A Sermon Based Upon 1 Peter 3: 13-22
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 25, 2014
There
is a story about an illegal Bible study group meeting in a Russian Apartment
building in Moscow back during the Cold War.
At that time Russia was officially ‘atheists’ and taking part in secret
Bible studies was against the law and would be punished by death, or worse, a
free ticket to a prison camp in Siberia.
On one occasion, as the Bible
study group was meeting, there was a knock at the door. A voice on the other side announced they were
from the KGB and demanded the door opened immediately. As the KGB agent entered, he closed the door
behind himself, then told everyone to line up to declare themselves guilty of involvement
in the Bible study so they could be arrested.
He gave them only one option. They
could renounce their faith and leave but never come back. After each one answered they were guilty and
ready to be charged, the KGB man answered “good”. Then the told them to sit back down. “I’m a Christian too” he said to their
surprise. I want to study with you, but just
wanted to make sure you were sincere in your faith and would not turn me in.”
How would you prove your faith if your
life was on the line? Is there enough
evidence of living faith to convict you?
This legendary incident, based on a very true events, reminds us of the
situation for faithful believers when Peter once challenged his readers to ‘be ready’ to ‘make a defense to anyone who
demands it’. Notice that the word here is not ‘anyone who
asks’, but ‘anyone who demands’. We’re not talking sharing your faith, but we
are talking exposing or even defending your faith not just to skeptics, but
also to accusers. The situation facing
the Christians Peter writes to is not simply one that demands them to explain
‘why’ they are believers, but it is more reflected in the question, “Are you
prepared to die for what you believe?” Would
you put your reputation, your job, or even your life ‘on the line’ because of
your faith? “Always be ready,” says
Peter, “to make your defense” (in court, he implies), for the hope that is in
you.” Are you ready?
HOPE
IS NOT BEING INTIMIDATED
I don’t think many of us could have ever
imagined the post Christian world we now live in, where churches are struggling
to survive, and some are even dying? You can see the loss of the privileged place
Christianity once knew in our life, most everywhere. In fact, as one Christian professor on one
college campus said a couple of years back, “On our campus most every form of religion is treated with respect,
except for those who say Jesus is the only hope. If you make a claim like that, either you
will be laughed at, ridiculed or most likely, completely ignored.” But it’s not just in academics or politics, but
also in local communities where faith is losing ground. Now seminaries who train young people for
ministry are advising students to get two degrees, not one. They need one degree in a field where they
can prepare for their calling in ministry, and another for prepare working to
make a living. The church of the very
near future will probably not be able to pay them full-time salaries because
the community and the church cannot afford to.
We all know this is true, but we don’t like
to talk about it. The church, as most of
us have known it, is on the way out. “Being a pastor on the old “ship of Zion” is
like being the captain of the titanic,” one pastor has noted. Churches
that are surviving, at least for now, have to work with smaller budgets, fewer
ministries, and smaller congregations. A
woman in the dentist office, recently shared her exasperation about her church just
the other day: “We have a wonderful
pastor, a great choir, and a loving church, but we just can’t grow.” A denominational executive also told me he
was using our ‘partnership’ as a model for other churches to consider, if they
and their pastors are willing to ‘face the music’ of what’s really happening.
What is happening is that the world we
used to know has been pulled out from under us like ‘a rug from under out feet.’ The nice, safe, comforting, steady and promising
world of the Christian Church has disappeared and now we are entering a ‘brave
new world’ that dares to live without church, or perhaps is trying a whole new
type of church, where those who attend demand that the church entertain them,
razzle dazzle them, all to meet their
needs. If it doesn’t, they will take
their children and go elsewhere, or if they don’t have children, maybe they
will not go anywhere. In this ‘new
world’ many, if not most, younger people have already left or are leaving, and
some of them wonder why are we still here, how can we still have hope. It just could be that some of you might be
secretly wondering that too.
Before we lapse into despair over the
situation, we need to realize that it could be worse, as it is in other parts
of the world where Christianity is still illegal or persecuted. It might also get worse, because traditional
forms of churches like ours are struggling everywhere. And of course, it has been worse in the past and
that’s what this text in Peter reminds us.
