Rock Bottom
Sermon
Sermons On The Second Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Object:
Peter begins a new paragraph here by asking, "Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?" The answer is: lots of people everywhere. Everyone who's attended a school with other than one's own family, or who's read the newspaper, let alone if they've read even a smidgen of history, everyone knows that people who are zealous to do good are abused.
An example is Ignaz Semmelweis, not exactly a household name, but important to your health. He was the Hungarian-Austrian medical doctor who realized that physicians should wash their hands. He didn't know the reason, but he deduced that if he went straight from performing autopsies to delivering babies, mothers became sick and died more frequently. He concluded that doctors were somehow carrying the problem from sick patients to well. No one knew why, but, where he could convince doctors to wash their hands before attending a patient, the mortality rate fell drastically.
How was he treated for being eager to do good? His results were resisted and argued against. Besides, for doctors to wash their hands between patients would take too long. Semmelweis refined his thinking, made experiments, offered statistics, and started also cleaning the instruments that doctors used in surgery. No one then knew about germs, but people wouldn't accept the clear evidence of his findings. For decades, generally, the medical establishment in Europe and around the world not only dismissed his findings but reviled him personally.
Peter knows the answer to his question, "Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?" He mentions "Christ who suffered." Jesus suffered for doing good. Some ethicists quip that no truly good deed ever goes unpunished. Not something like helping an elderly person across the street; that's just courtesy. But helping a nation to face it's racism, that's truly good, and you'll pay for it.
Peter goes on, "But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated." You're going to get into all kinds of grief for the sake of your faith and for doing what's truly good. Be zealous to do good anyway, because God can bless you even when you suffer antagonism or opposition. Peter offers two ways to prepare for the difficulties that converge upon us when we live for Christ and do what is right. These are also two ways God will bless us.
First, he says, "In your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord." He means our faith must be active inside us. We must practice an internal worship, an intentional turning to Christ's presence within us. Christ summons us to an intense personal relationship, our part of which the church across the ages has named "piety" or "spiritual discipline." We must meet God's grace regularly in order to receive the power to live for God. "In your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord."
The second way to prepare for the difficulties: "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you." On the Friday after Thanksgiving, our family's tradition is to shop in downtown Portland, especially at Powell's Bookstore, the largest in the world. Invariably somewhere on our day's weaving between shoppers, dashing into stores, and searching for a place for lunch, we're accosted by street preachers. Every one of them has screamed angrily and aimed threats at us, even though they didn't know us. I've never seen anyone respond positively to them. Peter instructs us, "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence." What we say about our faith and hope needs to be appropriate to the person hearing and always in a gentle manner. Few people can be scared into Christianity. No one can be argued into Christianity, at least not for very long.
Yet, we must speak. Our current society is like that of the early Christians, where people don't automatically become Christians. Too many Christians think that the church in America will grow today as it did in the 1950s. In case you missed it, the 1950s are gone. If the Christian faith is to survive, it won't be because the culture around us is friendly to Christianity and potential members keep pouring through our doors no matter what we do or don't do. For those Christians brainwashed into believing, "Our deeds show our faith," how good do we think our deeds are? Even Jesus talked about his faith. No one wants a faith that's just words, but Christianity can't survive without words being spoken from the source of our hope.
Notice that Peter doesn't mention our faith or our love but he mentions our hope. "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you." Hope is how we view tomorrow. For Peter, hope almost defines you as a Christian. Hope means you anticipate God's grace even more tomorrow no matter the circumstances. A question to ask a congregation is if it has any hope: "Do church members picture any specific future for this congregation beyond their lifetime?" You can twist the question around to bother pastors, "Are you preparing others for ministry after your pastoral term?" When you talk about tomorrow, you're touching upon the realm of hope. If you have hope, you're not bogged down with despair or dominated by despondency. You're not threatened by tomorrow's being different than today. Peter notes that hope is what's most distinctive about our Christian faith. We need to be ready to justify for others the hope we hold.
Be ready to give an account. In the original language, the word "account" means "a reasoned account, a summary." Peter instructs us to offer an explanation, a reason that we're Christian. One thing you learn quickly when teaching: Students don't really know something if they've only memorized it. They must put it into their own words to show they've grasped the concept. We need to put our explanation for Christian hope into our own words and nothing's wrong with having some of those reasons thought out. Before a job interview you anticipate the questions that will probably be asked so you can answer without too many "ahs," gasps, "you knows," or awkward silences.
