Walk in the Way of the Lord
June 28, 2026 • Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul • Pride Eucharist
Ezekiel 34:11-16 | Psalm 87 | 2 Timothy 4:1-8 | John 21:15-19
We gather this evening having spent the week in celebration of Love, The Episcopal Church’s 50th year of being affirming, and our growing coalition of affirming churches, sharing the love of God for all during Pride. In our Church, we believe at our core that our Creator is the source of love, delights in our love bringing us into union, and commands us to love one another. No exceptions. Whether we know and live this joyously in our life or come cautiously with a battered soul, wounded heart, or scarred body, here we are collected like chicks under the wings of a mother hen or like sheep called by name, recognized by our uniqueness and protected by our good shepherd. We are known. We are safe. We are loved. In this wildly uncertain life, we’ll bask in this moment with such assurance.
On the way back to my car following the Trans March, I smiled at a man on a razor scooter. He paused, told me that people vibrate at different frequencies and that he could tell that I would talk with him and knew that I would listen. He referenced a Bible verse, unsure if he got the words right, and I told him I didn’t know the Bible as well as I probably should. He glanced at my collar and looked at me incredulously, saying, “Would you rather know the Bible or walk in the way of the Lord?” I confirmed the latter, thinking of the line attributed to St. Francis: “Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”
I recall that moment as we commemorate the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul. Each of them has their own feast day: the Confession of St. Peter on January 18th and the Conversion of St. Paul on January 25th. Both are remembered together on this date as one feast, presumably because they were both martyred around the year 64 under the persecution of Nero, under secular Roman authority. [1] Our collect notes that they “glorified (God) by their martyrdom.”
For those of us who have friends or family who have died at the hands of violence, please know that we do not condone state-sanctioned violence. For those who have experienced, witnessed, or have empathy for all who have been bullied, tortured, or in any way persecuted or ostracized for being who they are even to the point of despair or suicide, know that we grieve with you . . . and mourn for them. For we do not glorify God in our death. We glorify God in our life, in our living. We glorify God as we seek and follow paths of liberation for ourselves and others. We glorify God in our love. Peter and Paul glorified God because they never renounced their faith. They remained faithful to God, not the powers and principalities, and through their faith they knew that death did not have the last word. While their own words hadn’t been canonized yet in the Bible, they were walking faithfully in the way of Christ, even if it’s not where they started.
Consider Peter, who repeatedly shows us he’s a clumsy disciple–literally when he fails after trying to walk on water and mostly in the way his foot finds its way to his mouth as he speaks quickly, spouting out the first thing that comes to his mind. He’s not always wrong; he was early to recognize Jesus as Lord. But it seems Peter, eager as he is, gets more looks or eye rolls from Jesus than most. He even gets outright rebuked by Jesus.
Peter is not perfect as a disciple, and perhaps no other depiction portrays it as well as the night of Jesus’ arrest. At their supper, the last one for Jesus in this lifetime, Jesus foretold that Peter would betray him before the cock crowed. Surely not! Peter would go where he goes! And yet, before the cock crowed, Peter had indeed denied Jesus thrice. Upon hearing the crowing Peter realized what he had done, how Jesus knew it would be so, and Peter wept.
So in his resurrection appearance we heard tonight, when after breakfast Jesus asked Peter the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt. Activated to remember the night of his threefold betrayal, Peter knows that Jesus knows him better than he knows himself. Jesus calls him Simon not to dead-name him but as if to say, “this is who you are, Simon son of John. If I am to call you Peter, the rock upon which the Church will be built, I need to know that you do love me, that you are who you are, who you are called to be.” With Peter’s affirmation he gets the charges to feed Jesus’s lambs, to tend and feed Jesus’s sheep. Jesus instructs Peter in how he will shepherd the faithful going forward, how he will live and teach in life and example what it is to follow in the way of Jesus. And we don’t have a record of Peter stumbling again. Faithfully he follows Jesus, even to death on a cross, though inverted so as not to die as Jesus did.
Perhaps Paul was even more imperfect than Peter in that he was zealous in his persecution of those who followed Jesus, being the righteous, blameless leader he was. He followed the Jewish law flawlessly. He knew right from wrong, and there were no deviations . . . until he was blinded by the light, literally blinded on the road to Damascus.
Restored to sight by the one chosen by God, Saul or Paul as he was called saw the new life before him, saw the path to salvation through Christ, and saw clearly his mission to preach to all who would listen, especially the Gentiles, the non-Jews. Paul would travel far and wide to share the good news, justification by faith, encouragement in times of trial and persecution. Others would write in his name, and eventually others would translate his words to match their own agendas. Even as Paul continued to refine his theology as he continued along his way, he never wavered in his full conviction of his belief in Jesus Christ and the grace and mercy of God.
My own Baptist background jades my perception of Paul. Often it was Paul’s words, or words attributed to Paul, that were belted at the congregation, while Jesus’s remained in their red letters in our open Bibles. Trusting that Paul did not bring violence with him when he went to new regions takes a belief that his conversion was all-consuming. Believing that he used his rhetoric and skill to weave eloquent speeches truly to share good news with folks with no other agenda than to provide for them a new way asks of us as much trust as his original audience. As much as Saul had destroyed earlier followers of the Way, so Paul worked relentlessly and passionately to spread the news of Jesus Christ. Rarely did he go alone, always recruiting others to accompany him, making friends and enemies alike along the way, until he, too, is killed. As a Roman citizen, he is executed by sword.
On that morning on the beach after breakfast, Jesus doesn’t hold back in describing the death that Peter would die. Even when doing the work we are called to do, living into who we are created to be, our lives can be hard, the world not understanding or even dismissive, at worst destructive. But our way forward is clear. We are to take care of one another–making sure we are all fed and well-tended. We are to continue to grow, filled with the message of the goodness, love, provision, and grace of God. So nourished, we can indeed walk in the way of the Lord, vibrating with the frequency that others may recognize as familiar, as one whose life is transformed by the true love of God.
~The Rev. Sara Milford
[1] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/lectionary/peter-paul/