There have been times in Christian history, when it was not only unpopular,
but it has been illegal and threatening to be a Christian.
In places like this, Christians were and
still are falsely accused and sometimes, even wrongly abused, for having
faith. This is part of the background
behind today’s Bible passage from First Peter.
Surprisingly, as NT scholar Fred Craddock says in his commentary on 1
Peter, “We do know that because the
Christians did not believe in and worship the array of Roman gods, they were called “atheists.” That term carried with it a cluster of
prejudices against Christians that questioned their character, citizenship,
patriotism, and social responsibility.” (See
First and Second Peter and Jude, by Fred B. Craddock, Westminster Bible
Companion, 1995, p. 58).
Some of us wrongly picture that the
ancient world was made up of pagan people who wanted to kill Christians because
Christians had faith in Jesus Christ.
The larger truth is that the ancient world was made up of many good,
religious people who simply misunderstood the claims the Christian faith and looked
down upon Christians as a negative influence for their world. When Christians would not bow down to the
emperor, they were considered ‘unpatriotic’.
When Christians would not eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols,
they were believed to be boycotting and hurting the economy. When Christians participated in worship and
celebrated the sacrifice of the body and blood of Jesus or shared in a ‘love
feast’, they were imagined as taking part in cannibalistic ceremonies, or
communal and immoral orgies. When
Christians insisted on telling the truth and showing love and generosity, even showing
hospitality to strangers and enemies while they also refused to in support of
the war effort or fight in the army, they were seen as being a threat to the
status quo because they did not join with the majority opinions or go the way
of the crowd. People saw Christians as
being an insult, an affront, or an offense to their own political viewpoints,
their own traditional religion, and their very well-established way of life. As Dr. Craddock goes on to say, “love seems to stir hatred in those who
refuse to love.”
Has the Christian life become unpopular,
or has it become undesirable, or maybe just impossible for most people? Has the Christian hope or the Christian way
of life become so offensive to our own American ‘way of life’ freedom and the
pleasure of getting what we want, when we want it? Maybe, there are those who still respect the
Christian way as good for some, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of what I
‘want to do’, what ‘I want to be’ or what ‘I want to believe’? This
is more like the situation of why Christians were first asked to ‘give an account for the hope’ that was
in them. It wasn’t so much that there
was great interest from others about becoming believers, but people were
looking for some “reason” not to hate Christians, not to haul them to court or
even worse, not to demand for their elimination and annihilation in society. The point is that people were simply afraid
of real Christians, and they still are.
They did not understand them then, and many do not understand the claims
of true Christianity now. Many still see
the claims and teachings of true Christianity as a threat to their own way of
life.
The first thing Peter is saying to the
Church of is day is that: Hope is not
being intimidated by what other’s fear.
“Do not fear what they
fear!” Peter says. Fear motivates so much of what humans did
then, and still do now. Fear controls
how most people react to life and to each other, especially to anything that is
different from what they know. But what
is it that people fear about Christians and Christianity?
Back in my High School years, I was part
of the Bible Club which met in a classroom of a ‘believing’ Biology Teacher. I’ll never forget studying the Bible and
praying in a room where there was a large image of a monkey becoming a human on
the wall. I once asked our
teacher-sponsor, who taught Biology, how she could keep that poster on the
wall, which represented Darwin’s theory of evolution which she taught, and yet,
as she said, she also believed that God created the world. Her answer was: “At school I teach Science
and theories, but at Church and in Life, I live by faith.” That settled it for me. Here was a woman who didn’t let the
‘theories’ nor ‘science’ intimidate her faith.
She did not have it all figured out, but she didn’t have to. As she also told us, “Everyone lives by
faith…even Biology teachers and many Scientists. She was an inspiring person who didn’t let
anything, intimidate her faith. She was
also not afraid of the theories nor the facts,
because faith is not a theory and faith will always be more than ‘just
the facts ma’am’, as Sargent Friday used to say on Dragnet.