As reason for your Christian hope, consider what others have said, "God seemed to get to me before I got to God, so I can't help but believe" or "God has helped me through some pretty difficult times" or "Jesus seems to be the best that life can produce" or "Jesus' resurrection shows that the worst tragedy can't stop God's love." What's your rock bottom faith? Stir around in your heart and mind, determine what you believe, and be ready to give an account. You don't have to get all nervous and perfectionist about your words. We're always going to live as did Ignaz Semmelweis, with evidence we don't fully understand. But we need to mention the faith we do understand, trusting the Holy Spirit to help us speak. It can make the difference between life or death for others.
In my ministry, I've more often taught Peter's letters than preached them, because a lot in Peter's letters is difficult to grasp. During one season of my life, I was so baffled by Peter's two letters that I decided I'd read them every day until I understood them better. I read and read them, and still there's much that's confusing. However, as I've tried hard to understand Peter's letter, I've realized that Peter is trying just as hard to understand and to explain what has happened in Christ. During Peter's time with the earthly Jesus, he did a poor job of understanding his master. If we falter or flounder as we struggle with Peter's writing, we can assume that he has sympathy for us. He's struggled, too. Basically, Peter is trying lots of different ways to help us see how Jesus relates to the Old Testament and to our lives.
Peter tells us that Jesus, having been "put to death in the flesh," was "made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison." In the New Testament, "spirits" almost always refer to supernatural beings in the spiritual realm, not to dead people, although Peter will later mention that the good news of Christ was even preached to the dead. The spirits Peter refers to in verse 19 are those "who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah." Is that perfectly understandable? Well, the church across the ages hasn't had an easy time grasping it either. At least it means that Jesus Christ has gone to extraordinary lengths to reach those who need him and to help those who turn desperately to heaven for salvation. That's what Jesus was about.
Having mentioned that the spirits who were in prison were disobedient "during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water," Peter leaps from Old Testament times to ours. Verse 21, "And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you -- not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
The connections between Peter's ideas might not be clear to us, but he writes this to help us think about our being baptized into Christ. We might not understand all that Christ does in the invisible realm of the Spirit, with the angels, authorities, and powers mentioned in verse 22, or what Christ did between the time he died and was raised from the dead. We know that we're baptized in God's name, claimed by God in baptism. That's closer to where we live. "And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you." If we've been baptized into Christ we can say, as did Martin Luther when he was most confused or tempted, "I have been baptized." God had plunged Luther into Christ in baptism.
No matter how waffling we might be on this side of the relationship, God is absolutely trustworthy. If you've been baptized into Christ, Christ is with you in a special way. When you're holding onto life by only your fingernails, or when you seem imprisoned by forces you don't understand, or when so much of you feels dead you can hardly touch a spot that seems alive, Christ is there, too. You've been baptized. That's God's promise of faithfulness to you. Hold onto that. If Christ can make a proclamation to the spirits in prison, Christ can get to you wherever you are and whatever you're struggling against.
Peter has learned by experience that the consequences of Jesus' resurrection reach from the farthest end of creation to the deepest pit in a prison. God's grace only awaits our asking for it, and sometimes we need it pretty badly before we get around to the asking.
Terry Anderson was the Associated Press Bureau Chief in Beirut, Lebanon, when he was captured at gunpoint March 16, 1985. He was held captive nearly seven years. He describes himself at that time as a lapsed Roman Catholic who six months before capture had returned to his faith. Once in confinement, he begged his guard for a Bible. Having received the Bible 24 days into his captivity, he read it through fifty times.
His fellow captors tell how Terry helped them survive and how he kept up their hope. Through his terrible suffering, he believed that Christ was with him. If Christ could reach the imprisoned spirits in Noah's time, Christ could reach Terry Anderson's cell in Beirut.
Anderson now travels the world to promote peace. He tells the amazing news that God was with him and that he's forgiven his captors. He learned how, as Peter instructed, to sanctify Christ in his heart. He now follows Peter's teaching by giving an account of the hope that is in him.
A faith that brought Terry Anderson through imprisonment and led him to forgive his captors has much to commend it. We need to acknowledge that not everyone will want to know about the hope we hold in common with our fellow Christians. Also, we ourselves will never understand everything about our faith. Yet, as Peter tells us, we can still reverence Christ in our hearts and we can and we must be zealous to do good, part of which is to give an account of the hope that is within us. Amen.
