The Eyes of the Lord are on the Righteous

please excuse what are probably a ridiculous number of typos.... very busy day....

We have come to a place in 1 Peter where some of the themes we met earlier in the letter come into focus again around the issue of suffering for one's relationship with Christ. Upon their conversion, Peter's brothers and sisters in Western Asia Minor found themselves immediately disenfranchised from the Roman social order; we think for the most part they would have experienced the sort of ostracising that would have moved them to the margins of society. The questions on every one's minds in this scenario would have probably been something like these: What have I gotten myself into? Is my experience with God and this new community of church real, genuine and worth the suffering I have now experienced? Why does God not vindicate his followers? I suggest these sorts of questions because it seems to me that these are the kinds of questions he is answering in his letter.


Early in the letter, Peter employs the categories of exile and alien (1:1, 2:11) to his brothers and sisters. In so doing he wants them to understand their role in the world as one which is connected to God's redemptive work in the world from the beginning of time. Abraham was a stranger, a wanderer, an exile when God worked through him to establish Israel; Israel had no home in Egypt but God redeemed them and gave them a home; and when Israel was exiled due to apostasy God did not abandon her but made promises of redemption to her. It is this latter period that Peter actually names at the beginning of his letter when he greets them as exiles of the dispersion (or, diaspora). So, remarkably and startlingly, Peter encourages these Gentile converts to see themselves as a new addition to God's ancient people; as such, they are the ones who are inheriting God's promises and through whom God is working to bring redemption to the world. They are a royal priesthood and a holy nation and are meant to mediate God's presence to the world in words and deeds (2:9-12). So, the answer to the question, what have I gotten myself into? is that they have gotten themselves into the mainstream of God's redemptive work in the world. Is the new community gathered around the resurrected Jesus real, genuine, and worth the suffering? Yes! Because of Jesus' resurrection (1:3) they and we are to believe that the darkness and evil of this world has been judged by God and has no future in God's world to come. Life apart from Christ is characterized as futility and like the grass and flower, will fade. God's work through Christ, though, endures forever (1:17-22). The stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone (2:8,9). Why does not vindicate his followers? The answer to this question leads us to the verses we took up this Sunday and will consider again next Sunday.


In 3:8-18, Peter encourages the community to understand their suffering as itself a sign of their vindication - a bizarre notion and completely ridiculous if not for the resurrection, and we think here of the words of theologian Robert Jensen: "Jesus resurrection makes possible saying yes to ways of living that simply make no sense otherwise". One of the great themes of the OT is the suffering of the righteous and the promise of God's vindication of them. Peter invokes this theme in his citation of Psalm 34: "For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil." But he follows this with a rhetorical question which invites his audience to see themselves as the righteous upon whom the Lord's eyes rest, while simultaneously suggesting that vindication is tied fundamentally to identification with Christ and his mission in this world - not with the absence of suffering at the hands of the evil. "Who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?" Well, lots of people will which gives rise to the occasions Peter addresses in the previous verses (i.e. do not return evil for evil but good for evil, etc.). Peter's main point here is to continue to help his people to have a deeper conversion of their imagination. Here Joel Green's words are helpful:


"The issue is this: life-events do not come with self-contained and immediately obvious interpretations; rather we conceptualize them in terms of imaginative structures that we take to be true, normal, and good. As a rule the world at large casts a thick dark cloud of despair over experiences of suffering, distress, trials and alien status. Peter insists that such experiences on the part of his audience must be read according to a radically different pattern of thought - one that grows out of new birth."


So here, we are taught to read the proverbial language of the OT with a conversion of the imagination, specifically through the lens of suffering with Jesus as we live out his mission in a world that still opposes his righteousness. God does vindicate the righteous and his eyes are on them but, as we mentioned before suffering for one's association with Christ becomes the sign of vindication; the proberbial language of God's protection of the good is given a gospel saturated meaning, because the axioms articulated here find their center in a recalibration of the universe - a recalibration for which there is evidence in the OT of the long tradition of the suffering of the righteous, and which has now received the divine imprimatur in the life. death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Green)."


