Musings on 1 Peter (4:12-16)

12-16: It makes sense, coming on the heels of Peter's exhortation to living outward focused lives, for him to switch gears, and encourage us to not be shocked when we are persecuted. The world's fundamental disposition toward grace is revulsion. They can't imagine a life not focused on one's own needs. It is suicidal to consider the needs of others as more important than your own. Why, they say, that might lead to personal discomfort, or letting go of the niceties we have come to feel entitled to. Niceties such as designer clothes, or more expensive cars, or even cable TV. After all, we've worked hard. We deserve some comforts in this life. Caring for others is alright in its way, but what do we get out of it? Is it tax deductible? Against this grain of thought grace cuts deep. So deep it hurts. The world sees it and rebels against it. Doing something not necessarily beneficial to self, for the sake of Someone you can't even see, is complete nonsense to the natural man. And so, when this becomes our life code, those around us will balk, then laugh, and finally shun. Therefore don't be surprised when it happens, Peter tells us. Don't look for a different outcome. You knew this was coming, in other words. Its part of what we signed up for. The Christian life of grace is so antithetical to everything the world stands for that friction is a necessary byproduct.

Furthermore, this friction is not only necessary but healthy. If nothing in our lives ever causes an unbeliever to feel awkward or resentful or just plain mad, barring our own sin of course, then it would do well for us to check our own position. If we are Christians, then we have been pulled out of death, and placed into life. As living, breathing examples of Holy Spirit filled life walking in the shadows of death, we should stand out like sore thumbs. If not, if you blend in with the shadowy surroundings, it's possible that you have not cast yourself on the mercy of Christ. If that is true, do so now. I'll gladly wait.

This is what Peter is speaking of when he talks about our faith being 'put to the proof.' When the cup is shaken, what spills out? When the sponge is squeezed, what liquid escapes? Is the sponge of your life soaked in the lifeblood of Jesus? Does grace gush out when you are squeezed? This is our faith being put to the test. Not so that we will despair at our sin. Rather, we are shown our sin so that the Father can scrape it off the top. We are being purified in this life. The dross of our sin is rising to the surface as we undergo the painful heat of tribulation, and the cold fire of suffering. It is precisely for this reason that Paul counts all the pains and hardships of this life as 'momentary light afflictions.' After darkness, light. After winter, spring.

More than this, suffering for righteousness sake is our glory. For if we suffer for our faith, and in our faith, we suffer with Jesus. We are united to Him in the Garden. His blood sweat becomes our own. He identifies with us, and allows us to participate with Him in suffering in this world. For if we suffer with Him in this world, we will be glorified with Him in the next. Therefore rejoice! Dance, Sing! Sing a song of joy! Our graves will lie abandoned. Our tombs, like His, will be empty.

So laugh when you are insulted. When someone throws the name 'Christian' in your face with the intent to make you ashamed, or to make you feel stupid, laugh. Not for spite, but simply for joy, for it means the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. Therefore glorify God with your laughter. Honor Jesus with your joy. To be named a Christian by the onlooking world is a great honor, and should be seen as a sign of heading in the right direction. It is the same lifestyle that will cause the ones God is drawing to Himself to ask you about the hope within you. If you by your faithful and loving life of grace are not drawing scorn from the hateful and spiteful world, you will not be drawing searching questions from those God is bringing to Himself. It must remembered of course, we are to live quiet and peaceable lives, seeking peace with all men as far as it depends on us. But if we live in obedience to God first, and man second, some men will necessarily be disobeyed, and that will not sit well with them. And so we find the great chasm that separates the City of God and City of Man. In this way we show our allegiance. In this way we honor our King.

Musings on 1 Peter (4:10-11)

10-11: Having been exhorted to be "lovers of strangers" in verse 9, leading us all to be givers, Peter brings the command into clearer focus. We all have been shown grace. All of life is grace. The air we breath, the water we drink, the loveliness of a sunset, the beauty of a pastoral scene. Not only the essentials of life that we take for granted are grace, but also the very aesthetic quality of those essentials as well. Our God does not dole out grace. He dumps it out. Deluge and not sprinkle is the proper term. Every minute, I am fond of saying, is a moment in which we as living creations experience grace. We are completely surrounded. The expedient thing to do is to surrender. To throw up the white flag of truce. To realize that the castle of our own self-will has been besieged by the manifold Grace of God, is to find life. But more than this, each of us have been shown particular graces as well. Some are given to speaking, and are given tongues that proclaim with bold words the grace that supports it. Some are given to serving, and are given hands that hold cups of clear and cool grace, refreshing the thirsty soul. Some are given to praying, and are given knees that know the grace of the worn floor beside the bed. Each of us has not only been given life, but a means to share it. Not only are we given water, we are given a cup as well. Grace comes in many shapes and sizes, for our Father has a different purpose for each of us.