The reason I’m telling you about that
Biology teacher, is because of what happened one day, while we are all in our
Bible Club meeting. While we were
sharing and praying with the door open, as a testimony to our faith, one of the
popular, most intelligent students in the school, put his head in the door and
shouted out, “There is no God!” I’ve always wondered why he had to do
that. Later, I got to know him as we
worked together on the Yearbook. When I
was injured in that terrible car accident, he came along with the student body
president to visit me while I was in the hospital. I was
cautious not to impose my faith on him, but I did not let his ‘unbelieving’
intimidate me. I was bound and
determined not shout out to him that ‘there is a God’ like he shouted out to us,
‘there is no God’! I didn’t want to
tell him the difference between us, but I wanted him to see the
difference. Interestingly, he never
personally questioned my faith nor did he ever ridicule me.
As we might imagine it, Peter says to
his readers and to us, “Don’t be afraid
of what other people say or think!”
“Don’t let other people or never let life intimidate the faith and hope
you have in Jesus Christ. Don’t be
afraid to learn all you can. Don’t be
afraid to live all you can. Most of all,
never be afraid of loving all you can.
As someone has said, “The truth is always the truth, and a Christian should
seek, learn and serve the truth no matter how the truth turns out.” We will
never understand everything about faith, nor will we fully understand all people,
nor will we ever fully know why people do some of the stupid things we do, but as
Christians, we must remain courageously unafraid and ‘always ready to give an account for the hope that is in you’, as
Peter puts it. Peter says the ‘accounting’ of faith comes directly
from the ‘the hope that is in you”. This means that we show why we believe out
of our own accounting of how ‘hope’ remains in us’ in spite of what happens in
life. Our confidence does not come
from clever arguments, but from hope-filled and heart felt experience that we
share with others who have no true hope.
As we have been made ‘confident’ in our hope, because we have been faced
with the option of hopelessness, we will become fearless in the face of the all
the opinions, the viewpoints, or even the actions of others.
HOPE
IS KEEPING YOUR CONSCIENCE CLEAR
Besides not being afraid of what others
say, or what happens in life, Peter
speaks about “sanctifying Christ as Lord…in
your hearts”. He explains what he
means as he goes on to tell his readers to share their hope with all ‘gentleness and reverence’, and then he
says that by doing this, Christians will “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.” (3.16).
There
is a lot that could be said about what Peter means by “keeping your conscience clear”.
Perhaps the best interpretation for us would be, that when we have an
opportunity our best ‘defense’ of faith is not to become ‘offensive’, not to
put our own foot in our mouths , and not to argue or try to prove our hope in
ways we may come to regret later. So
often, the reason people don’t believe like we believe, is because they don’t
have the same upbringing, experience, or knowledge that we do. And the best way to get them to listen to
us, is for us to first learn how to listen to them and their own story. When you care and listen, you can ‘keep your
conscience clear.”
This is very important to learn today,
for when a church or people come under stress, either because we are being
attacked by others, or when things are not going well for us, our greatest
enemy is normally not those who are attacking us, but how we might respond to
those attacks or how we start attacking each other. When
life becomes uncertain, because we are human, we Christians can be our own
worst enemy. We can destroy our opportunity in how we share our faith, in how
we show our faithlessness. Pastor Adam Hamilton
illustrates how this can happen in in a book he wrote entitled, “When Christians get it Wrong.” And I
think he answered very well how this can happen another book, “Seeing Gray In a World of Black and White”. I believe Pastor Hamilton’s book title
remind of exactly what Peter means when he say,
“Keep your conscience clear” when
we witness to our faith. Because we are people who believe in right and
wrong, or ‘black and white’, it is very easy for us to fail to understand the ‘gray’
area where most of life happens.
Because we have hope and are eager to share it, if we are not careful we
can become aggressive zealots who fail to represent the very heart of what our
faith is about: love. When we show love
first and foremost, we can ‘keep our
conscience clear’.
