We are so used to extraordinary complexity that we make little of it: the gifts  of sight, sound, speech, for example. Memory and imagination, color and feeling. And what of the complexity behind this gathering, the intricate network of circumstances and trifles that has brought us together into one house and community? It is a marvel of God. Surely a superb combination of human desire and divine design.

Did Peter just happen? And Paul? Was it fate, luck, chance, destiny that threw them together in the world's greatest enterprise? Or was it the fruit of God's maneuvering? Had they anything to do with it?

It is perhaps healthy sometimes to face the mysteries of our lives. As Christians we are willing and able to sense the providence of God in life. And yet doing as much does not take us very far. We still do not know how real we are and how real He is. It is to deal with what we call mystery in the classic sense: that is, truth beyond our comprehension, our full understanding. The mystery of Peter and Paul is no greater than our own.

What we really ought to understand is how great is our need for mysteries and the pondering of them. We are immortal. A simple enough statement, but a truth almost incomprehensible. And yet it is basic, elemental to any grasp of human existence.

And to stand in awe before unassailable truth is nurturing, is extremely healthy and health promoting. Just as to live indifferent to the mystical leads inevitably to sickness. The flight from the world of faith is disastrous.

Hence to look on Peter and Paul in some honesty is to tune in to the play of God in human history. Peter, an unlikely prospect for any serious endeavor: charming, generous, enthusiastic. But unsteady, fickle, cowardly. To him were entrusted the keys. And Paul, proud bigot, self-righteous, vindictive, posturing. Yet he was chosen to be apostle to the gentiles.

With such material the power of God made heroes. They were the very human foundation of a very human Church which is at once the presence and power of Christ on earth.

If all you see is reality, you do not see at all. If you are blind to the mystical dimension to the human scene, you might as well be physically blind for all the good it does you. We need and are nourished by the deeps of faith. This feast of Peter and Paul is a call to that.

Our liturgy this morning speaks of this. If our own worship deals in special clothes, and rites, ceremonial, in candle and cup, in wine and bows -- all in a special place by special people for a special reason -- so today's liturgy is doing as much even more emphatically for being unfamiliar and strange. All to break the bondage of the banal and commonplace, open us to the world of God and spirit.

We all have a hidden dimension more real than the obvious and visible. Our very being here is witness to that. Peter and Paul are two ordinary men caught up in a net of God's providence to be involved in the most sublime engagement on earth:  the Kingdom of God. Peter and Paul and what they were about will mean little to you unless you are open to the God active in your own human life. You are caught up in as glorious a business as Peter and Paul knew. The stakes are no less. The rewards are real.   Amen.