Two pillars of the Church

A sermon for the Feast of Ss Peter and Paul, preached by Fr Christopher Woods in St Barnabas Oxford on 28 June 2026

There is a tradition in the Church - you can trace it back at least to Leo the Great in the 5th Century - of speaking of Peter and Paul together as the twin pillars on which the Church stands. They are not rivals and they do not compete. Rather, they are two faces of the same apostolic vocation and two lights from the same fire. Yet these are very different men, with different temperaments, different callings, different wounds, different gifts. But together they show us something essential about the Church: that the Church is not built on one kind of personality, one kind of holiness, one kind of ministry, or one kind of courage. The Church is built on Christ; and Christ calls many different people into one apostolic faith.

Peter is the rock and Paul is the missionary. Peter is the one who confesses: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Paul is the one who spends himself carrying that confession to the nations. Peter receives the keys of the kingdom, Paul proclaims the Gospel in season and out of season, until he can say genuinely, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

The New Testament is honest that they did not always find one another easy. Paul tells us in the Letter to the Galatians that he once opposed Peter “to his face.” The early Church did not brush this under the carpet. It did not pretend that apostolic life was a sentimental friendship group in which everyone always agreed. Peter and Paul were united not because they had identical temperaments, but because they had been seized by the same Lord.

That is an important word for any group, community or parish. We are not called to be uniform. We are called to be faithful.

In the Gospel, Jesus asks the disciples a question: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” They give the answers that are circulating around them. John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. Then Jesus presses deeper: “But who do you say that I am?”

That is the question beneath every Christian life. Not simply, what do other people say about Jesus? Not simply, what does the culture say? Not simply, what did I once learn, or inherit, or assume? But: who do you say that I am?

Peter answers: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

It is a glorious answer, and yet we know that Peter does not fully understand it yet. Very soon after this, when Jesus speaks of suffering and death, Peter resists him. Peter can confess Christ with his lips before he has fully allowed the pattern of Christ to shape his imagination. He has the right words, but he still has to learn the way of the cross.

There is something merciful in that. Peter’s greatness is not that he is flawless. Peter’s greatness is that, having made mistakes, having denied Jesus three times, having wept bitterly, he is still drawn back into God’s love. The rock of the Church is not a man of unbroken confidence. The rock of the Church is someone who has discovered that Christ’s mercy is stronger than his fear.

In Acts, we see Peter in prison. Herod has already killed James. Peter is chained between soldiers. The situation is dark, violent, and apparently hopeless. And then, quietly, wonderfully, the angel of the Lord appears. The chains fall away. Peter is led out into freedom. At first, he thinks he is seeing a vision. Only afterwards does he realise: “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me.”

This is not a childish story about escape from every difficulty. The same passage reminds us that James has been killed. The Church is not promised safety from suffering. Peter himself will one day die as a martyr. Paul will write from the edge of death. The deep truth is that no prison, no empire, no violence, no failure, and no fear can finally imprison the Gospel of Christ.

Paul, in the second reading, speaks as a man at the end of his life. “I am already being poured out as a libation.” It is a haunting phrase.

Paul shows us what it means for the Gospel to move outwards. Peter gives voice to the confession of the Church; Paul carries that confession across boundaries. Across culture, language, class, geography, religious inheritance. Paul refuses to let the Gospel become the private possession of one group. In Christ, the old walls are broken down. The outsider is welcomed. The stranger is no longer a stranger. Grace is wider than we imagined.

And of course, Paul’s own story makes that Gospel credible. He had once persecuted the Church. He had once been violent in his certainty. Yet Christ met him on the road and remade him. Paul never forgot that he lived by mercy. His authority came not from being right all along, but from having been converted.

That may be one of the most urgent lessons Peter and Paul give to the Church now. The Church does not need more brittle and defensive certainty. It needs deeper conversion. It needs people who can confess Christ with Peter and be changed by Christ with Paul. It needs people who know the faith, but who also know that they are still being converted by the faith.

Peter without Paul can become too settled, too cautious, too concerned with preserving the centre. Paul without Peter can become rootless, restless, untethered from the common faith of the Church. But Peter and Paul together give us a Church that is both grounded and sent; both rooted and adventurous; both sacramental and missionary; both faithful to what has been received and open to what the Spirit is doing next.

That is not a bad vision for the parish. We need the courage of Peter: the courage to say clearly and joyfully that Jesus Christ is Lord, the Son of the living God. We need the energy of Paul: the courage to carry that faith beyond the walls, beyond the familiar, beyond the already convinced.

But today, especially, the Church places Peter and Paul before us and says: remember them together.

May Christ give us strength. May he free us where we are imprisoned by fear. May he convert us where we are hardened by certainty. May he ground us in the apostolic faith of Peter. May he send us out with the apostolic courage of Paul. And may we live for the glory of the living God. Amen.