For these early Christians to whom Peter is writing, they were able to ascertain quite quickly that their new lives were against the stream of the broader society and culture. The culture told them by marginalizing them and subjecting them to opposition. This is not so much the case for us in our situation in our socio-cultural setting. Not to belittle the suffering that many have received through being rejected by their families and friends because of their faith in Christ but we simply do not have anywhere near the same experience that the early Christians did. So, I would argue that the onus is on us to be careful and prayerful as we think about what it means for us to be faithful to Christ within our own cultural setting. It is to this question that we will turn next week.


Questions for discussion:


1. What practices and habits should a Christian engage in regularly to assist her in an ongoing conversion of the imagination? Do you feel that you are where you need to be with these practices and habits?


2. What are some examples of sins that we might easily overlook because there is not as much social pressure on us to recognize our the ways in which we are to be counter-cultural? For example, in Peter's world to confess Jesus as savior and Lord was to immediately blaspheme the emperor and put one's self in peril. Hence, one was always aware of one's loyalties. For us, we are in no great peril from our government when we confess Jesus as savior and Lord. What sorts of things might we not see because of that?


3. The church often treats single people like people who aren't married yet and families are held up as a model of human flourishing in a way that it seems like family life is the preferred way to serve the Lord. Do you think the church has not understood how to swim against the stream in this category?

Loving Enemies For God's Sake

We continued our reflections on 1 Peter 2 and 3 again this week. For my point of departure I referred back to the imaginative and challenging words of last week's preacher, Aaron Kuecker. Peter wanted his fellow Jesus-followers to train each other to ask themselves tough, mission driven, gospel focused questions when they considered how to respond to those who had authority over them. Aaron suggested that Peter wanted his people, in the face of criticism and oppression, when imagining how they might respond, to ask themselves questions like this: " 'What is best for the Gospel?' Or, put more provocatively and to the point, 'What is best for my enemy?' (Kuecker)."

As I write this recap, I wonder how many of us at Grace have grown tired of hearing homilies and reflections on Jesus' call to love our enemies? We have been talking about it for a while. Some of us may be asking ourselves, "is this aspect of the Gospel being overemphasized in our community?". Good question. I have been asking myself that question recently. The issue at hand, however, is that Peter, in 1 Peter, makes this issue a major concern. The call to ".... stumble in the footsteps of the enemy-loving God.... (Volf)", is on the top of Peter's mind as he pictures the priestly role of the Christian community as the mediator of God to the world. So, we'll linger on this important topic as long as Peter does, as we continue to move through the study of this epistle.

There is a sense in which Jesus' call to love our enemies should make us uncomfortable - but uncomfortable in a good way. Really - who can hear these words and not be taken aback? "But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful (Luke 6:35....)." Kind to the wicked?! Yes. This is the way God is and it is the way we are to strive to be.

There is much talk in the church today about the need to be missonal. Many are making the very helpful argument that the only way for the church in the West to experience revival is by understanding that it exists not for itself but to demonstrate God's love in word and deed to those who have not yet heard, experienced, and become convinced of God's love for them. This is all very helpful. However, at the core of what it means to be missonal is to know how to love and bless one's enemies and I don't hear this talked about enough. In a world where people are becoming each other's enemies increasingly and at an increasing rate, loving and blessing our enemies may very well be the most important thing we Christians are known for. This might be the unique prophetic word that, in our generation, can awaken the life-giving collision between the powers of darkness and the light of the Gospel. This may be the message which when enacted, to paraphrase Kierkegaard, will preach to life the possibility of offense. For, "nly the possibility of offense (the antidote to the apologists' sleeping potion) is able to waken those who have fallen asleep, is able to break the spell so that Christianity is itself again (Kierkegaard)."

So, we live out the story of God's love for the whole world when we bless our enemies; and we practice enemy-love for the sake of the enemy coming to know God. We must take care, however, not to think of this approach as a missionary strategy or methodology. As Stanley Hauerwas puts it: "The basis for the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is not what works but rather the way God is..... God is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish." Loving and blessing one's enemies is "the missionary side of following in the footsteps of the crucified Messiah..... It is..... part and parcel of Christian identity itself (Volf)". This is an identity we seek to acquire, as individuals and corporately as a church community, as Christ is formed in us. When we become more at home with the notion that this way of life is not a stratagem but simply how God shows his love to the world we are much more likely to be a community of people who point away from themselves and towards the God who reveals himself in Jesus Christ.

