1
Peter 3:13-22
Lent
1
February
18, 2018
William G. Carter
Now who will harm
you if you are eager to do what is good? 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, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord.
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. 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. For
it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than
to suffer for doing evil.
For Christ also
suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to
bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the
spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the
spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God
waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which
a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. 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, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand
of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.
The
story is told of a young child going into a church for the first time. He was
seven or eight years old. It was a Roman Catholic sanctuary, classic and ornate.
The pews were hand carved, with fine detailing added by an artist’s paintbrush.
The walls were lined with stained glass windows. With sunlight streaming in,
the room was ablaze with color.
The
air held traces of incense, lingering after a worship service held an hour
before. It was the reminder of a heavy perfume, suggesting this was a special
place, detached from the rest of the world. It seemed a room drenched in
prayer. He paused for just a moment to take it all in. His head lifted toward
the ceiling as he sniffed in all the prayers.
Just
then, he noticed, high above his head, a figure on a cross. The eyes were
closed, the head tilted, the mouth twisted. The little boy let out a gasp. It
was frightening. He saw the nails and the crown of thorns. The pain of the
figure on the cross was obvious.
And
to no one in particular, he exclaimed, “He looks like he is having a really bad
day.” Then he added, “So what did he do wrong?”
There’s
a lot of theology in a young child’s comment, especially if they come to the
church and see such a sight for the very first time. At the center of all
Christian worship is a cross. The cross was the instrument of capital
execution, state-sanctioned death. And in most of the churches in the world, if
there is a cross, there is probably a figure on it.
I
once asked a group of teenagers, “Why do you suppose we don’t have a body on
our cross?” They looked at me blankly until one of them said, “Because we’re in
denial.” There’s a lot of good theology in a teenager’s comment too. We can
declare we have not figure up there because he is risen, and that’s true
enough. But we can’t have a resurrection if nobody has died. And Jesus of Nazareth
died.
The
scripture readings this Lent will keep us focused on that. There is no rushing
to Easter, not this year. Some of the readings that we will hear over the next
six weeks will come from Jesus himself, as he looks ahead to what will be
handed to him. And in the Bible, the words of Jesus are written down, thirty,
fifty, sixty years after them, so the church has collected the words that they
believe are most important for understanding the death of Jesus.
Other
words, like the words we heard from First Peter, are words that come directly
from the church. The early Christian leaders had some time to reflect on this particular
death. How is it, that God could send his Son to the world, and the world would
execute him? How could God become that vulnerable? How could we be that evil? These
are mysteries that we never outrun.
The
young boy looks upon the crucified figure of Jesus for the first time and
blurts out, “He looks like he is having a really bad day.” There’s no joking
about that. Crucifixion was a brutal business. The hammer and the nails went
through flesh and bone. The soldiers whipped him with cruelty. And the custom was
to display the crucifixions by the busiest highways, to warn others what would
happen to them if they did something wrong. This was standard practice in the Roman
Empire.
This
is a hard thing to face. Maybe that teenager was right, too. We would rather
not look upon a savage, sadistic act. Perhaps it is a form of denial, an
emotional cushion to numb the hard reality of how Jesus actually died.
On
the day before one more gunman shot up a school with a military weapon, the
coroner of Clark County, Nevada, released the autopsy results of the fifty-eight
people who were shot at the country music concert in Las Vegas. I will spare
you the details; I glanced at twenty-three of them before I had to change the
page.
The
news reporters had this to say:
Shying
away from that truth has only helped perpetuate a status quo in which many
people have decided there’s nothing we can do to limit either the scope or the
frequency of these tragedies. If that’s the path we continue to take, we
should at least be willing to face up to the raw brutality of the incidents
that we have accepted as an unavoidable feature of American life.[1]
Violence
is real. Jesus died in an act of violence. And in light of the resurrection,
the church had to think about the violence. First Peter is one response, a partial
response, to some of the first century thinking about the violent death of
Jesus. Perhaps it’s best focused by the second comment of the little boy who
went into the church for the first time: “What did he do wrong?”
