Genuine Mutual Love
Sermon
ACCESS TO HIGH HOPE
Second Lesson Sermons For Lent/Easter
A rather insightful novel about the problem of Christian missions to Africa is Barbara Kingsolver's story The Poisonwood Bible. Kingsolver weaves her story around Nathan Price, a fundamentalist, legalistic preacher who takes his wife and four daughters to serve in the heart of the Belgian Congo. While they are there, in l960 Patrice Lumumba emerges as the leader of his people when Belgium grants the Congolese their independence. Soon after, Mobuto comes to power. Nathan Price decides to remain and serve with his family even when the resources of his sponsors are cut off. As one missionary stated, people fled the Congo for many reasons. They left for common sense, lunacy, or faintness of heart. However, he also added that some remained for the same reasons. Nathan's wife and daughters relate their observations of how things happened in this troublesome transition time in the Congo. What they watched and experienced struck them all differently and evoked different reactions to the Congolese scene as well as to the die--hard approach to missions by their father.
In reading this fascinating story one has to raise the inevitable question of the wisdom of the rule of foreign powers who abused their practice of colonialism in Africa. At the same time we have trouble accepting the rise of native factions who are not trained or schooled in democratic rule. More important for us, as Christians we have to be concerned about the identity of so much mission work with the abuses of colonialism. Even more crucial is the fact that so much evangelization in the name of Christ, overseas or at home, is not based on the gospel of grace but on legal approaches to culture. In contrast to that, we have in the Second Reading for this day a carefully crafted Christian approach to change.
The Context
The context for the Second Reading is the approach of persecution of the Christian communities under Nero. It is the Apostle Peter who writes this exhortation to the Christians to be prepared for the worst, but at the same time, to be confident in the face of trial. Some scholars do not believe Peter wrote the letter, because of its highly sophisticated Greek. The average pastor who reads the Greek New Testament with some ease will have trouble with the Petrine epistles. However, it could well be that Sylvanus, who is mentioned in the last chapter, could have written the letter at Peter's behest as Peter surmises that his own martyrdom might be imminent. Just how it happened, we cannot be sure.
What is impressive is the fact that Peter's letter was addressed to Gentile Christians, who did not have a long tradition in Christianity to fall back on. As members of young congregations they had to rely upon the faith, as they had come to know it, to muster the strength to face trial and persecution. The letter reflects that kind of insight. The author assures the readers they will be able to face what they must. They are not to feel abandoned or doomed. This studied approach stands in rich contrast to what Kingsolver portrays as the shabby and unsubstantial methods often applied in areas like the Congo. What is important for us is that what Peter applies in a time of uncertainty for the early Christians is important for us. Fortunately, for us, we are not threatened with persecution of the faith by our government. Yet Christians in some parts of the world are threatened by persecution. At the same time, our faith may be intimidated and threatened by other forces within the world. In the face of that fact, all of us can use the kind of encouragement for our faith offered by the Apostle Peter in such a thoughtful way. Peter makes the best use of the resources of the faith to build a good case for us.
Your Accountability
The section of Peter's letter assigned for this day begins with an exhortation for us to be accountable to God for our actions. This follows upon a longer statement which reminds us we have the same obligations incumbent upon the people of God in the days of the prophets. The warning is that people who know the revelation of God in Christ Jesus should not be conformed to the desires of this world. Rather we should remember that the word holds true for us as it did for people from the beginning. God says, "You should be holy, even as I am holy." Because our Creator has the authority to make this demand of us, Peter urges us to recognize when we call upon God for anything, we have no legs to stand on. God is our Judge, and God judges "all people impartially according to their deeds." Putting it frankly, Peter writes, "Live in reverent fear during the time of your exile."
When Peter uses the term "exile," he means the time we have in this world. Peter uses this term because he uses illustrations from the life of the children of Israel who lived in the exiles of Egypt and Babylon. Peter wants us to know we live in the freedom of the gospel of God's grace. However, at the same time, so long as we are in this world, we must think of our time here as something of an exile from the home and life we know will be in heaven with God. Also while we are in this world, we should know the temptations of unbelief and rebellion are always there. We can never become flip about our relationship with God. We must know that whenever we think we have it made with God on our own, God can come down on us as an angry Judge.
The Example In Israel
It is not Peter's intention, however, to dwell on the possibility of our loss of status with God. He reminds us the possibility of our fall from grace is always there. However, what he emphasizes is that God does everything to assure us such a possibility does not have to occur. In the face of the worst chaos and turmoil, we know we can be secure with God. He recalls the manner in which God did deal with the ancient people Israel. From the manner in which Peter writes, we can assume that the Gentile Christians may have known about the history of the children of Israel from their dealings with the Jewish people. Or they may have been instructed by Christian teachers in the Hebrew history. Either way, Peter assumes they know as we also should know.
