Thinking allowed

St Peter and St Paul: 29 June 2025

Read­ings: Acts 12.1–11; Psalm 125; 2 Timothy 4.6–8, 17, 18; Mat­thew 16.13–19

May the words of my mouth
and the med­it­a­tion of my heart
be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

I won­der if you’ve ever been to Rome.

It’s some­where I’ve been sev­er­al times,
and one of the things I have done each trip
is vis­it the Vatican
and climb up the dome of the great basilica there.

It’s a bit of a slog,
some 500 steps to the top,
but when you get up there
you are rewarded
with some won­der­ful pan­or­amic views across the city.

And you can also access the gallery
that runs around inside the dome.
From there
you get some really impress­ive views of the interi­or.

One thing you can see close up, for example,
is a Lat­in inscription
that runs full-circle around the dome.
In giant let­ter­ing it begins: “Tu es Petrus …”.
I’ll come back to these words in a moment.

Look­ing down from the dome of St Peter’s. [Photo: Simon Ker­shaw, 2004]

But first
– if you’re not too bothered about the height –
per­haps you can look straight down.
It’s a rather dizzy­ing couple of hun­dred feet
but there beneath you
is the high altar,
with its great bal­dachino or can­opy by Bernini.

And right in front of that altar
there’s a semi-circle of steps
lead­ing fur­ther down,
down beneath the floor of the church.

Now these steps aren’t access­ible to the public.
But if you could go down them,
and under the high altar,
you’d find yourself
stand­ing among the remains
of an ancient Roman cemetery.

Because those steps take you down
to the site of the tomb of St Peter.
Of course, the church we see today
was com­pletely rebuilt
some 4 or 500 years ago,
in the flam­boy­ant baroque style.
But they rebuilt it
on exactly the same site
as the pre­vi­ous church,
with the high altar
in exactly the same place as before.

Sec­tion show­ing the vari­ous altars and floor levels and their rela­tion to the tomb of St Peter. [Litur­gic­al Arts Journal]

That first church had been built
over a thou­sand years earlier,
in the 300s,
as soon as Chris­tian­ity had been legalized.
It was built
– with con­sid­er­able difficulty –
right on top of this ancient Roman cemetery;
and awkwardly,
on the side of a hill;

Cross sec­tions through St Peter’s. [From The Tombs of St Peter and St Paul, by Engle­bert Kirschbaum, 1959]

Interi­or elev­a­tion of St Peter’s show­ing also the floor level of the Con­stantini­an basilica, and the nec­ro­pol­is or buri­al area beneath. [From The Nec­ro­pol­is under St Peter’s Basilica in the Vat­ic­an, by Pietro Zander, 2009]

all care­fully positioned
so that the high altar
was dir­ectly over
one par­tic­u­lar tomb*.

And next to this cemetery
there had been an arena,
the Cir­cus of Nero,
and that’s where many early Christians
had been put to death,
accused by Nero
of caus­ing the great fire of Rome.

Peter him­self was among those executed,
said to have been crucified
– cru­ci­fied upside-down accord­ing to tradition.
Paul was a Roman cit­izen though,
so he was spared crucifixion
– he was beheaded
(and buried)
else­where in the city.
Oth­er Chris­ti­ans were roun­ded up
and put to death in the arena:
torn apart by wild beasts,
or forced to fight to the death as gladiators,
burned alive,
or killed in some oth­er bar­bar­ic Roman spectacle.

And it is
this first great persecution
– the mar­tyr­dom of Peter and Paul and many others –
that we are remem­ber­ing today.
It is those mar­tyrs, Peter, Paul and the others,
that we commemorate
and hold in great honour.

It was prob­ably around the year 64,
so just 30 years or thereabouts
after Jesus had walked around Galilee
and come to Caesarea Philippi.

And we heard a bit about that
in today’s gos­pel reading.
Peter,
Simon Peter,
at Caesarea Philippi
acclaim­ing Jesus as the Messiah.
You can sort of ima­gine him blurt­ing it out, can­’t you?
The first per­son to put into words
what he, and per­haps others,
had been thinking.