The
answer – you know the answer – is Jesus did nothing wrong. In fact, he suffered
because he did everything right. He came with healing in his touch and was confronted
by illness of body and spirit. He came speaking peace on his tongue and was met
with hatred. He came with kindness in his heart and was subjected to cruelty.
He came with forgiveness in his spirit and was attacked by evil. He acted
graciously, in accordance with the grace of God, and that is what got him
killed.
Welcome
to a world that rejects the God who made the world and loves. That’s one good
reason why Jesus is on the cross.
In chapter
three of Peter’s first letter, we hear that, just because we belong to God in
Christ, it doesn’t mean we are exempt from the same things that happened to
Christ. In fact, we should not be surprised if the world that rejected Jesus
should also reject us. We should expect the world to slap us because it slapped
Jesus first.
Peter
sprinkles the passage with one-liners of encouragement:
·
If
you suffer for doing what it right, you are blessed
·
Do
not fear what the world fears, and do not be intimidated
·
Give
an account of the hope that is in your heart
·
Keep
a clear conscience, so when you’re maligned, your abusers will be shamed
·
If,
by God’s will, you suffer for doing good, that is far better than suffering for
doing evil.
Above
all, says the writer, remember Jesus. Look to Jesus. He did nothing wrong – the
righteous man was killed by the unrighteous, which is to say Jesus suffered because
of our sins. What did in Jesus? All the murderous tendencies of the world.
For centuries, God tried to steer us, correct us, teach us, coach us – and it
didn’t do any good. That’s why Jesus died.
Peter
says, “If the world is beating you up for being a Christian, remember the world
first beat up your Christ.” And if you are having a really bad day, remember
Jesus had a really Bad Friday.
I
think it’s helpful to remember how nasty the world can be. Certainly, we are capable
of making our own messes – that’s for sure. Left to our own devices, it’s
amazing how much trouble we can find. One thing about being in the suburbs, we
are so sneaky about it. There’s a lot more money, influence, and weight to
throw around. And none of it makes anybody’s life any better. We just think it
does, and that is part of sin’s delusion.
And
if you try to live a good life, the world will come back swinging. No good deed
goes unpunished. Simply know this in advance, says Peter. Remember how the
world treated Jesus.
But
let’s keep thinking on Jesus. He comes to earth, and that means he is
vulnerable: subject to limitations of time, restricted to wherever he happens
to be, limited in his power to how he is received by others. For God to come to
Earth in Jesus means that God chose to be vulnerable.
Do
we realize what this means? In choosing to be vulnerable, to be completely
with us in every way, God chooses to accept and receive us as we are. If we are
savage and violent, God decides the abysmal quality of our character is not a
deal-breaker for his relationship to us. If we are weak and broken-hearted, God
comes alongside us to share and what it means to be human. If we are indifferent,
God is still there, waiting us out.
I think this is why Peter can say, “Christ died in
order to bring us to God.” Jesus brings us alongside God in every way. That is
good news and it resonates most deeply with those who have a pack of troubles
of their own. Nothing will separate them from God anymore, not their sin, not
their weakness, not their pain and grief.
Where
there was division, there is union. Where there was estrangement, there is
forgiveness. Where our spirits are fractured, and our bones broken, there is
healing. The promise of the Gospel is that Jesus brings us to
God.
For here
is the thing to remember: his death counted for something. Not only his good
life, but his good death. Something happened in the heart of God when Jesus was
crucified. Peter does not spell out. He hints at it in a few ways – the
righteous died for the unrighteous, Jesus suffered once for all. Somehow the
brutal violence of the cross cancelled the power of violence. God decides to
cancel the punishment we deserve, decides to release it, forgive it, let it go.
He looks at the perfect, sinless Christ and how he is rejected. Then God says,
“That’s it. I’ve had it. No more am I going to allow human sin affect my love
for my own world!”
That’s
the miracle of the Gospel. Somewhere in the heart of God, sin is cancelled.
Forgiveness is declared. God declares a definitive word on the world’s abuse –
the cross of Jesus is to be the conclusion of it all. Cancelled, forgiven,
reconciled - period. It is finished.
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