An example is Ignaz Semmelweis, not exactly a household name, but important to your health. He was the Hungarian-Austrian medical doctor who realized that physicians should wash their hands. He didn't know the reason, but he deduced that if he went straight from performing autopsies to delivering babies, mothers became sick and died more frequently. He concluded that doctors were somehow carrying the problem from sick patients to well. No one knew why, but, where he could convince doctors to wash their hands before attending a patient, the mortality rate fell drastically.
How was he treated for being eager to do good? His results were resisted and argued against. Besides, for doctors to wash their hands between patients would take too long. Semmelweis refined his thinking, made experiments, offered statistics, and started also cleaning the instruments that doctors used in surgery. No one then knew about germs, but people wouldn't accept the clear evidence of his findings. For decades, generally, the medical establishment in Europe and around the world not only dismissed his findings but reviled him personally.
Peter knows the answer to his question, "Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?" He mentions "Christ who suffered." Jesus suffered for doing good. Some ethicists quip that no truly good deed ever goes unpunished. Not something like helping an elderly person across the street; that's just courtesy. But helping a nation to face it's racism, that's truly good, and you'll pay for it.
Peter goes on, "But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated." You're going to get into all kinds of grief for the sake of your faith and for doing what's truly good. Be zealous to do good anyway, because God can bless you even when you suffer antagonism or opposition. Peter offers two ways to prepare for the difficulties that converge upon us when we live for Christ and do what is right. These are also two ways God will bless us.
First, he says, "In your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord." He means our faith must be active inside us. We must practice an internal worship, an intentional turning to Christ's presence within us. Christ summons us to an intense personal relationship, our part of which the church across the ages has named "piety" or "spiritual discipline." We must meet God's grace regularly in order to receive the power to live for God. "In your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord."
The second way to prepare for the difficulties: "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you." On the Friday after Thanksgiving, our family's tradition is to shop in downtown Portland, especially at Powell's Bookstore, the largest in the world. Invariably somewhere on our day's weaving between shoppers, dashing into stores, and searching for a place for lunch, we're accosted by street preachers. Every one of them has screamed angrily and aimed threats at us, even though they didn't know us. I've never seen anyone respond positively to them. Peter instructs us, "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence." What we say about our faith and hope needs to be appropriate to the person hearing and always in a gentle manner. Few people can be scared into Christianity. No one can be argued into Christianity, at least not for very long.
Yet, we must speak. Our current society is like that of the early Christians, where people don't automatically become Christians. Too many Christians think that the church in America will grow today as it did in the 1950s. In case you missed it, the 1950s are gone. If the Christian faith is to survive, it won't be because the culture around us is friendly to Christianity and potential members keep pouring through our doors no matter what we do or don't do. For those Christians brainwashed into believing, "Our deeds show our faith," how good do we think our deeds are? Even Jesus talked about his faith. No one wants a faith that's just words, but Christianity can't survive without words being spoken from the source of our hope.
Notice that Peter doesn't mention our faith or our love but he mentions our hope. "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you." Hope is how we view tomorrow. For Peter, hope almost defines you as a Christian. Hope means you anticipate God's grace even more tomorrow no matter the circumstances. A question to ask a congregation is if it has any hope: "Do church members picture any specific future for this congregation beyond their lifetime?" You can twist the question around to bother pastors, "Are you preparing others for ministry after your pastoral term?" When you talk about tomorrow, you're touching upon the realm of hope. If you have hope, you're not bogged down with despair or dominated by despondency. You're not threatened by tomorrow's being different than today. Peter notes that hope is what's most distinctive about our Christian faith. We need to be ready to justify for others the hope we hold.
Be ready to give an account. In the original language, the word "account" means "a reasoned account, a summary." Peter instructs us to offer an explanation, a reason that we're Christian. One thing you learn quickly when teaching: Students don't really know something if they've only memorized it. They must put it into their own words to show they've grasped the concept. We need to put our explanation for Christian hope into our own words and nothing's wrong with having some of those reasons thought out. Before a job interview you anticipate the questions that will probably be asked so you can answer without too many "ahs," gasps, "you knows," or awkward silences.