Questions for discussion:

1. This came up in another recap some time ago but I think it is one of those questions that gets us thinking about issues of spiritual formation in such a deep and meaningful way that it bears asking again in the context of the discussion above. My minister friend Cuck DeGroat at City Church, San Francisco has urged us to see that "enemy love" is necessary when dealing with ourselves. "I’ve seen healing and transformation when men and women begin to love their enemies, even their inner enemies. These unreconciled parts of ourselves which live in extreme conflict cannot thrive.... And like the Prodigal Son and his Elder Brother, they need to be invited to a feast of reconciliation and redemption. You can only thrive as you become the Father in the great story, as the new and redeemed self led by Christ races out to both the Prodigal and the Elder Sons with an embrace of love and compassion. Transformation begins when you kiss the demon on the lips (DeGroat)". What do you make of Chuck's remarks? Do you find them helpful? Do you think you do pretty good job of preaching the Gospel to yourself?

2. On Sunday I said that if you pull the strand that is God's call to love our enemies out of the Gospel that the whole garment will come unraveled. Can you think of ways in which your experience of God's grace and love has been diminished by a refusal to bless, pray for, or love an enemy?

3. Why is it important that, in the words of Kierkegaard, the Gospel give offense, creating collisions between how the world thinks and how God is?

4. Why is it important to draw a distinction between strategy and identity when it comes to practicing enemy-love?

Walking With The Grain Of the Universe

The Following is an excerpt from the sermon preached at Grace by Dr. Aaron Kuecker.

The sections of 1 Peter that comprised our readings this morning are marked off by a set of bookends. Listen to how similar these texts from 2.12 and 3.16 sound:

1 Peter 2:12 12 Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.

1 Peter 3:16 - Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.

There’s no question that the communities receiving this letter from Peter are undergoing some sort of suffering because of their identification with Jesus. In this section, Peter creates a set of bookends that say, basically, do honorable deeds/good conduct so that those who are against you might see something of God. In other words – and this seems pretty incredible to me – in the midst of very real social pressure, Peter imagines that the orienting posture of the community should be a posture that is missional – concerned for the sake of the other, even the dangerous other.

Within these missional bookends, we can think of five little books:

* On the outer edge, instructions to all people to treat everyone honorably (oh, even the emperor), and to do acts of enemy love rather than retaliation.
* One move inward are two other books that give particular examples of just how to live honorably in a hostile environment and just how to love enemies – those are instructions to slaves, wives, and husbands.
* At the center of the bookshelf is the book that (if I can mix metaphors) forms the center of gravity for the books around it. That book tells us that Jesus’ righteous suffering both set people free from the power of sin and death and formed an example to be followed in hostile contexts.

The way this sort of literary construction works in the ancient world is that the center point – Jesus’ cruciform life, in our case – gives meaning and content to the rest of the section. So all I want to note is that, at the center of this section detailing concern for enemies in the midst of persecution, the definitive clue is the cross-shaped life of Jesus. This is the community shaping practice to which Peter will call his community. This is the posture the text presses us toward.

Here already we can make a fundamentally important point about our more particular text: the core concern of this part of the letter – with regard to those who do not know Jesus – is to seek their good. Thus, we can categorically rule out readings of this text that suggest that the faithful response of wives to husbands is to endure abuse. And here is the reason, it is never for the good of my neighbor to enable their pathologies or their endurance in a twisted and broken way of living. So, where emotional or physical violence enters into marriage relationships, the loving option is clearly not just to enable the aggressor to persist. That isn’t really the issue Peter is dealing with here – but I think it is clear that Jesus doesn’t love by allowing people to remain broken. There is much more to be said here – but it should at least be said strongly that allowing someone to abuse you does them no favors, it is not love, it only allows them to further diminish themselves.

