Alien Life: Suffering
We Are Called to Follow Jesus
1 Peter 2:19-25
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. April 30th, 2023
The Bible is God’s gift to us, and it is powerful and life giving. But the Bible can also be difficult. It can be difficult in two ways. Some of the Bible is very obscure. I had a conversation recently with someone about the nephilim in Genesis. We are told the sons of God had relations with the daughters of men and gave birth to nephilim, giants, men of renown. And the nephilim are never heard of again. The Bible can be obscure that way, assuming that we know things that has largely been lost to us. Or, the Bible can be difficult because we understand what it says all too well. In John’s gospel Jesus teaches the crowds that he is the bread of life, and if they don’t chew on his flesh they will not have life in him. The crowd’s response is to leave him. “This is a hard teaching,” they say, “who can accept it?”
Today’s scripture from 1 Peter is difficult in this sense. It is a hard teaching. But a hard teaching can also be life giving when placed in its proper context. And though it is hard it is no less life giving. It is no less the word of God.
Peter commends his audience for bearing suffering unjustly. “For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly.” He writes, “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.” What is especially difficult here is Peter does not seem to have persecution in mind, specifically. Indeed, he’s taking about slaves bearing the unjust blows of their masters. Peter is, seemingly, no John Brown or Nat Turner. That may trouble us.
It may trouble us because we have a strong sense of justice, and a strong sense of fairness. Even if we don’t always agree on what is just or what is fair. I think we’ve all been in situations that were unfair and we had no means to resist or fight back. And I’m sure we can feel empathy for those who are oppressed. People trapped by circumstance. Anyone who suffers unjustly.
And Peter says that we are simply suffer, simply endure.
I doubt anyone wants to hear this. Except maybe the slave master. What good does it do to suffer and not fight back? Where is the justice in endurance? This is antithetical even to the spirit of our nation, which was won by the sacrifices of revolutionaries.
Who can bear it?
Before we say “get behind me Satan” and pass judgment on the Apostle we should look at his reasoning and give him a chance. Remember that Peter addresses this letter to the “exiles in the dispersion” and opened the letter taking about the new birth through the Father, and new life in the Spirit that has been given to the Church. Here we are seeing one way that Christians are strange, peculiar, eccentric. One way that we have been given an alien life, being an alien people with a different inheritance.
He says, “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.” John also tells us in his first letter, “he who says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” We talk about following Jesus, being like Jesus, being disciples of Jesus, loving like Jesus, asking “what would Jesus do?” And Peter points us to the one part of Jesus’ life that is hardest for us to follow, the part that we might like to ignore or explain away, the part Peter himself once tried to reject! And that is “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.”
Jesus offers himself up freely awaiting his Father’s verdict. The verdict of the Father is the resurrection of Jesus. The Father could not bear to see his son remain in the grave. And so Jesus won the victory. That victory and that life he would share with all of us. But if we are to join in that victory, and have a share in his life, in our inheritance, that means following him. And following him takes this form. That we would endure pain even unjustly. That we would consider it a credit. That we would hope in our resurrection.
This is, like I said, a hard teaching. But we see how it ties in with the cross of Christ. It is no accidental teaching. But is an intrinsic element of our strange, alien, eccentric life together. But it is not something we are asked to do without aid. For the Bible does speak of a peace that surpasses all understanding. The Bible does speak of a joy that can be known in all circumstances. The Bible speaks of the grace of God that is more than sufficient to bring us through all the unjust sufferings of this world. Knowing we do not entirely belong to this world, but in being given a new birth our citizenship is in heaven.