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April 10 3 Easter 1:17-25 (reading 1:17-23)
This Easter season we are reading the First letter of Peter, written
probably 35 years after the Resurrection, 15 years after Paul’s writings,
about the same time as the gospels began to be written down. Peter writes
to Christians in north and west Asia Minor, in churches that included
both people born as Jews and born as non-Jews, but born again in Christ,
churches that had split off from the synagogues, churches under
persecution. In synagogue and in church people read from the Law, the
Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible, and from the Prophets. They were
familiar with the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. Peter quotes from Isaiah
40:6-9, from the chapter that begins, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people;
speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is
accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the
LORD’S hand double for all her sins.” Isaiah goes on with what the church
read as the prophecy of John the Baptist who came to proclaim, “Repent
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
The kingdom came in Jesus who triumphed on the cross, defeating the
power of evil and death, and rising from the dead to give us new life.
The things of the flesh will wither and die. We’ve learned that from
Terry Schiavo, and from Pope John Paul, and this week I heard of the
death of the Rev. Lee Cutair in Maryland. Lee was two years older than I;
we were ordained deacon at the same service June 21, 1966. Neither of us
could ever remember who was ordained first and had seniority. When I was
in Shelby Lee came to be rector at Black Mountain. He was a gifted
musician, a graduate of the Peabody Institute in Baltimore; his wife
Birdie teaches Special Education.. The flesh withers and dies. Christians
believe in new life in Jesus, and with Jesus in our eternal home in
heaven.
We believe in a heavenly father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the
father who has made himself known to the world and the people he has
created through the law and the prophets of Israel. We “invoke as Father
the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds.” We
believe that God is just, that God is perfectly just and that all human
justice comes from God and has as its goal a just and godly society. God
is all knowing and all wise. We are limited in our knowledge and in our
wisdom. We are prone to judge by what is best for us rather than what is
best for all. Our goal is to be better than that, to be impartial in
judgment. The idea that one person is entitled to special treatment under
the law because of who they are is abhorrent – and we all seek special
treatment. We all want our special breaks. But we also “invoke as Father
the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds.”
We’re not consistent. We all need and ask for mercy.
And God is merciful. As today’s reading from Isaiah reminds us, God has
said, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name,
you are mine.” We are ransomed from slavery, ransomed from slavery to sin
by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus has set us free from
the necessity always to act in accordance with what we think of as our
best interest. Jesus has sent us his Holy Spirit to lead us into all
truth, to enlighten our minds with God’s knowledge and wisdom, so that we
may be more Godlike, more impartial in our judgments, so that we may
indeed “live in reverent fear,” live with respect for the will of God,
“during the time of our exile,” until we go to be with Jesus or he comes
in the last day to rule over the world he has redeemed.
We are “ ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not
with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood
of Christ.” Many of the new Christians to whom this letter was written
had been born Jews, of Jewish parents. They had learned the 613
commandments of God, and they had learned as have we all that it is not
possible to keep all these commandments. The church decided that the
ceremonial laws, including the food laws, no longer apply to Christians.
Many of the new Christians had been born pagans, with a family tradition
of worshipping the many gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheon. The
legends of the behavior of those gods, their sexual promiscuity, their
conflicts with one another that included murder, adultery, theft, and the
like, did not offer any godly model for living. Both Jews and Gentiles,
for different reasons, recognized as futile the moral and religious ways
they had inherited. They had turned to Christ like people ransomed from
captivity rejoice to be home again.
Ransoming people from captivity is not uncommon in our own time. In parts
of South America, in Iraq, in Southeast Asia and in other parts of the
world where bandits can take advantage of civil unrest and corrupt police
and military forces, people are regularly kidnapped and held for ransom.
The common ransom is ten percent of the family’s total wealth, a tithe to
evil and bandits. But we have been ransomed by “the precious blood of
Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish,” a lamb like the
Passover lamb that was the way God chose to ransom the people of Israel
from slavery in Egypt.
So how are we to live as ransomed people? St. Peter calls us to “love
one another deeply from the heart.” We love one another in response to
God’s love for us and all creation poured out in the shed blood of Jesus
Christ. When we are loved, and when we love, we come to trust, to trust
in God who raised Jesus from the dead, and to act toward one another in
ways that are honest and fair and just and worthy of trust.
Loving one another includes seeing the actions of another in the best
possible light, looking for good reasons for the behavior rather than
having an attitude of suspicion. That is hard to do. We know our own
harts too well; we know our own mixed, and sometimes unworthy, motives.
Most of us have learned by experience to be wary of our own attitudes.
But the risen Christ has given us new life, new birth. We are free to
love one another, not for what we can receive, but for what we can give.
We are free to freely give that ten per cent ransom for the common good,
to help relieve the needs of the poor, to help children, and older
people. The power of the love of Christ is the power of Happy Tuesday,
the power of all our giving of self, time, money, energy in our families
and in our community, and even in the church.
Love includes justice, impartial justice, justice that gives everyone a
break, love that shows forth the love of God in Jesus for each of us and
for all creation. Jesus “was destined before the foundation of the world,
but was revealed at the end of the ages for our sake. Through him we have
come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so
that our faith and hope are set on God. Now that we have purified your
souls by your obedience to the truth so that we may have genuine mutual
love, let us love deeply and from the heart.” Amen.
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