Reading the Text:

When Peter addresses the household here, it is clear that he is addressing households in which only the wife is a Christian. Just as was the case with Jesus’ ministry, it appears that here, too, women were the quickest to see and understand the truth of the gospel. As people whose identity as ‘strangers’ and ‘sojourners’ is deeply evident in their own homes, women here – for Peter – are primary examples of how one should “live honorably” for the sake of the Gentiles. In this way, it becomes somewhat apparent that these instructions are not based on Peter’s ideas of inherent differentials in status between men and women. Instead, Peter is helping his community deal with the social structures of power.

Peter’s first word to wives is “in the same way…” And the most immediate point of contact is with the story of Jesus situated just prior to this section. Just as Jesus exercised his freedom and power in self-giving love for the sake of those who were against him (and even though it came at great cost), in the same way – wives – submit to the authority of your husbands. That “submit” word is a hard word – and it takes real care to read it. Here’s what it does not mean: Submit – hupotasso – does not mean unquestioned obedience by virtue of one’s inherently inferior position. Peter actually has another word for that – and we usually translate it “obey” and it is this word that describes our response to Jesus, to the Gospel, to truth. Peter is not reinforcing Roman household ideals here – but rather subverting them in careful and cagy ways. New Testament scholar Joel Green suggests that “submit” here is best considered as the opposite of “withdrawal.” That is, wives – don’t withdraw from the social structure that gives authority to your husbands. The word carries connotations of "a voluntary attitude of giving in, cooperating, assuming responsibility, and carrying a burden." We might say it this way: the call to wives with unbelieving husbands is to give up the rights that come with their identity as members of God’s household – and to give those rights up for the good of their husbands. This is the reconfiguration of freedom that the Gospel brings – that our freedom is not to be exploited, but leveraged for the good of others – even our enemies. That Peter has this in mind seems clear from earlier in this section, where he teaches people to “submit” to authority of human institutions – but where that submission is qualified not by inherent status differential, but because his hearers act “for the Lord’s sake,” “as slaves of God,” and “as free people” in which the Gospel does not pluck people out of the culture, but sends them back in with new identities.

Peter’s vision of the Christian life is not one in which the new identity of believers calls for a sectarian existence at the margins of society – but one in which believers enact a new and greater reality in the midst of society. The pattern is the pattern of Jesus and the cross. And the point for wives here is that refusing to opt out of the social structure – but rather living within it in a new way – with honorable conduct toward husbands – is a posture that seeks the good of husbands. From this cross-shaped posture – a posture concerned with the good of even the enemy – there are many appropriate gestures. Again, the orienting force of love is precisely the reason that this text is not urging men or women to simply grit their teeth and bear with abusive situations in marriage. Instead, the idea is that somehow, as ‘sojourners’ in the household, women would live the story of God’s family. This is not easy, and giving up ones rights is often difficult, but this is the pattern set by Jesus. And maybe this is the time to note the quote by now deceased theologian John Howard Yoder has written that “those who bear crosses are walking with the grain of the universe.” This is a remarkable claim. Yoder’s suggestion, in a nutshell, is that those who use power exploitatively, those who organize the world around their own needs, and those who use violence or coercion are actually fighting against the deep structures of God’s world. But those who give themselves away for the sake of the other – those who live the pattern of life by which Jesus set the whole world free – are actually walking with the grain of the universe. This is a remarkable – and perhaps a wholly counterintuitive claim.

This cross-shaped pattern is extended toward husbands – precisely in the Roman rendering of the household. “Husbands, in the same way show consideration for women in your life together, paying honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they too are heirs of the gracious gift of life.” Two points to note – first, husbands are commanded – in the Greek, to honor not only their wives but all the women in their household. The translation in our bulletin betrays us here. And that honor is precisely because women hold a position of little power in the social structure of the day. So again, we do not hear Peter making a Christian distinction in which male = strong & superior and female = weak & inferior. Instead, within the Roman story in which this community is sojourning, Peter activates the Jesus story. Husbands, your position in society is never to be exploited for your own benefit. Instead, leverage your privilege for the sake of the powerless – for this is what Jesus did. The word honor is powerful here, as Peter has already said that the way to live in this overlap of stories is to honor everyone – and even the emperor. So now, Peter has changed the game. Women are not the Aristotelian “natural born slaves” – but rather women are to be treated in the same way you would treat the emperor – with honor.

