Scripture texts: Acts 9:1-22, Various others linked in text below.
Well, the excitement is building. George Lucas has sold the rights to Star Wars to Disney and now the “Mouse House” has put into production three new Star Wars films. One of the cool things about these new films is that old cast is back, playing elder versions of these iconic characters. Long time fans of the franchise will get to see Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and (of course) the dashing Han Solo on-screen once again in a brand new adventure.
Han Solo is probably the most popular character in the Star Wars franchise. He’s the scoundrel, the not-so-nice guy that really has a heart of gold. When he’s first introduced, he’s kind of villainous, shady, not sure you can trust him. Unpredictable, cocky, full of himself. You know, like pretty much every other scoundrel character in pop culture. It’s Tony Stark in the Marvel superhero movies. It’s Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones. It’s Walter White from Breaking Bad. (Come to think of it, these guys are all really popular too.) They’re folks that do the right thing, but seem on the outside pretty shady. Or they’re folks that want to do good, but are too much prisoner to their vices. Or they’re folks that are doing the wrong things for the right reasons. Or perhaps some combination of all three. But we love them regardless.
The Bible, for its part, has a lot of scoundrels in its pages too. Before our Bible study wrapped up for the summer, we were reading about the adventures of Abraham in the book of Genesis. Patriarch, father of many nations, recipient of God’s holy covenant. All around good guy, right? Well, there was that episode in Egypt where he was worried about how pretty his wife was and what the Pharaoh might try to do to claim her from him, so Abraham pretended that she was his sister and then sent her off to be a part of the Pharaoh’s harem. To be one of his slave women. Yeah, nice guy that Abraham.
King David. Greatest king of Israel’s history. So great that the Bible can’t shut up about him. Even the Gospels talk about this guy constantly. Must be a fantastic fellow to have all those accolades. Except for the time when he looked down from his balcony and peeped in on a bathing woman, decided he had to have her. So he invited her to his chambers, raped her, got her pregnant, and then arranged to have her husband murdered to cover it all up. Great guy.
Moses was a murderer. Jonah was a coward. I could find plenty more throughout the pages of holy scripture. But if you were compiling a top ten list of the “Biggest scoundrels of the Bible,” you’d probably pick the celebrities of this feast day to be part of your list: Peter and Paul.
To continue the Star Wars metaphor, Peter is the Jar-Jar Binks of the twelve disciples. He means well, got a good heart, but, boy, is he inept. Always opening his mouth to offer the least helpful suggestions possible. Always making bold and outlandish claims he knows he’d not going to live up to. But there are two moments in his life where he goes from simply bumbling to borderline sinister. Scoundrel-like, even.
The first is, of course, on the night when Jesus was betrayed. As some stories tell it, Peter begins the night rather chivalrous. When Jesus is arrested, Peter rushes to his defense, drawing his sword and attacking the first interloper he can get to, one of the slaves of the high priest. But after Jesus talks him down from this violent approach, Peter’s valor seems to vanish. He follows behind the mob to the court of the high priest. There, as we all know, he denies his Jesus three times before the dawn arrives.
He’s not done. Some years later, during the infancy of the Church, Peter is called upon by the leaders of the Church to become the “apostle to the Gentiles.” But when an opportunity arises for Christians of both Gentile and Jewish stock to come together in fellowship and harmony, Peter balks and hides away with only the Jewish Christians. He wants nothing to do with “those people.”
In that episode, he’s called out for his racist behavior by none other than Paul, the rogue of today’s remembrances. Peter may have been made the “official” apostle to the Gentiles, but it’s been Paul that’s been doing the boots-on-the-ground work to bring the wider world to Christ. But he too has a few dark episodes in his past.
When the deacon Stephen was called before the tribunal for preaching Christ, Paul was there. He watched as the angry mob stoned the first martyr to death (or so the Scriptures claim. Some scholars believe that Paul probably wasn’t as much a bystander in that episode as the text implies, but more an active participant.) Some time after that, he received orders to hunt down Christians in the city of Damascus, a mission during which he had a rather profound encounter that changed his whole life.
Like Peter, Paul wasn’t quite done with being a scoundrel after his conversion. You read through his letters, which make up the bulk of the New Testament and get a good sense of the man: arrogant, full of himself, has issues with women and sexuality in general. He’s still a scoundrel, but now also an apostle for Jesus Christ.
But therein lies the beauty of all these stories. These people, these heroes of Scripture, are truly human beings. In every way that word means. They have immense courage, strength in adversity, boldness in their convictions, trust in their God, but they likewise have, at the exact same time, fear, anxiety, prejudice, vices, vulnerabilities, anger, doubt, and every other negative quality that we humans have struggled with since day one. They are paragons of the faith not because they are perfect or that they are better than us. In a lot of ways, these people are a lot worse than us, doing and saying things from time to time that we would consider appalling or perhaps even unforgivable. No, they are paragons of the faith because God has chosen to make use of them anyway.
All those negative qualities, God looks past. They don’t matter. He saw in Peter and Paul something he could make incredible use of, in spite of their many flaws, in spite of the fact that they were scoundrels. And he came to each of them in their own way to call them to his service and to make use of them to transform this world. And transform it they did. They, in many ways, built the Church in which we live today. Their words continue to guide us on what it means to be a Christian, to be a follower of Christ. They are long dead, but their presence is felt here in this place even now.
But God’s work in this world did not end with them. Even now, he calls to his people, to each one who names him Lord, to do their part in continuing that work. To each one of us, he calls and says you have a part to play. And we may respond with a whole host of excuses as why we’re unworthy of such tasks. To our excuses, I suspect God laughs. He sent Jesus to live, die, and rise again to forgive our sins and our flaws. He called countless scoundrels to his service. Between those two things, our reasons for not heeding his call seem rather moot.
In a thousand years, there may be preachers that tell our stories of faith. And they will say it wasn’t because we were better than others that made us heroes. They will say we were far from perfect. But what made us what we are is that God believed in us enough to entrust us with his plan, even though we too are scoundrels. Amen.
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