As reason for your Christian hope, consider what others have said, "God seemed to get to me before I got to God, so I can't help but believe" or "God has helped me through some pretty difficult times" or "Jesus seems to be the best that life can produce" or "Jesus' resurrection shows that the worst tragedy can't stop God's love." What's your rock bottom faith? Stir around in your heart and mind, determine what you believe, and be ready to give an account. You don't have to get all nervous and perfectionist about your words. We're always going to live as did Ignaz Semmelweis, with evidence we don't fully understand. But we need to mention the faith we do understand, trusting the Holy Spirit to help us speak. It can make the difference between life or death for others.
In my ministry, I've more often taught Peter's letters than preached them, because a lot in Peter's letters is difficult to grasp. During one season of my life, I was so baffled by Peter's two letters that I decided I'd read them every day until I understood them better. I read and read them, and still there's much that's confusing. However, as I've tried hard to understand Peter's letter, I've realized that Peter is trying just as hard to understand and to explain what has happened in Christ. During Peter's time with the earthly Jesus, he did a poor job of understanding his master. If we falter or flounder as we struggle with Peter's writing, we can assume that he has sympathy for us. He's struggled, too. Basically, Peter is trying lots of different ways to help us see how Jesus relates to the Old Testament and to our lives.
Peter tells us that Jesus, having been "put to death in the flesh," was "made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison." In the New Testament, "spirits" almost always refer to supernatural beings in the spiritual realm, not to dead people, although Peter will later mention that the good news of Christ was even preached to the dead. The spirits Peter refers to in verse 19 are those "who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah." Is that perfectly understandable? Well, the church across the ages hasn't had an easy time grasping it either. At least it means that Jesus Christ has gone to extraordinary lengths to reach those who need him and to help those who turn desperately to heaven for salvation. That's what Jesus was about.
Having mentioned that the spirits who were in prison were disobedient "during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water," Peter leaps from Old Testament times to ours. Verse 21, "And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you -- not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ."
The connections between Peter's ideas might not be clear to us, but he writes this to help us think about our being baptized into Christ. We might not understand all that Christ does in the invisible realm of the Spirit, with the angels, authorities, and powers mentioned in verse 22, or what Christ did between the time he died and was raised from the dead. We know that we're baptized in God's name, claimed by God in baptism. That's closer to where we live. "And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you." If we've been baptized into Christ we can say, as did Martin Luther when he was most confused or tempted, "I have been baptized." God had plunged Luther into Christ in baptism.
No matter how waffling we might be on this side of the relationship, God is absolutely trustworthy. If you've been baptized into Christ, Christ is with you in a special way. When you're holding onto life by only your fingernails, or when you seem imprisoned by forces you don't understand, or when so much of you feels dead you can hardly touch a spot that seems alive, Christ is there, too. You've been baptized. That's God's promise of faithfulness to you. Hold onto that. If Christ can make a proclamation to the spirits in prison, Christ can get to you wherever you are and whatever you're struggling against.
Peter has learned by experience that the consequences of Jesus' resurrection reach from the farthest end of creation to the deepest pit in a prison. God's grace only awaits our asking for it, and sometimes we need it pretty badly before we get around to the asking.
Terry Anderson was the Associated Press Bureau Chief in Beirut, Lebanon, when he was captured at gunpoint March 16, 1985. He was held captive nearly seven years. He describes himself at that time as a lapsed Roman Catholic who six months before capture had returned to his faith. Once in confinement, he begged his guard for a Bible. Having received the Bible 24 days into his captivity, he read it through fifty times.
His fellow captors tell how Terry helped them survive and how he kept up their hope. Through his terrible suffering, he believed that Christ was with him. If Christ could reach the imprisoned spirits in Noah's time, Christ could reach Terry Anderson's cell in Beirut.
Anderson now travels the world to promote peace. He tells the amazing news that God was with him and that he's forgiven his captors. He learned how, as Peter instructed, to sanctify Christ in his heart. He now follows Peter's teaching by giving an account of the hope that is in him.
A faith that brought Terry Anderson through imprisonment and led him to forgive his captors has much to commend it. We need to acknowledge that not everyone will want to know about the hope we hold in common with our fellow Christians. Also, we ourselves will never understand everything about our faith. Yet, as Peter tells us, we can still reverence Christ in our hearts and we can and we must be zealous to do good, part of which is to give an account of the hope that is within us. Amen.