We can extend this just a little further. Peter finishes this section by saying that it is the gift of all Christians, for the sake of their enemies, to return hate with love – to live the pattern of the cross. And we can begin to see that Peter’s primary concern is not the ontological differences between man and woman, but with the Gospel reality that – in the face of the shadow power of empire and status division and social coercion – true power is exercised in love. And because Peter is addressing the power of Rome and its order with the power of the cross, we can see that these texts apply not discreetly to males or females, but to people of any gender or status who find themselves either marginalized or empowered by the structures of the culture. And when you are weak, you don’t use your identity in Christ as an excuse to leave your relationships (though I say that with all the caveats I’ve given above). And when you are in a position of power, you don’t use that power to exploit – but to bless. This is the posture of the cross.

And, these sorts of deeds of radical self-giving are only can only be done for one reason – because of the radical self-giving love of God in Christ. We saw this care in the Sermon on the Mount, we have seen it in Jesus, and we hear it again at the end of this section: “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer.” -- this is the reason we can live a cruciform life that orients itself toward God and toward neighbor – even when the neighbor is our enemy. And, when we do that together, the household of God exists as an alternative pattern of truly human community.

Questions for discussion - drafted by Bob Reid:

1. Can you think of someone who has set themselves up in an adversarial relationship to you? What would it look like to seek their good? Can you think of a tangible example?

2. Can you think of a relationship where you don't want to submit, but where God may be calling you to submit - in the way of the cross; and, for the missional reasons outlined above? What can help you see these opportunities of submission rightly? What role does your Christian community play in helping you tell the difference between submission and enabling an abuser?

3. In Aaron's remarks leading up to communion he said this: "Our habits and practices shape us in profound ways. Philosopher Jamie Smith says it this way: our practices – whether they are sacred or secular – 'shape and constitute our identities by forming our most fundamental desires and our most basic attunement to the world.' Our practices, 'make us certain kinds of people, and what defines us' [and is both revealed by our practices and shaped by our practices] 'is what we love' (Desiring the Kingdom, 25)." Question: in daily worship, what sorts of habits and practices should we be performing regularly so that we will be in a posture from which we may more successfully love our enemies?

the Power of the Meek

This week we returned to the portion of 1 Peter where Peter exhorts his brothers and sisters in how they are to conduct their lives in relationship to those outside the Christian community. There is no hint in 1 Peter that Christians are to shrink away from the roles they play in the cultures in which they live and work. They are not to regard themselves as a sect, separated from the rest of the world; they are not to head for the hills and live in seclusion. They are now a people set on a mission. They are to mediate God's presence in their communities - through words and in good works performed for the common good. And, they are meant to mediate God's presence by living in the pattern of Jesus' cruciform life, particularly in relationship to submitting to authority within the Roman social-political order.

Peter's words on submission are difficult to hear. For one thing, they are difficult to hear because Jesus' call to discipleship, to take up his cross and follow him, is difficult to hear. But they are also hard for us to hear because of how these verses have been misused by Christians. For instance, many a Southern pastor used these verses on submission to argue for slavery in the 19th century. And, many a pastor has misused these verses to wrongly advise women to remain in abusive relationships. This is a spot on the church's record which must be acknowledged and mourned. There must be repentance of using these passages in this way. Regrettably, one of the sad results of the misuse of these verses in the history of the church is that not many Christians today really have a good understanding of Peter's original intention in calling his flock to imitate Jesus' suffering in their submission to authority. Consequently, we don't have a good understanding of how to apply his exhortation to our lives and situations.

The first thing to understand along the way to a fuller understanding of Peter's pastoral intention in all of this is that Christianity contains at its core a revolutionary message about social relationships. The gospel truly does turn things upside down in the world, and the community that arose around the resurrection of Jesus was a community that quickly applied the gospel to social relationships. Early on we hear this reflected in Paul: Galatians 3: 27: "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring,* heirs according to the promise." A community which is nourished on words like these and the stories of Jesus' partnerships with women, social outcasts, etc. - this is a community that understands that the world's way of using power, in this case the Roman social order, is warped by sin. There is a political component to the gospel that must not be ignored. As usual, Miroslav Volf is a big help when thinking about the gospel in this light. Here are his remarks regarding our passage at hand:

"To be “subject” means to act in the freedom of the slaves of God (2:16) and, instead of provoking additional acts of violence, to curb violence by doing good (knowing all along that suffering will be one’s lot, because one cannot count on the victory of good over evil in this world). To be “subject” in a situation of conflict means to follow in the footsteps of the crucified Messiah and to refuse to take part in the automatism of revenge [34] — “evil for evil or abuse for abuse” (3:9) — and to
break the vicious circle of violence by suffering violence. If the injunction to be subject appears at first to function as a religious legitimation of oppression, it turns out, in fact, to be a call to struggle against the politics of violence in the name of the politics of the crucified Messiah. How blinded must one be by the prejudices of one’s own liberal culture to see in this demanding way of suffering only accommodation to the dominant norms of the Hellenistic world!

We should keep in mind, however, that the call to follow the crucified Messiah was, in the long run, much more effective in changing the unjust political, economic, and familial structures than direct exhortations to revolutionize them would
ever have been. For an allegiance to the crucified Messiah — indeed, worship of a crucified God — is an eminently political act that subverts a politics of dominion at its very core."
- Volf from his essay, Soft Difference

Basically, what Peter is saying to the sisters and brothers is this: you are now free from the Roman social order. The political ramifications of the cross have established you in a community gathered around the crucified one, who is now risen from the dead. The very existence of this community, a community where there is neither slave nor free, etc., is a confrontational challenge to the socio-political oppression of Rome. So, live revolutionary lives but don't forget for a second that your revolution is always in the "the name of the politics of the crucified Messiah".

In many ways Peter's exhortations in 1 Peter 2:11- 25 are expansions upon and applications of Jesus' teaching on the Sermon on the Mount. We saw this last week when we noted that verses, 11 and 12 echo the Lord's challenge to "let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." This week, in this passage on submission, we hear clear echoes of Jesus' admonition to resist not an evil person and to forgive those who persecute you.

From a pastoral perspective, I think this is how we should think of applying this in our context. Our lives must be cruciform in shape so that, with regard to those who exercise authority over us and those who set themselves up to be our adversaries, we might leave for them a trail of question marks in the shapes of the cross.

Of course who knows if something like this actually happened but imagine if it did. Imagine the question mark left in the mind of a Roman centurion who conscripted a Christian to carry his bags for one mile, only to be told by the Christian that he would be happy to carry them another mile. Imagine the Christian going on and on about how he feels compelled to do this because this was the way Jesus lived, serving others, even to the point of dying for his enemies on the cross. Powerful question mark to leave in one's wake.

Questions for discussion:

1. Have you ever heard these passages used in favor of keeping the powerless powerless. Have you ever heard these passages used to encourage people to remain in abusive relationships? What would you say to someone who was using these verses in that way?

2. Are there examples that are current, or from your past, wherein you are or have suffered abuse, while sharing in the sufferings of Christ. What role should your Christian community play in helping you discern how you should respond to abuse of authority? What role should prayer play in your response to the abuse of authority?

3. In our socio-political context we have lots of opportunities to fight the abuse of power on behalf of those being abused. How do we fight for justice and remain cruciform in our pattern of activism?

Living Well, Working Well, Playing Well for the Sake of Others

We came this week to the passage in 1 Peter (1 Peter 2:11-12) where we find a bracing exhortation followed by a staggering promise. The exhortation to the Christian community is to live honorably and perform honorable deeds among those outside of the Christian community. The staggering promise is that some will come to know and receive God's love for them because of what they have seen of our lives.

It is difficult for us to know exactly what Peter had in mind with this exhortation. Most probably, the people to whom he wrote had very little power, wealth and influence. Yet, what they make of their lives and what they make and do in their communities is of the utmost importance. At the very least, it is fair to say they would take from Peter's challenge that they were to live compassionately, care for social outcasts, practice "enemy-love", sacrifice for the poor, and be honest and honorable in their dealings. Because these Christians were poor and powerless much of their life "among the Gentiles" would consist in suffering with and like Christ - not surprisingly, a discourse on sharing in Christ's suffering follows quickly after these verses. But what about us? We have, relatively, a good deal more power, money, and status within our society. What does it look like for us to live honorably and perform honorable deeds?