I’ve share with you before about the
Sunday School class in a church that was eager to express their disdain and
disapproval of abortion. On this Sunday
the teacher lead their discussion on how to stand for their faith and that they
should oppose and challenge those who would consider such a terrible thing. There was nothing wrong with their belief and
ethics, which were commendable, except for how they approached it. For in the class that day, unknown to them,
was a woman who was struggling with the fact that she had and abortion many
years before. When she broke down in
tears, the class asked what was wrong and then she confessed to them. She
felt so horrible and so guilty, although she had already found forgiveness in a
loving God who gave her a new start in life and faith. Fortunately, the class no longer took such
an aggressive stance against an issue, but now they saw a person, like them,
who was troubled and was going through a difficult time. I believe that that class learned the
importance of being a witness in a way that they were not the judge of her as a
person, but now trusted and allowed God to be the merciful and forgiving judge
of us all. That was the day they
learned that few things are ‘black and white’, and most everything, if we will
take long enough to understand, can be understood in some form of gray that
will demand ‘gentleness and reverence’
even the worst situations.
HOPE
IS TRUSTING IN THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST
That last word ‘reverence’ means that we
trust and hope in God, not in ourselves, not in our own opinions or our own
viewpoints, no matter how ‘right’ we think we are. We must show our hope in ‘gentle’ and ‘reverent’ ways that respects not only God, but also the respects
the believes of the other person even the person we don’t agree with or doesn’t
agree with us. We do this because, as
Paul said, “we only preach in part
because we only know in part”. This means
that all of us live by faith and hope, and we because of this we need to show
love because there is a sense that we are all in the same human situation. But,
how do we share our hope to someone who does not understand us, and how do we keep a clear conscience in our
sharing, if think that if they don’t not believe, as John 3:16 suggests, after
it says that God ‘so loved the world’ that they might ‘perish’ and not have ‘everlasting
life’? How can we let God do the very hard
work of convincing people that our faith is true, especially when others don’t
trust or believe in the hope we have, which we believe is the ‘only’ true hope. I love where Peter takes us as he closes
out this conversation. It’s one of those
places most of us would not dare to go, where even ‘angels fear to tread’ because
it opens up all kinds of ideas that the Bible tells us nothing, if very little
about. But the direction Peter goes with his argument
is clear. Peter tells his readers they should
‘not fear what others fear” and should “keep
a clear conscience” and even be willing to ‘suffer for doing good’ and doing “God’s will” so that they do not get lost in their own agenda in
being a witness, or in sharing their hope, because, he continues, ‘after Christ also suffered’ he was ‘made alive in the spirit’ (v. 18). In other words, because the Spirit is at
work in Christ, we don’t have to do the winning, convincing, or the changing of
human hearts.
But it gets more complicated than
that. Now Peter goes on to open us up
to the reality all of us Christian teenagers used to discuss in youth
group. Peter goes then on to suggest that
after Jesus became ‘alive in the spirit’,
then he “went and made a proclamation to
the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey…..” (3.19).
However you want to interpret what
Peter is saying here, because it is still up for interpretation, but the
general consensus of what is being said here is that that Peter, in his faith,
is dealing with some of the same problems we all have, when we say “Jesus is the way, truth and life, and that
no one goes to the Father, except through him.” We all know that there are
all kinds of people in this world who have either never heard, or never fully
understood the truth about Jesus. What
will happen to those ‘good’ people? If everything depends on Jesus, shouldn’t we ‘get
in the face’ of others and force the truth on them? And
not only that, but Peter is wondering perhaps more about all those other people,
who lived before Christ, especially those who ‘disobeyed’ God’s warning just like they did in the times of
Noah? What will happen to people who
disobeyed then, and to people who disobey now?
Some say that Peter opens up the door
for belief in purgatory, where all will be given another chance after death as
they face the final judgment of God. I
can’t go that far. I can only tell you
one thing that fits what he’s be saying all along. Fairness of judgment, justice, as well as,
forgiveness, grace and mercy belong to our God, and we can be very sure that
this does not after death. The God of
Jesus is always the Father ‘is not
willing that any should perish, but that all will come to repentance.” I
can’t still can’t imagine how everyone will get the chance to have the
gospel of Jesus proclaimed to them, but I am sure that this is a job that only
God can do through the ‘spirit of Christ’
‘made alive’ to speak to spirits, here and now, and also there and then, as
Jesus does here, proclaiming the truth in a way that not one person will have any
excuse to say, “I didn’t hear!” or “I didn’t understand”. I don’t
trust in our human ability to understand, but I do trust in Christ’s ability to
get his point across, then, and now. Amen.
No comments :
Post a Comment