“To boldly go.”

Homily for the Feast of St Peter & St Paul                            24 June 2018
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

Eternal light, shine in our hearts. Eternal hope, lift up our eyes. Eternal power, be our support. Eternal wisdom, make us wise. Amen.

Derrick Johnson. Not a household name, but he aims to be one in the next decade or so, right up there with Christopher Columbus, Lewis and Clark, Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin.How? Johnson ─ along with about 200,000 others ─ has applied to be among the first cohort of humans not only to land on Mars, but to build a permanent, self-sustaining colony on the dusty hulk.

The name of the mission? Mars One. “One,” as in one-way. Yes, the privately-funded mission aims to launch the successful applicants into space, land them on Mars, and attempt to keep them alive for the length of their natural lives.

One-way. Exponentially cheaper than a round-trip.

That means Mars One has lots of critics. For example: Can it really be done on the shoe-string budget planned, they ask? Is it ethical? Is it a scam?

Let’s say it’s all on the up-and-up. Would you do it? Would you sign up for a one-way trip into the history books via Mars?

I suppose it would depend on a lot of factors: What you want to do with the rest of your life. The ties that bind (spouse, family, friends). The lure of fame or the gravitational pull of going boldly where no one has gone before.

A one-way, no-exit enterprise raises questions like that.

That’s why Derrick Johnson is beginning to get cold feet. That’s because ─ what else? ─ love. Johnson, now 32, wasn’t in love when he first applied for Mars One. Back then, he thought he would never fall in love, never find the “one.” But love ─ earth-bound Jonathan ─ has found Mars-bound Derrick Johnson. Aw-w-w-w-k-ward.

And now, in light of a love he never saw coming … in light of a law he never saw coming ─ equal marriage in all 50 states, thanks to five fair and forward-thinking justices on the Supreme Court almost three years ago to the day ─ in the event he makes the final Mars One cut, Derrick Johnson has to decide what he really, really wants to do with the rest of his life … what he really, really has to do.

In other words, while Johnson hasn’t yet resolved his dilemma, he’s discovered that bumping into the future ─ in his case, two competing futures ─ has a way of changing your life … changing your mind … changing the course of just about everything.

That’s Jesus’ point when he asks Peter once ─ twice ─ three times, “Peter, do you love me?” hitched once ─ twice ─ three times to Jesus’ invitation, “Follow me.” Why the repetition? It’s Jesus’ way of saying, “Follow me: It’s a one-way mission. What, then, do you want? What do you have to do?”

Peter doesn’t quite know what to think of the question. From where he stands, the future looks pretty good. The trauma of Good Friday is far, far behind him. He has just realized the perfect day: caught a mother lode of fish … on a glassy sea … dug into a steaming breakfast … on a pebbled shore … with each and every one of his best friends in the world. And with Jesus … alive once more!

Now, not all our tomorrows end in gloom-and-doom. I mean, sure, we don’t get out alive. But getting there isn’t necessarily a steady drumbeat of gloom-and-doom. Just the same, where will a one-way future lead Peter? Because, according to Jesus, all this, too, shall pass. “When you grow old,” Jesus suggests, “you will stretch out your hands, Peter ─ searching and unsteady ─ and someone else (a captor) will restrain you with a leather strap and drag you into a future not on your bucket list.” Destination, as it turned out? Death on a cross, like Jesus. Only, for Peter, hung upside down.

Of course, at this point, Peter doesn’t know the specifics of his less-than-rosy future, pushing him to determine, “What do I really, really want to do with the rest of my life? What do I have to do?”

It’s a question no less urgent for Paul, whose witness, ministry, and martyrdom we also commemorate today.

When we first meet Paul, the world is his oyster: Inquisitor-in-Chief commissioned to stamp out the early Christian sect. Stamp out any vestige of Christians. Period. And he’s very good at it ─ killing them, that is, without pity, without regret. With fanatical efficiency. Zero tolerance.

But if his victims are anything like the deacon Stephen — whose stoning Paul supervised … Stephen, who knew what he had to do and, even as life escaped him, prayed, “Lord do not hold this sin against them” ─ this prelude-to-holocaust must have taken its toll on Paul, eroded his confidence, challenged him to look at his victims as neighbor. Because he, too, soon comes to a point in his life ─ that point being the road to Damascus ─ Damascus, where he hoped to launch even more mayhem on the Christians there ─ Paul comes to the point where he must determine what he really, really wants to do with the rest of his life. What does he really, really has to do.

And being confronted by Jesus in a vision on that Damascus Road, as Paul describes it, that thoroughfare becomes a one-way wormhole into the future, because Paul knows that others will rise up to take his place to persecute ─ annihilate ─ him (the fresh-minted follower of Christ), as he has done to Christians. Hoisted on his own petard.

And so, like Peter, Paul chooses the costly one-way mission Jesus offers him.

The urgency of a one-way future, then, pushes each of us to ask: What do we really, really want to do with the rest of our life? What do we really, really have to do?

For example, it’s been a whiplash week for the victims of the Administration’s determination to halt the flow of immigrants across our southern border, engineering what one advisor has called a “final solution” … by scapegoating … by whipping up the base with a fiction: that the immigrants are murderers and rapists. If you can’t build a wall, erect a lie.

The whole situation is a bloody mess, with no one quite sure what the President’s executive order — reversing his earlier policy to separate children from parents criminally-charged for crossing the border — means.

Good news: Newly-charged immigrants won’t get their kids ripped out of their arms.

Bad news: They (the entire family) will be held indefinitely — and illegally — likely in our burgeoning internment-camp system.

Worse news: There’s no plan in place to reunite with their parents the roughly 2300 kids and infants already detained, triggering a crisis of soul-searching: What do we really want to do with the rest of their lives … lives condemned, at this point, to a future irreparably-scarred by the trauma of separation and no-end-in-sight incarceration? What do we have to do?

As followers of Jesus, then, we’ve got a problem. We believe that God dreams of a one-way future for each and all that’s designed to expand: Expand justice. Expand human dignity. Expand equality.

Factoid: This isn’t “fake news.” The prophet Micah himself describes that future: “Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly" — one step in front of the other into the future — "with God.”

Bonus factoid: That expansive future isn’t in God’s hands, despite what you were taught in Sunday School. That future is in our hands.

In other words, God’s justice didn’t come to a dead stop with the signing of that executive order banning future separation of kids from their parents. God’s justice will expand when we decide that we want what God wants: just and humane treatment for all families, especially families with their backs up against a wall of unimaginable violence in their home villages and neighborhoods.

God’s justice didn’t come to a dead stop with taking down Confederate flags and monuments to racism, relegating them to museums. God’s justice expands when we decide that we want what God wants:  the elimination of racism altogether, once and for all.

God’s justice didn’t come to a dead stop when equal marriage became the Law of the Land.  God’s justice will expand when, in the spirit of all Jesus stands for, we decide to march and fight, resist and vote to end altogether — in each of the 50 states — discrimination against LGBTs in housing and hiring and bathroom use and the purchase of wedding cakes and the death-by-a-thousand cuts of everyday bias so many of us experience.

Taken altogether, that’s an agenda that includes checking in first with Jesus when we espy the one-way destiny of days ahead. Consulting with Jesus, then ... Jesus — just up ahead — who asks each of us, “What do you really, really, want to do with the rest of your life? What do you have to do? Read: Follow me.”

That’s a one-way adventure Jesus guarantees that we and each and every one of our neighbors — not one person left out — can all live with.

Amen.