Like our first century counterparts, it at least means that we work to relieve the suffering of others by finding ways to perform acts of compassion and mercy for all without discrimination. We should also note that in Peter's words their is a presumption that our acts of benevolence will sometimes be attractive to those who do not yet know God or subscribe specifically to Christian ethics. Because of this presumption I suggest that we make sure that a healthy percentage of our acts of mercy be truly "among the Gentiles" and for their sake.

Peter's exhortation also speaks to our work (vocation and/or what we do for money), to our play (how we recreate, our hobbies), and to how we live as citizens and neighbors. Because we are Christians we ought to desire to serve others well in all of these arenas. For the athletes: we should pray that we might be known for being diligent, competitive and fair in sports; but, moreover, we should be famous for being warm and gracious losers. For the business professionals: we should pray that we might be known for being honest in our dealings, good at what we do, and as those who create within their work communities a place of honor for those "low on the corporate ladder". And, if we are those who perceive ourselves to be under-employed or working in jobs we don't like: we should pray that God move us into a new job that better suits us; but, as importantly, we ought to pray that God enable us to resist the temptation to see ourselves as better than what God has given us to do for now. Instead we should pray that we startle our customers and colleagues with our diligence and our desire that our work, whatever it is, will make life better for others.

Peter's exhortation also speaks to how we relate to the cultures in which we live, work, make/create, and play. For some time now there has been a huge emphasis in Christian circles to analyze and critique "the culture". There has also been a lot of Christians "copying the culture". And lately there are myriad examples of Christians who critique what they don't like while simply gorging themselves on what they do (e.g. I know Christians who think Disney World is evil but who, themselves, for most intents and purposes, are amazingly thoughtless materialists. Andy Crouch, in his book, Culture Making, says this: "What is most needed in our time are Christians who are deeply serious about cultivating and creating but who wear that seriousness lightly—who are not desperately trying to change the world but who also wake up every morning eager to create." He goes on to argue that Christians all too often tend to allow gestures of critique and consumption (though appropriate gestures in many ways and at many times) to become the postures that some of us settle into. Andy proposes, however, that God's narrative of what he is doing in the world suggests the appropriate postures for his children. Going back to our primordial ancestors, he suggests we take a cue from them and understand our postures to be creators and cultivators within God's world and its many cultures. From these postures we will be free to make any appropriate gesture (e.g. critique, confrontation, consume, etc.). But wouldn't it be great if Christians were thought of first as cultivators and creators. Wouldn't it be great if we were known in our neighborhoods as those who can be relied on to work to preserve what is best in our culture. Wouldn't it be great if we Christians were known and thought of as those who work hard at making things (e.g. music, visual art, a great neighborhood street festival, neighborhood garden, etc.)?

A general principle: when we discover a place where the "current horizons deprive people of their fully humanity", we ought prayerfully to get to work and move the horizons of the possible for the sake of those who are being deprived.

Questions for discussion:

1. What role does repentance play in our life "among the Gentiles"? Are there times when we should carefully and prayerfully tell our neighbors, co-workers, bosses, etc. that we know we have not lived as we should and ask for forgiveness? What would this look like? Are there ways to amend our life "among the Gentiles" that do not include confessing but might be more meaningful than confession? What would that look like?

2. Can you think of situations in you life at work where you can help move the horizons of the possible for the sake of those who are being deprived of their full humanity? How about you life at play or in your hobbies? How about in your neighborhood? (For example, Andy has many examples of actions which further social justice but he also offers this small but meaningful example: he says kudos to whoever redesigned the Charlotte Douglas International Airport to include dozens of comfortable rocking chairs, noting that frequent business travel can be stress-producing and depressing).

3. Can you think of an example of a partnership you have formed with a person or entity outside of the Christian community for the common good of society? Why are such partnerships important? What do these partnership say about your understanding of God and his relationship to the world?

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?

