Living in Our World

Sermon for Sunday, May 10

1 Peter 2:11-17

1 Peter is a book written for Christians in uncertain times. It is a book about taking control of your life when your world is out of your control. For Peter’s audience, the church was a minority movement living in an openly hostile culture. For us, we have been an accepted majority, but we often face the reality of a culture that is always trying to sweep us away, to blow us along on its way. And now we are more uncertain than ever in the face of an invisible enemy who we can’t even see to fight. One question Christians will always be asking is how the gospel affects the life we live. The question, “What Would Jesus Do?” is only so helpful. Jesus taught us a good many things: love one another, love your enemies, turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But for the questions of our modern era, we sometimes have little guidance. How to vote? People in Jesus’s time couldn’t have even imagined common folks having any say over their government. What to drive? Jesus walked everywhere he went, except on water, and sometimes even then! And how would Jesus use a phone? Social media? These questions are kind of trivial except that they point us to one more relevant question: How will we respond to these things? We live in a world where a lot of powers and organizations compete for our loyalty. I will confess that I have “loyalty cards” to two grocery chains and about four coffee shops. Our employers, our friends, our political parties all claim loyalty over us. But the question we have to answer in an uncertain time is which loyalty do we hold highest? If it’s not our faith in Jesus, we are on the wrong track. Long before he wrote this letter, Peter was one of the original disciples of Jesus. One day he and his buddies were out on the sea and Jesus was someplace else. A storm came up and threatened to swamp their boat, but just as suddenly as it came it passed, and then they saw him: Jesus out there walking on the water. Peter said to Jesus, “If it’s really you, can I join you out there?” So Jesus said, “Come on.” And Peter hops out of the boat and starts walking to Jesus, but at some point he starts to sink. Jesus grabs him and says “why did you doubt?” Doubt is like trying to step from the dock onto a boat and becoming unsure once you get one foot across the gap. The most dangerous form of doubt is what happens when our loyalties are divided and we can’t figure out which one to follow. You might say “I’m a Christian and I’m a loyal fan of my sports team.” You might think that those two things will never come into conflict, but I’m here to tell you they will. Some of y’all sat with me through my discovery of rank corruption at the heart of my favorite college football team, the Baylor Bears. There was a sexual assault scandal and coverup. I saw a lot of people I liked refuse to criticize the school. I felt that temptation. But loyalty to Christ meant standing up for truth, and produced a loyalty to my team that didn’t amount to burying my head in the sand. To be a Christian in the world is to live under pressure. If we are faithful, we will feel pressure from the world to become more worldly. If we are too worldly, we will feel pressure from our faith to leave all that behind. Our default response when we have doubts is to ignore them. When we are tempted to compromise our beliefs, we do and hope no one notices. We cheat on our taxes and say, “well, everybody does that.” Bible scholars have tried to make Jesus’s harder teachings apply only to some future time, when they are more realistic. So often we choose comfort. Comfort over hard choices. Comfort over honest self-reflection. Comfort over the hard work of living for Jesus. And so here, at the heart of Peter’s first letter, we have a reminder: Christians are to live holy, live honorably, and live attractively. If we do these three things we will be a faithful witness. Live holy. Peter says to “abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.” What is it that keeps you from being concerned about the things of God? There is an old Cherokee parable: a grandfather tells his grandson: “there are two wolves living inside every person. One is evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other wolf is good. It is joy, peace, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.” The grandson reflected on the old man’s words before asking, “Grandfather, which one wins?” And the old Cherokee replied, “The one you feed.” Often, we feel disconnected from God because we don’t feed our spiritual lives. We consign our spiritual development to our spare time and allow our the rest of our lives to crowd it out. Living holy means making time to be holy. If we allow our holiness to grow, we can live honorably. Live honorably. Peter says we are to conduct ourselves in such a way that even our critics secretly know we are have been good. The apostle Paul points out in his letter to the Galatians that life by the Spirit results in bearing a certain fruit: a life characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Paul adds that “there is no law against these things.” While in countless places and times throughout the history of the world Christians have found the law turned against them, in those situations Christians have embarrassed the law by living exemplary lives. During the Civil Rights movement, before protests participants would often subject themselves to times of training— having people pull their hair, yell obscenities, and push them to practice no retaliation. They often embarrassed their tormentors by their ability to refrain from responding to hate with hate. Many moved the culture with their ability to live honorably. And a Christian’s honorable life is a life that holds up the gospel, it is a life that attracts people to the gospel. Live attractively. Peter says that if we live honorably among nonbelievers, they will come to see that our way is better. He says they will glorify God, if only at the last day, because they will come to see by our light. One of the things that amazes me about humans is our ability to make up our minds about people we barely know. Our culture is particularly good at this: we divide the world into Us and Them. Good guys and bad guys. Smart people and dumb people. But this division makes it impossible for us to hear each other. We respond to things other people aren’t saying in order to make ourselves look good at their expense. Arguing isn’t about finding common ground, after all: it’s about scoring points. Imagine for a moment what injecting a little bit of love and sympathy into the discourse might do? In a world ruled by “us versus them,” portraying our opponents honestly and truthfully might soften them up to the gospel. If we listen, maybe we can be heard. This is just one way the gospel teaches us to live attractively. If we live a holy, honorable, and attractive life, we will be faithful to Jesus. The same Peter who walked on water also denied Jesus three times, by the light of a charcoal fire. He failed to live up to his faith on the night of Jesus’s trial. After his resurrection, the Gospel of John tells us that Jesus walked up to Peter by the light of another charcoal fire, and asked him— three times: “Do you love me?” Peter— fragile, insecure, lost Peter— wept. He confessed his love for Jesus. And so when he tells us how to bear the pressure of the world, he speaks to us as one who has failed, been forgiven, and learned from failure. This is the gospel for today: that when we fail to live faithfully to Jesus—when we fail to live holy, honorable, and attractive lives— he will restore us and use our failures and our brokenness to help us get back up.