Peter writes, "You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors." The futile ways were the sacrifices of animals. Those sacrifices did not do anything to win God's favor. What the sacrifices did was to assure the people they did not have to be sacrificed themselves or sacrifice others. God loved the people, and the sacrificial system of the Hebrews was the sign that God loved them in a way that no other god could love. Christ came to replace the sacrificial system. Jesus offered himself to take the place of the sacrificial system, so that we also can be sure there is no need for sacrifice. Jesus shed his blood as the Lamb without defect or blemish not to appease God but to demonstrate God's love for us. To make the case even more sure, Peter writes that Jesus was destined for this role before the foundation of the earth. And now God raised Jesus from the dead to prove the point. Because of that, Peter says you now "trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God." What God did in both the sacrificial system of the Hebrew era and in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ was to make it possible for people to believe and trust in God. That is what had been lost by the creature within the creation. This was God's great recovery act. God gave the evidence of divine and eternal love for us.
The Example Of Slave Masters
While Peter used the example of the replacement of the Hebrew sacrificial system, he expanded on the freedom our Lord Jesus Christ has won for us by using the language from the slave market. Peter's Christian audience included many people who were either slaves or had been slaves. What they could understand, whether they were free or slave, was the language that described manumission, the freeing of slaves from the legal bonds of slavery. Masters could buy or sell slaves. Someone could buy from a master the freedom for a slave by paying a price. Peter mixes the metaphor. Peter talks about being ransomed from the sacrificial system with the blood of Christ. Not only is the metaphor mixed, but we do not get to know to whom the price or ransom is paid. Certainly, Jesus does not pay a ransom to God for us. God is the one who sent Jesus to set us free. Nor did Jesus pay ransom to sin, the devil, our flesh, death, or hell. It is not important that the analogy is not completed. We all mix our metaphors, and sometimes we cannot take them to their logical conclusions.
What is clear about the illustrations Peter uses is that we are set free. We are no longer slaves to sin, the devil, our flesh, death, or hell itself. Peter does not mention those forces which seek to hold us in their grips. He stresses our freedom from any slavery to which we have been bound. Christ is the one who set us free. Jesus paid the price or the ransom to make that possible. The price our Lord paid was not with "perishable things like silver and gold." Our Lord paid a much higher price. Our Lord paid with his life. He paid with his precious blood. Even though Peter mixes the metaphor and leaves it incomplete, it is music to our ears. It is a declaration of freedom and liberty for us.
A Superior Condition
Peter does not quit with the good word about our freedom and the ability now to trust God. He goes on, "Now ... you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth." We should recognize this is, indeed, a condition much superior to the way we would live without the freedom God has won for us in Jesus Christ. Our lives have been purified or cleansed by the word of truth. That word of truth is the honesty about ourselves. Without Christ we are condemned sinners who have no way of rescuing ourselves. The word of truth is also that our Lord Jesus Christ has died and risen again for us. The word of truth asserts that in the crucified and risen Christ we become the children of God. We are able to live as free. Peter calls it being "born anew." In Christ our future is secure.
Futurists like James Canton talk about the unlimited potential of the future. There is so much that has been advanced by our technology and the explosion of research and learning that we have to ask if we are prepared for the future. The advances that are now possible in technology, in medicine, in the computerized world, and in space exploration raise questions as to how much we can handle. We also have to ask how we will deal ethically and morally with the problems the world of tomorrow brings. The futurists paint a scenario for us that is purified by the desires for achievement and perfection. However, we know that much of what the futurists predict may not come into being because of the human propensity to abuse, to ruin, to mar, and to destroy much of what should serve our interest and welfare. Tragically it is the human touch that spoils. There once was a cigarette called Old Gold which advertised that its manufacture was "untouched by human hands." That is a dreadful commentary on the human situation. The human touch can be perverse. However, Peter says our future is secure because we "purified our souls by obedience to the truth." We face the future with that confidence. Whether the future would involve the kind of chaos Peter knew persecution would bring, or whether it is personal illness, or the uncertainties of old age, or modern invention and innovation, we are certain of God's presence, grace, and love in whatever circumstances we face.
