christ is to reign with Christ …The patience of the saints is their victory.”  AMEN