Live for Righteousness
Sunday, April 10th, 2008
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Good Shepherd Sunday
1 Peter 2:19-25
Theme: “Living a Holy Life”
(18 Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh.) 19For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. 20If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. 21For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. 22“He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” 23When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. 24He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 25For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.
It seemed a little piece was missing when I first read the passage for this morning, if I had left it simply at the texts indicated in the lectionary. Opening the Bible and turning to it, I found that the first sentence of the passage was left off the reference. (NOW read v 18) On the one hand, I can understand the omission of the 18th verse and it’s addressing of Christian slaves. With a few glaring exceptions around the world, for the most part, including everyone here in this room, slavery is a thing of the past. On the other hand, the lectionary is never more than suggestions of what the reading MIGHT include for any given Sunday for those denominations, Baptists included, which do not practice STRICT adherence to the prescribed readings. All that to say: there is a good deal of latitude when it comes to what to include or exclude in passage selections. If we had started this morning’s reading at verse 18, a good many of us might have gotten stuck on the fact that the passage was addressed to Christian SLAVES. This way, beginning in verse 19 and reading through to 25, and THEN going back to verse 18, we can a little more clearly begin to address the issues as they were, I believe, intended to begin with: as being addressed to CHRISTIAN slaves – emphasis on the FAITH of the people, not their STATION in society.
It would be easy to write off the verses read as a ‘not applicable’ section of scripture if we WERE to stop at the fact that Peter is speaking to slaves. After all, nobody here is a slave, at least in the sense that Peter was calling them slaves, are we? We live in a free society and culture, surrounded by a country founded on the enduring concept of freedom. We can discuss other forms of slavery as we move forward. There are so many things we can so easily become enslaved to, aren’t there? That list might take us a while to get through.
But the topic at hand is living a holy life, and that is something that very definitely applies to anyone who calls themselves a follower of Christ, whether we’re talking about someone who happened to be a slave in the Roman empire or who is today claiming to be a follower of the same Christ as our first-century brothers and sisters. In that sense, the same rules apply.
So what do we have? In some ways, this echoes the passages we’ve been studying in our Wednesday night Bible studies in Matthew, Jesus asks similar questions to the opening question in verse 19. In Matthew chapter 5, Jesus asks
43 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
46For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? 47And if you greet only your brothers and sisters,* what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
Which is pretty much the same tack that Peter is taking here: if you did something wrong and you are being punished for it, that’s the way it’s SUPPOSED to work. That is to be expected. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about that. He is much more concerned with the variation where you HAVEN’T done anything to warrant a beating, or punishment of some sort, and yet, you receive it anyway.
Hmmm… sounds like a familiar scenario, doesn’t it? Someone we’ve spoken of fairly recently … who didn’t commit any crime worth the punishment received, and ended up dead on a cross … oh. Yeah. Him.
There is a direct correlation between the situation Peter is addressing and the reality of the gospel message being delivered, regardless of which century and to whom. Just as Christ lived the whole of human experience when he was here on earth, living the life of Christ as his followers involves … living the WHOLE of Christ’s life – if that is what comes our way.
Peter is not telling the believers he is writing to who are FREE to go and enslave themselves, neither is he telling those who are SLAVES to go and emancipate themselves. Peter was not a violent revolutionary. He was hotheaded, from what we read in the gospels, but he did not advocate the violent overthrow of the existing structure. He took it for what it was: much less than perfect, not as God intended, and certainly not friendly to the gospel. He did not tell the Christians he was writing to to run away and set up enclaves in remote places where people would leave them alone if for no other reason than that they would be really hard to find on the backside of nowhere.
There is no presumption that Christians should be anywhere else but right in the midst of regular, run of the mill, everyday existence in society – WHATEVER society that turns out to be.
You see, if we live righteous, pure, holy lives and we are surrounded by fellow righteous, pure and holy brothers and sisters … it’s kind of a moot point. We’re only trying to outdo OURSELVES in righteousness and good deeds. It’s an intramural competition. It’s tone on tone. We’re fighting over nothing. The world isn’t getting any of it.
But if we undertake to live, as nearly as we are able to, righteous, pure and holy lives surrounded by the everyday banalities of western materialism, then we’re actually up against something that we can stand in contrast to. There would actually be a possibility that someone might look up and say “now, THAT shouldn’t have happened to them, but look at how they are responding. That’s pretty amazing.”
One of the most outstanding examples in recent memory of this would be the Amish families in
In her own words, the widow of the gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, Marie Roberts, wrote an open letter to her Amish neighbors thanking them for their forgiveness, grace, and mercy. She wrote, "Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately need. Gifts you've given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you."[
What does this mean for
We are living with our feet in two worlds: The world as it is, and the world that is to come. By our nature as followers of Christ, we are called to stand in that place that puts us in uncomfortable positions.
Yesterday we held a memorial service for a friend of ours who touched as many lives on this side of the border as he did on the far side. The opportunity was given for anyone to share a memory, a story, a reflection of what knowing him meant. There were expressions of resignation, there were expressions of grief, even anger, and there were expressions that reflected a deep trust in a merciful and loving God in the face of the tragedy that took his life.
The service was conducted bilingually, for the benefit of those who could not understand either English or Spanish, depending on who was speaking. As a believer, and as a minister, it was hard to hear some of the things that were said. They begged for an answer. Some of them we might have been able to address, but others were things that just had to be left unanswered. And that was hard. There is a way of looking at the world, of understanding the world that brings a measure of peace despite the fact that every “I” is not dotted, and every “t” is not crossed. We learn to live with uncertainty in some things, and to live in a trusting spirit with others.
We are called to live our lives in such a way that THAT will be what comes through: the ability to live at peace with uncertainty. One of the women that shared spoke of caring for her husband, who later died, and of dealing with the destruction wreaked on her family home in the wake of tropical storm Ernesto a few years back. Our friend who died provided that family with a ray of insight into what living in peace in the midst of uncertainty looks like.
We are called to love God, to live in community with each other and in our greater community, and to be Christ’s presence in a sometimes rapidly changing world. Not that we are immune from change ourselves. In fact, we would be well advised to embrace change if we are to maintain an ability to speak to our contemporaries in a way that is meaningful to them, in a way that they can understand. Which is what Jesus did and Paul and the Apostles did after him. We touch people where they live. And call them to live for righteousness.
Let’s pray.
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