Two Fires, Three Denials, Three Affirmations, A Man Made New

This Easter we considered what Jesus' resurrection reveals to us about God's relationship to us in the midst of the failure and chaos of our brokenness and failures. Resurrection is surely a victory. Jesus' resurrection is a victory of God's light over darkness, whether we are talking about the cosmic scope of the resurrection, or it's meaning to each of us as individual disciples of Jesus. Cosmically, Jesus' resurrection from the dead is the first-fruit of the harvest of what will be God's redemption of this entire world; individually, the resurrection is a promise that our whole selves, including our bodies, matter to God. Our share in Jesus' resurrection means that sin and death will not have the last word in our personal lives; we are bound for glory. The resurrection is surely about victory but we need to think carefully about what sort of victory.

Mike Lloyd, one of the theologians in residence of Saint Paul's Theological Centre in London, has made some valuable suggestions as to how we ought to think about what sort of victory is the resurrection. The following is my paraphrase of Lloyd: the resurrection is not an attempt to cover up the crass mistake of the cross. God owns the cross of Christ and it is where he deals most powerfully with the evil and sin in world, defeating them in Christ's sacrifice. On the cross God entered the world of chaos, evil, failure, and defeat and claims the entire arena to be a place where he is at work. It is in Jesus' moment of being forsaken by the father that God's love is most powerfully at work. And finally, it was when the hopes of the disciples were dashed that their salvation was being accomplished. Lloyd goes on to point out that when we experience failure and chaos in our lives that we often imagine that we have come to a place where hope is irretrievable. Quite the opposite though. In the cross, God has entered into the chaos so that it is not an alien place for him. So, whatever the case may be for us (e.g. whatever terrible thing befalls us because of evil at work in the world, whatever calamity we have brought on ourselves through the selfishness of sin), God is not alien to us in these circumstances. His presence with us is for the purpose of reconciling us to himself and doing something new in our lives. A poignant example of God at work in this way is found in Jesus' visit with Peter as told to us in John's Gospel, 21:1-19.

John sets the scene for us in such a way that it makes it as if, in the words of Rowan Williams, Jesus had never been. The disciples are back to fishing, their vocation before they were called by Jesus and taught to fish for people. And then there is the matter of the charcoal fire, a detail it seems that John does not want us to miss. Just a little bit before in John's Gospel, Peter is warming his hands by a charcoal fire when he denies Jesus three times; here the risen Jesus cooks breakfast for Peter over a charcoal fire. Equally important, if not more important, than the words exchanged at this breakfast setting is the scene itself. In the scene of Peter's betrayal there is an angst-ridden shell of a man nervously warming his hands by a charcoal fire, denying Jesus three times. In the scene we considered this Easter we have the one who was betrayed returning himself to Peter to be loved by him. This is the Easter Gospel, Jesus gives us back our lives, complete with the memories of our mistakes and failures; but! in his presence we can be made new! Peter, and the others, who had gone back to fishing are forgiven and remade into the fishers of people they were intended to be. And in the presence of the risen Lord, Simon, son of John, who first met Jesus as a fisherman is once again, Petros, the rock, among those who God will use to shepherd the sheep and lead the new community, the church of Jesus Christ, that arises through the power of Jesus' resurrection.

Questions for discussion:

1. The cross looked like quite a miserable failure but God was at work to bring victory out of it. Do you think your posture in moments of failure makes you more or less likely to find and see God at work? What can make it especially hard for you to see God in the midst of your failure. What can make it especially hard for you to help others see God at work in the midst of their failures?

2. God is present and working in dark situations (e.g. situations where we do not immediately perceive him to be at work - like on the cross). Does this insight challenge the way you think about how you evaluate the lives of others, especially those who are walking through dark times? Does it make you think carefully about what you say or don't say to someone who is in a dark time? I'll give you an example: I grew up in a religious context where people who were divorced were considered to be people who were in darkness. No spiritual leader in that world would ever expect to find God at work in the midst of those difficult situations. Of course, now I know that God is not absent in those situations. He is present, wanting reconciliation when possible but always desirous of doing something new for each person effected by the divorce.

3. Jesus chooses to coax Peter's confession of love for him in a way that makes him feel uncomfortable - John tells us that his feelings are hurt. What do you think Jesus is doing here? I bring this up because I have heard some Christians talk about this as if Jesus is almost shaming Peter by making him confess his love three times in a row. I don't think this is about shaming Peter, do you? What is Jesus up to?