Freedom To Love
The certainty we know through obedience to the word of truth produces some results besides just feeling good about the future. Peter writes that because our hearts are purified through obedience to the truth, we experience "genuine mutual love," and we can love one another deeply from the heart." The mutual love which we experience is the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is the Johannine word that emphasizes repeatedly that we love God, because God first loved us (John 15). God's love produces love in our hearts as we respond to the goodness of God's mercy, grace, and forgiveness. We are never bankrupt for the love of God. Our love for God is accepting God's love. The mutuality of our love is triggered by what God initiated in saving and redeeming us. Without God's love we might find it impossible to love.
In the book mentioned in the introduction, The Poisonwood Bible, Leah, one of the twin daughters of the fundamentalist missionary in the Congo, is a delightful child in her early teens when they arrive in the Congo. She is the one out of the five females in the family who does the most to please her father. She confesses that she truly tried to set her feet into his footprints. She had faith in her father and love for the Lord. However, her father's insensitivity to the needs of his wife and daughters created doubts and created a void which filled her life with fear. The ability to love is always threatened when there is no mutuality. By contrast, Peter recognized that because of the mutual love we have with God, we are now capable also of "loving one another deeply from the heart." As the people of God we should thrive on the love of God to the point of reflecting this love in the manner in which we love one another.
Guaranteed Product
Peter asserts that we are not only made capable of loving because of our mutual love affair with God, but also what God accomplishes in us with the gift of love has permanent value to it. Peter writes, "You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God." Peter means what God does for us is not a fly--by--night operation. God does not intend to help us out just for the moment or because God just wants us to feel good. What God starts in us with the gift of faith, whether it was in baptism in infancy, or if we came to the faith in the middle of life or late in life, God wants to take root and hold forever. From God's side of things, God intends that our faith should be indestructible. The word and promise God gives us is imperishable stuff and comes to us through the "living and enduring word." If it does not last, it is not God's fault.
God would keep us strong to all eternity. That is the message which Peter the apostle wanted to get to the people of God whom he knew would soon be suffering persecution under Nero. In the end, tradition has it, Peter himself suffered a martyr's death on the cross in the city of Rome where he labored and the city from which he sent this letter. Tradition also has it that he asked that he be crucified upside down, because he was not worthy to be crucified as our Lord was crucified. A century later the aged Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, was arrested and tried. When asked by the proconsul to deny Christ and gain his freedom, he answered "Eighty--six years I have served him, and he never did me wrong; how can I blaspheme my King and Savior?" The tradition yields that he was to be burned at the stake, but when the flames appeared to harm him none, he had to be stabbed to death. Down through the centuries people of God have suffered martyrdom, because they were convinced they were born of imperishable seed. Strengthened by mutual genuine love, they knew they could withstand the trials forced upon them. We can do no less in the face of the trials that may arise out of our serene and prosperous days or in the days of uncetainty and distress. God is feeding us on imperishable stuff of love and grace.
In reading this fascinating story one has to raise the inevitable question of the wisdom of the rule of foreign powers who abused their practice of colonialism in Africa. At the same time we have trouble accepting the rise of native factions who are not trained or schooled in democratic rule. More important for us, as Christians we have to be concerned about the identity of so much mission work with the abuses of colonialism. Even more crucial is the fact that so much evangelization in the name of Christ, overseas or at home, is not based on the gospel of grace but on legal approaches to culture. In contrast to that, we have in the Second Reading for this day a carefully crafted Christian approach to change.
The Context
The context for the Second Reading is the approach of persecution of the Christian communities under Nero. It is the Apostle Peter who writes this exhortation to the Christians to be prepared for the worst, but at the same time, to be confident in the face of trial. Some scholars do not believe Peter wrote the letter, because of its highly sophisticated Greek. The average pastor who reads the Greek New Testament with some ease will have trouble with the Petrine epistles. However, it could well be that Sylvanus, who is mentioned in the last chapter, could have written the letter at Peter's behest as Peter surmises that his own martyrdom might be imminent. Just how it happened, we cannot be sure.
What is impressive is the fact that Peter's letter was addressed to Gentile Christians, who did not have a long tradition in Christianity to fall back on. As members of young congregations they had to rely upon the faith, as they had come to know it, to muster the strength to face trial and persecution. The letter reflects that kind of insight. The author assures the readers they will be able to face what they must. They are not to feel abandoned or doomed. This studied approach stands in rich contrast to what Kingsolver portrays as the shabby and unsubstantial methods often applied in areas like the Congo. What is important for us is that what Peter applies in a time of uncertainty for the early Christians is important for us. Fortunately, for us, we are not threatened with persecution of the faith by our government. Yet Christians in some parts of the world are threatened by persecution. At the same time, our faith may be intimidated and threatened by other forces within the world. In the face of that fact, all of us can use the kind of encouragement for our faith offered by the Apostle Peter in such a thoughtful way. Peter makes the best use of the resources of the faith to build a good case for us.