And Jesus recog­nizes the leap that Simon Peter has made.

This is when Jesus gives him the nickname:
“Rock”, which of course is what “Peter” means.
“You are the rock,”
he says to him
– “you are Peter”.
Remem­ber that inscrip­tion around the dome at the Vatican?
This is the verse that it quotes, in Latin:
“Tu es Pet­rus”, “you are Peter”.

And in the 30 years or so
since that moment at Caesarea Philippi,
first Peter, the rock, and then Paul
had built the early church
from tiny beginnings
to some­thing that was start­ing to be noticed
– even in the heart of the Roman Empire.

Because these Chris­ti­ans were a bit different
from your every­day Roman.
They did­n’t join in things
that good Romans were sup­posed to do,
like … sac­ri­fi­cing at the temples,
or con­sid­er­ing the emper­or to be a god.
And although a few of them were wealthy,
many were slaves or ex-slaves
or very def­in­itely among the poor and oppressed.

Because it was often among
the poor and the oppressed
that Peter and Paul
and others
preached the good news of the king­dom of God.
“Blessed are the poor, the hungry,
the sick, the persecuted”
Jesus had said
– that’s def­in­itely good news when you are poor and oppressed.

Per­haps this mes­sage of hope
(and – dare I say it? –
social revolution?)
was already caus­ing a stir in Roman society.
There must have been some­thing they were doing
that attrac­ted the atten­tion of the rul­ing class
– of the Emper­or Nero,
when he was look­ing for someone to blame
for that dis­astrous fire.

And I won­der to what extent
this mes­sage of hope
and social revolution –
can still cause a stir in our mod­ern society.
Or have we made it so bland,
or so other-worldly,
that it simply does­n’t impinge
on the thoughts of our fel­low citizens?
Most of them have not just giv­en up believing,
they have even giv­en up dis­be­liev­ing
– they just don’t care.

But as Christians
it is our job to care.

Peter and Paul,
as we have heard,
were mar­tyrs,
a Greek word mean­ing wit­nesses.
In their life
and
by their death
they and oth­ers were witnesses:
wit­nesses to the recon­cil­ing love of God,
wit­nesses to the good news
of the rule of God that Jesus had proclaimed.

And just like Peter, just like Paul,
we too are witnesses.
We are God’s witnesses
here in St Ives in 2025.
We are the ones
tasked with rep­res­ent­ing God –
rep­res­ent­ing God
to the world in which we live.
We are the ones
who are called to bear witness
to what God has done in our lives.
To bear witness
to what Jesus means in our lives.

Now I trust and hope that none of us
will be called to bear witness
in the face of per­se­cu­tion and viol­ent death.
So we will not be martyrs
in the way that the word is used nowadays.
We will not be mar­tyrs like Peter and Paul.
But we can be God’s witnesses
among our friends and family,
our acquaint­ances and colleagues,
and those we meet.
Does that sound a daunt­ing task?
Well, maybe it does, yes!
So, let’s start with something
any of us can do.

Let’s think for a moment.

Do you have a ready answer
when someone asks
what do you do on a Sunday morning?
Do you have a ready answer
when someone asks why do you go to church?
Do you have a ready answer
if someone asks you about Jesus?

If I’m hon­est, I’m not sure I do.
So my chal­lenge to each one of us is this:
find time this week to spend a few minutes
con­sid­er­ing how you would answer those questions
– in just a short sen­tence or two.
How you might answer those questions
in a way that encour­ages engage­ment and fur­ther interest.

And little by little,
per­son by person,
we will,
like Peter and Paul
and all the saints before us,
help to build God’s kingdom
here on earth
as it is in heaven.

Amen.


* This is a slight over-sim­pli­fic­a­tion. In the first Church, as ori­gin­ally built under Con­stantine, the tomb was vis­ible. It was Gregory the Great (in about 594) who raised the floor of the sanc­tu­ary by sev­er­al feet and placed the altar over the tomb. That altar was at a level sev­er­al feet below the floor of the rebuilt basilica that we see today.

 

 

 

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