1
Peter 2:19-25
Easter
4
May
11, 2014
William G. Carter
For it is a credit to you if, being aware of
God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If 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. For
to this you have been called, because Christ
also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in
his steps. “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” When 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. He 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. For you
were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and
guardian of your souls.
Tuesday was a beautiful
morning at Antietam National Battlefield. The sky was bright blue, the rolling
farmland was a carpet of spring green. John Conklin suggested I should stop by,
if ever in the area. Tuesday morning, I realized I was very close. With a
little time on my hands, I stopped by.
Most of our Civil War battlefields
are now quiet spaces. Well preserved, hauntingly quiet. Standing at the ridge
by the visitor’s center, I looked toward the old German church, imagining
McClellan’s army coming up on Robert E. Lee. I recalled Matthew Brady’s early
photographs of dying soldiers on the fields of Antietam. 23,000 people died in
the one-day Battle of Antietam. September 17, 1862 was the bloodiest single day
in United States history.
If you have visited
these battlefields as I have, you wonder about the blood and the massacre. On a
beautiful spring day, you wonder what the violence accomplished. In 1862,
Antietam did not end the war. The leaders of both sides did not recoil from the
horror and say, “That’s it. All of us have had enough. No more violence ever
again.” Oh no. The Civil War went on for two and a half more years. Violence
does not end all violence.
I was thinking about
this sermon as I wandered around the battlefield. Our text reminds us of Good
Friday and the death of Jesus. That was another brutal day. Sometimes I think
we have spruced up the crucifixion, much like we have tidied up a Civil War
battlefield.
Holy Week was not that
long ago. I recall the grim faces at our last men’s Bible study. We were
studying the account in the Gospel of John, where the Jewish religious leaders
asked the Roman soldiers to speed up the executions so they could get on with
their Passover celebrations. The men in our group turned pale as we read of
soldiers breaking the legs of the crucified men so they could suffocate sooner.
The cross was a horrible way to die, brutal and violent.
In today’s text, an
early church leader turns to the cross for a moral lesson. “Look to the cross,”
he says. “Jesus did not return abuse for the abuse he suffered. When the Lord
suffered, he could have retaliated but he did not. Instead he trusted himself
to the God who judges every person.” All the time, in the words of the African
American spiritual, “He never said a mumbalin’ word.”
Peter was speaking to a
congregation of Christians who are suffering. They knew first-hand that those
who follow Jesus have a tough time in the world. They can be mistreated for
doing the right thing, maligned for setting God’s ways as their highest pursuit.
This was especially true for the primary audience addressed by Peter. They were
house servants, many of them domestic slaves. They were bound to serve earthly
masters, but as Christians they had a higher Master. And it is God in Christ
who determines the Christian’s behavior; it is not our situation in life.
It is difficult to stay
clear about that. With my hands shading my eyes, I looked toward Antietam
Creek. The water ran thick red on that day in 1862. Sharpshooters stood on the
ridges above, picking off scores of enemies trying to forge the stream. 23,000
men died in a single day. We remember three men dying on crosses outside of
Jerusalem. One was more than enough.
The writer of our Bible
text is reflecting on that single death. What does it mean? For a group of
downtrodden Christians, the violent death of Jesus means that we must refrain
from perpetuating the violence. Jesus taught as much: “You are not,” he said,
“to love the neighbor and hate the enemy, speak to the friendly but not the
unfriendly, be generous to the generous but withhold from the selfish. No, God
acts out of God’s own nature, never reacting, but sending sun and rain to both
the just and unjust.”[1]
God loves all, even if they do not deserve it.
Here is one of the many
things that the New Testament says about on the death of Jesus. What does this
mean? “Christ suffered for you,” he declares. There is something freeing about
this, something profoundly liberating. Peter says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that,
free from sins, we might live for righteousness.” Then he reaches back into the
Jewish scriptures to find an affirmation from the prophet Isaiah, “By his
wounds you have been healed.”
It is intriguing that after
President Lincoln heard about the violence at Antietam, he regarded the Civil
War differently. It was about more than states rights, and whether or not the
southern states could do whatever they wanted. It was also about freeing those
who were enslaved. Four days after the gunfire stopped in Antietam, Lincoln
announced he would issue his Emancipation Proclamation as of January 1863. All
slaves in rebellious states would be forever free.
So I’ve been thinking
about how all of this holds together. What amount of self-sacrifice is
necessary to provide freedom for others? Not merely to exert control over the
rebellious tribes but to create freedom – and finally reconciliation? These are
more than Civil War questions from 152 years ago. They are matters of the
greater gospel, begun on a cross in 30 A.D.
We say a lot of things
about the cross – “Jesus died for our sins,” for instance, even though our sins
continue. Or another New Testament writer declares, “Christ has broken down the
wall of hostility between us . . . through the cross.”[2]
But there is still great hostility in the air among a lot of people; I observe,
in some corners, we could make the case that the Civil War may not be over yet,
and it’s still Blue against Gray.
So in these days after
Easter, when we reflect on the cross, we see how far God will go to bring
violent people into peace. God cannot compel warring people to stop their war,
not without obliterating all of them. But here is what God will do: with all
vulnerability, God will step onto the middle of the battlefield and take all
the bullets – all the anger, all the hostility – into his own body. God takes
all of it on the cross, in order to take it all away . . . provided we let
it all go.
That’s the human
struggle, isn’t it? I saw war in the eyes of the lady who cut me off on the
highway yesterday, then she glared at me as if it was my fault. Sorry, not that
time. But I have to let it go.
I saw it on the sign
outside the visitor’s center at Antietam. In official lettering, it declared
that guns and firearms are not welcome at a battlefield memorial. Just let the
irony of that sink in. Then ask: why would anybody take guns and firearms to a
battle that is already over?
But my favorite glimpse
came when I pulled off to a little spot to write a few notes about Antietam,
and I discovered where I was. There it was - a monument to Clara Barton. I didn’t
know for what she did on that battlefield. A forty-year old clerk in Washington’s
patent office, she collected medical supplies and food to deliver to the soldiers.
Her father had taught her that Christians care for those in need. She persisted
with army officials until she received permission in August 1862 to take humanitarian
supplies to the front lines.
One month later on the
field of Antietam, she got busy, bandaging the wounded, feeding the hungry,
showing compassion regardless of what side of the line anybody fought. They
called her “the Angel of the Battlefield.” A few years after that, she organized
the American Red Cross.
She did this willingly: she
went to the battlefield to bind up wounds. She offered compassion to all soldiers
regardless of whether they wore blue or gray. She is still remembered for her
mercy at a level far beyond the soldiers or their generals. Through her deeds,
she pointed us beyond the war to another way of living. And just to score the
point: we would never have known about her if she hadn't entered the war.
These are clues to the work
accomplished by Jesus on the cross. He entered the battle between heaven and
earth, putting himself squarely on the battlefield of rebellious Confederates
and warlike Yankees. And he gave himself that all people ultimately might be healed.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
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