Your Accountability
The section of Peter's letter assigned for this day begins with an exhortation for us to be accountable to God for our actions. This follows upon a longer statement which reminds us we have the same obligations incumbent upon the people of God in the days of the prophets. The warning is that people who know the revelation of God in Christ Jesus should not be conformed to the desires of this world. Rather we should remember that the word holds true for us as it did for people from the beginning. God says, "You should be holy, even as I am holy." Because our Creator has the authority to make this demand of us, Peter urges us to recognize when we call upon God for anything, we have no legs to stand on. God is our Judge, and God judges "all people impartially according to their deeds." Putting it frankly, Peter writes, "Live in reverent fear during the time of your exile."
When Peter uses the term "exile," he means the time we have in this world. Peter uses this term because he uses illustrations from the life of the children of Israel who lived in the exiles of Egypt and Babylon. Peter wants us to know we live in the freedom of the gospel of God's grace. However, at the same time, so long as we are in this world, we must think of our time here as something of an exile from the home and life we know will be in heaven with God. Also while we are in this world, we should know the temptations of unbelief and rebellion are always there. We can never become flip about our relationship with God. We must know that whenever we think we have it made with God on our own, God can come down on us as an angry Judge.
The Example In Israel
It is not Peter's intention, however, to dwell on the possibility of our loss of status with God. He reminds us the possibility of our fall from grace is always there. However, what he emphasizes is that God does everything to assure us such a possibility does not have to occur. In the face of the worst chaos and turmoil, we know we can be secure with God. He recalls the manner in which God did deal with the ancient people Israel. From the manner in which Peter writes, we can assume that the Gentile Christians may have known about the history of the children of Israel from their dealings with the Jewish people. Or they may have been instructed by Christian teachers in the Hebrew history. Either way, Peter assumes they know as we also should know.
Peter writes, "You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors." The futile ways were the sacrifices of animals. Those sacrifices did not do anything to win God's favor. What the sacrifices did was to assure the people they did not have to be sacrificed themselves or sacrifice others. God loved the people, and the sacrificial system of the Hebrews was the sign that God loved them in a way that no other god could love. Christ came to replace the sacrificial system. Jesus offered himself to take the place of the sacrificial system, so that we also can be sure there is no need for sacrifice. Jesus shed his blood as the Lamb without defect or blemish not to appease God but to demonstrate God's love for us. To make the case even more sure, Peter writes that Jesus was destined for this role before the foundation of the earth. And now God raised Jesus from the dead to prove the point. Because of that, Peter says you now "trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God." What God did in both the sacrificial system of the Hebrew era and in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ was to make it possible for people to believe and trust in God. That is what had been lost by the creature within the creation. This was God's great recovery act. God gave the evidence of divine and eternal love for us.
The Example Of Slave Masters
While Peter used the example of the replacement of the Hebrew sacrificial system, he expanded on the freedom our Lord Jesus Christ has won for us by using the language from the slave market. Peter's Christian audience included many people who were either slaves or had been slaves. What they could understand, whether they were free or slave, was the language that described manumission, the freeing of slaves from the legal bonds of slavery. Masters could buy or sell slaves. Someone could buy from a master the freedom for a slave by paying a price. Peter mixes the metaphor. Peter talks about being ransomed from the sacrificial system with the blood of Christ. Not only is the metaphor mixed, but we do not get to know to whom the price or ransom is paid. Certainly, Jesus does not pay a ransom to God for us. God is the one who sent Jesus to set us free. Nor did Jesus pay ransom to sin, the devil, our flesh, death, or hell. It is not important that the analogy is not completed. We all mix our metaphors, and sometimes we cannot take them to their logical conclusions.
What is clear about the illustrations Peter uses is that we are set free. We are no longer slaves to sin, the devil, our flesh, death, or hell itself. Peter does not mention those forces which seek to hold us in their grips. He stresses our freedom from any slavery to which we have been bound. Christ is the one who set us free. Jesus paid the price or the ransom to make that possible. The price our Lord paid was not with "perishable things like silver and gold." Our Lord paid a much higher price. Our Lord paid with his life. He paid with his precious blood. Even though Peter mixes the metaphor and leaves it incomplete, it is music to our ears. It is a declaration of freedom and liberty for us.
