John 21: 15, 16, 17; Acts 9:3,4

Between Peter and Paul

Dear friends,

What do you think of the following:  “There are two kinds of people, those who make your life easy and those who make your life hard;…., those who finish what they start and so on. — Robert Byrne …those who do the work and those who take the credit. He (my grandfather) told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition. — Indira Gandhi; …… — those who love and build and those who hate and destroy. — Jose Marti; … the ones that suck the life out of every day, and the ones that let every day suck the life out of them. — ; and.. those who want this country for themselves and those who want it for everyone. — Bill Purdin. … some willing to work and the rest willing to let them.– Robert Frost; ….. those who go ahead and do something, and those who sit still and inquire, ‘Why wasn’t it done the other way?’ — Oliver Wendell Holmes. …: those who love to talk, and those who hate to listen. — James Thorpe; ..those who walk into a room and say, “There you are” — and those who say, “Here I am!” — Abigail Van Buren; There are THREE  kinds of people in the world: those who can’t stand Picasso, those who can’t stand Raphael, and those who’ve never heard of either of them. — John White; … the have’s, the have-not’s, and the have-not-paid-for-what-they-have’s. — Earl Wilson; …. 1. Those who make things happen, 2. Those who watch things happen, 3. And those who wonder what’s happening. – Anonymous; ….. those that are immovable, those that are movable and those that move; — Benjamin Franklin; And then there are “four kinds”s of people.. ..cop-outs, hold-outs, drop-outs, and all-outs. “– Robert Schuller.

Friends, that list went on for quite a while. I wanted to make a point. This is how we humans are often programmed to think.   But I left out one….those who divide people into two types and those who don’t ,” Edward A. Murphy.  Let’s be honest, when we hear this list we thought:”yeah, that’s right. “ At least with a number of them. And that’s because there is SOME truth in them.

We have talked about Peter and Paul.  We have talked about complex their personalities were.  Where would they fit in each of those typologies?  It’s not that easy is it.  Or let me ask you: “where would you fit in?  You know yourselves pretty well, but even that’s not that easy.  It’s because we are complicated. We bring our personality, our personal history, our upbringing and the experiences of one day and what it has done to us and we act or do not act, we speak or do not speak.  And when someone pegs us as a certain type, we protest and we say:”that wasn’t really me. That was an exception.” Peter is the beloved disciple, the rock, both in Aramaic as in Greek.  He was passionate, sincere, cowardly, but died a hero’s death in Rome, supposedly crucified upside down. His faith was great and it was puny. He loved Jesus deeply, but he also betrayed Him.  He was a towering figure with glaring flaws.  Paul was tireless and tenacious in everything he did: persecute Christians and make converts.  He was articulate and humble, insecure and boastful.  He was Roman and Jew and a native of present day Turkey.  He did all his work at great cost to himself without ever having met Jesus in person.  Perhaps in response to my description, each would have said: ”that wasn’t really me. That was an exception.”

Friends, what makes us want to have a simplistic picture of people? Why do we have such a simplistic view of ourselves? The people who love us the most or who are closest to us can tell give us the full picture we don’t want to see.  The reality is that we all want some credit but we seldom want it all the time.  The reality is that sometimes we are ready to move and sometimes we are immovable. The reality is that the people who make our life easy can also be the one who make our life hard. The reality is that sometimes people are willing to work and sometimes they are not.  Seldom are all people lazy all the time.

Friends I like to think that who we are is like a jagged mosaic, not a glossy touched up picture. There are these uneven, sharp edged pieces of glass of different thickness and in varying colors.  They are pieces of who we are and who we have been.  We never quite put them together perhaps, but they exist in a panel of who we are, a small red piece next to a large blue piece etc. This is the true picture of who we are: this jagged panel, haphazardly glued together.  But you know what, when you hold that panel, and none is alike, up to the light, it creates a special, unique quality of light.  Peter is richer to us because of all the jagged pieces, some shoved in the corner and Paul is more meaningful to us because of his complexity.  The light of God’s grace through their lives has a unique quality. This is true of us also.  So, friends, when you look at yourselves, see the whole picture.  When you look at others you meet, see all of the light. May God give us vision.