For The Sake of Others

On the first Sunday after Easter we came back to our reflections on 1 Peter. We have now come to the place in the letter where Peter begins to talk a great deal about relationships between Christians and those outside of the Christian faith. It is hard for us to imagine the situation these young Christians found themselves in. In their socio-cultural setting following Jesus meant certain persecution. Though it is unlikely that the persecution in this region of Asia Minor had taken a physical form at this point, following Jesus guaranteed that you would be discriminated against, ostracised, and forced to operate at the margins of society. You may recall from the introduction to 1 Peter this quote from Luke Johnson, but it might be good to have it set in our minds again: ".... martyrdom, after all, ha a certain clarity and comfort. Lines of allegiance are obvious. However difficult the choice, it need be made only once. But scorn and contempt are slow working acids that corrode individual and community identity. Social alienation is not a trivial form of suffering. persecution may bring death but with meaning. Societal scorn can threaten meaning itself, which is a more subtle death (Luke Timothy Johnson)." Remarkably, stunningly, it is into this setting that Peter exhorts his fellow Jesus-followers to love those who misunderstand and hate them. And the verses that we came to this week, 2:11-12, are an exhortation to Peter's people to live well for the sake of their non-Christian neighbors. However, we did not get into the meat of those verses because we did a little review.

What I wanted for us to be reminded of in the review was that the theme of loving others is at the heart of 1 Peter. By the time he comes to the sobering call to enemy-love, he has already laid out a deep theology of the pathos and proper end of God's love. God's love comes into the world for the purpose of establishing his divine image-bearers in a life-style of human flourishing, through placing us in a new community gathered around the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Conversion is turning away from a life of selfishness, shalom-breaking behavior, from all sin; and, a turning to Jesus in faith an repentance. Growing in Jesus' self-giving love animates growth in holiness so that holy living looks like people loving each other deeply from the heart (1:22 Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth* so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply* from the heart.* 23You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.) Though this reference is descriptive of the love that animates Christians in their relationships with each other, we are quickly reminded that the proper end of God's love is to be gifted to others in words and deeds. (2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,* in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.) We who have tasted that the Lord is good must now tell others! As priests we are to mediate God's presence to others. This is a sobering responsibility to be sure but not an impossible task, even for imperfect people (like all of us). What we are to be and do as priests is to use our stories to bear witness to God's healing work within us, our experience of his love. Richard Bauckham and Stephen Fowl are helpful here.... here are two quotes from these guys which bear on this discussion.

" It is the very nature of Christian truth that it cannot be enforced. Coerce belief and you destroy belief and turn the truth believed into a lie. Truth must be claimed in a way appropriate to the content of the truth.... The image the Bible itself often suggests is that of witness..... Witness is non-coercive. It has no power but the convincingness of the truth to which it witnesses. Witnesses are not expected, like lawyers, to persuade by the rhetorical power of their speeches, but simply to testify to the truth for which they are qualified to give evidence. But to be adequate witness to the truth of God and the world, witness must be a lived witness involving the whole of life and even death. And as such it can show itself to be not self-serving (Richard Bauckham, Bible and Mission)."

"we are reminded that.... compassion and mercy are necessary if Christians are to exercise forbearance and forgiveness/ For Christians, this is crucial because the quality of common life in Christ is not simply judged by the holiness of believers' lives (though that is certainly to be encouraged). Rather, Christian community is more definitively judged by the forgiveness that enables and calls Christians to be reconciled and reconciling people. Indeed, it is the quality that is most attractive to a broken and alienated world (Fowl)."

"In order that"... we may love others by telling our stories is how Peter puts it when he talks about our role in the world as God's people. However, in the next passage we encounter it is clear that mediating God to the world is not just about telling but also about living well and doing good for others. Unpacking verses 11 and 12 are for next week.

1. It was suggested in the homily that contemplation upon the pathos and purpose of God's love can be an enormous help to us when we think about our responsibility to others. I suggested that a good way of thinking about the proper end, or telos, of God's love is to understand that it desires to be received, it desires to renew, it desires to transform and then it wants to be given away. Caroline Simon from Hope College puts it this way: "knowing and loving our neighbors and friends is caught up in a sacred tangle of knowing and loving God." How might this thought inform the way you approach your prayers of petition and confession?

2. The idea of being a witness for Jesus can be a bit off-putting to many of us. Name some of the familiar and maybe not-so-familiar reasons for that. Keeping the quotes from Bauckham and Fowl in mind (from above), can you think of a more natural way you might approach being a witness to the gospel for the sake of others?