A Superior Condition
Peter does not quit with the good word about our freedom and the ability now to trust God. He goes on, "Now ... you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth." We should recognize this is, indeed, a condition much superior to the way we would live without the freedom God has won for us in Jesus Christ. Our lives have been purified or cleansed by the word of truth. That word of truth is the honesty about ourselves. Without Christ we are condemned sinners who have no way of rescuing ourselves. The word of truth is also that our Lord Jesus Christ has died and risen again for us. The word of truth asserts that in the crucified and risen Christ we become the children of God. We are able to live as free. Peter calls it being "born anew." In Christ our future is secure.
Futurists like James Canton talk about the unlimited potential of the future. There is so much that has been advanced by our technology and the explosion of research and learning that we have to ask if we are prepared for the future. The advances that are now possible in technology, in medicine, in the computerized world, and in space exploration raise questions as to how much we can handle. We also have to ask how we will deal ethically and morally with the problems the world of tomorrow brings. The futurists paint a scenario for us that is purified by the desires for achievement and perfection. However, we know that much of what the futurists predict may not come into being because of the human propensity to abuse, to ruin, to mar, and to destroy much of what should serve our interest and welfare. Tragically it is the human touch that spoils. There once was a cigarette called Old Gold which advertised that its manufacture was "untouched by human hands." That is a dreadful commentary on the human situation. The human touch can be perverse. However, Peter says our future is secure because we "purified our souls by obedience to the truth." We face the future with that confidence. Whether the future would involve the kind of chaos Peter knew persecution would bring, or whether it is personal illness, or the uncertainties of old age, or modern invention and innovation, we are certain of God's presence, grace, and love in whatever circumstances we face.
Freedom To Love
The certainty we know through obedience to the word of truth produces some results besides just feeling good about the future. Peter writes that because our hearts are purified through obedience to the truth, we experience "genuine mutual love," and we can love one another deeply from the heart." The mutual love which we experience is the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is the Johannine word that emphasizes repeatedly that we love God, because God first loved us (John 15). God's love produces love in our hearts as we respond to the goodness of God's mercy, grace, and forgiveness. We are never bankrupt for the love of God. Our love for God is accepting God's love. The mutuality of our love is triggered by what God initiated in saving and redeeming us. Without God's love we might find it impossible to love.
In the book mentioned in the introduction, The Poisonwood Bible, Leah, one of the twin daughters of the fundamentalist missionary in the Congo, is a delightful child in her early teens when they arrive in the Congo. She is the one out of the five females in the family who does the most to please her father. She confesses that she truly tried to set her feet into his footprints. She had faith in her father and love for the Lord. However, her father's insensitivity to the needs of his wife and daughters created doubts and created a void which filled her life with fear. The ability to love is always threatened when there is no mutuality. By contrast, Peter recognized that because of the mutual love we have with God, we are now capable also of "loving one another deeply from the heart." As the people of God we should thrive on the love of God to the point of reflecting this love in the manner in which we love one another.
Guaranteed Product
Peter asserts that we are not only made capable of loving because of our mutual love affair with God, but also what God accomplishes in us with the gift of love has permanent value to it. Peter writes, "You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God." Peter means what God does for us is not a fly--by--night operation. God does not intend to help us out just for the moment or because God just wants us to feel good. What God starts in us with the gift of faith, whether it was in baptism in infancy, or if we came to the faith in the middle of life or late in life, God wants to take root and hold forever. From God's side of things, God intends that our faith should be indestructible. The word and promise God gives us is imperishable stuff and comes to us through the "living and enduring word." If it does not last, it is not God's fault.
God would keep us strong to all eternity. That is the message which Peter the apostle wanted to get to the people of God whom he knew would soon be suffering persecution under Nero. In the end, tradition has it, Peter himself suffered a martyr's death on the cross in the city of Rome where he labored and the city from which he sent this letter. Tradition also has it that he asked that he be crucified upside down, because he was not worthy to be crucified as our Lord was crucified. A century later the aged Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, was arrested and tried. When asked by the proconsul to deny Christ and gain his freedom, he answered "Eighty--six years I have served him, and he never did me wrong; how can I blaspheme my King and Savior?" The tradition yields that he was to be burned at the stake, but when the flames appeared to harm him none, he had to be stabbed to death. Down through the centuries people of God have suffered martyrdom, because they were convinced they were born of imperishable seed. Strengthened by mutual genuine love, they knew they could withstand the trials forced upon them. We can do no less in the face of the trials that may arise out of our serene and prosperous days or in the days of uncetainty and distress. God is feeding us on imperishable stuff of love and grace.