The Author of all things speaks to us in story. He speaks to us both in the Revealed Story of Scripture, and in the story we call our life. As mentioned above, our lives are not our own. They are not ours to do with as we like. It is not as though the Father rents time from us every now and then, paying us for time spent in His presence. Rather, our lives, bought with a purpose, belong to Him, to do with as He likes. This means every part of our life has meaning behind it. There is nothing accidental about our existence. This in itself is most comforting, but it leads to something far more amazing. It means we as characters in His book, actually participate with Him in the ministry of His Grace to the world. As a Father He wants a thirsty child to have water to refresh his spirit. Therefore He has gifted another child to hold out clear cups of grace at the right time and in the right place. In this way He has made us interdependent. We are all connected and given to one another. My cup, holding the grace that I have been given, is perfectly suited to offer refreshment to your need. And the cup you have been given is shaped in just the right way so as to quench the thirst that has been welling up in me. In other words, the Author of all things uses indirect methods of blessing His people. Even this is grace in that it builds up a bond between believers, and bond no army can undo.

So what are we to do? Know the story being written around you. Who are you? What graces have you been shown? What vessel has been given to you so that you may meet very particular needs? This requires us to actually see others as more important that ourselves. With us at the center all we look for is what others can do for us. All we notice is the shortfall in their cups ability to meet our needs. But that's the magic of grace. When pursued for self-serving reasons, grace, when obtained, always turns to ash, and will not quench. But when one keeps others in front at all times, the grace shown him, no matter what size cup it comes in, nor what shape, will quench his need beyond all the wells in the world. Therefore let us pursue others, showering them with the grace we have been given. This way of life honors our Maker more than anything.

How? How does this way of living honor our Maker? For one thing it means a life of obedience, and obedience is sweeter than sacrifice. More than that though, and closer to Peter's point, a life which showcases grace is a life that makes manifest the incarnation of Jesus. We are the Body of Christ. He has made us His incarnate presence on this Earth, through the power of His Spirit. Now of course, Jesus still has a physical body, which we have argued thoroughly above. But, in a very real sense, we are His body. Every time we put grace on display we are telling the truth about who God is to the world. Every time we live for self, we lie concerning the name we have been given. Every clenched and grasping fist is Peter before the cock crowed, denying his association with His Lord. Every upturned hand, open to the story being told, is Peter saying, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." In other words, our actions are our theology. What we say with our hands is truer than anything we say with our lips, concerning our real heart attitude. And there is no neutral zone. Either we brush our teeth to the glory of God or we don't. Either we wash the dishes to the praise of His name, or we don't. Granted, actions fall on a graded scale in terms of importance, but nothing happens without meaning or story behind it. Everything we do is accompanied by attitudes and motivations. Despite our best intentions they are often thinly veiled, and so speak volumes to those who watch. Either they speak truth, or they lie. Either they align with what we say we believe, or they prove us to be hypocrites. And someone is always watching. Even if it is only the Lord of all things. Therefore let your actions be true.

We serve "as one who serves by the strength that God supplies." In other words, when we do anything we are to do it as a representative of the One who enables us to do anything at all. In this way, Jesus is made manifest, and through Him the Father is glorified. Peter supplies that common and annoying clause, 'so that in everything.' This does not mean only in big ticket items like our jobs, or our marriages, or our finances. It means in everything, down to the way we tie our shoes. In everything, if our lives reflect the grace that we have been shown, then Jesus is preached, and the Father is glorified. Peter explains why this is necessary. All things are already under His dominion anyway. All glory belongs to Him already. Therefore wake up. Don't be the child who covers his eyes and says, "I can't see you so you must not be there." Look around. See with your eyes that Jesus is Lord. Show with your hands that you see.

Musings on 1 Peter (4:9)

The three commands of verses 7-9 are set in the context of the immediacy of the end of all things. The first two commands make sense in light of this imminent reality. First, be self controlled, or don't flip out because the end is coming. Our security is not found in this world, and so the coming destruction of this material world should not burden on our souls. Second, love each other. This also makes sense as we live in communities as reflections of Christ. We show Christ to one another without care for seasons or days. We have been filled with the Spirit and so love is simply our new way of living. But the third command might seem strange to our modern, individualistic ears. Sure, we love people...out there. Our home though is our home, after all. Our sanctuary from the outside world. Right? So when Peter tells us all to love strangers and foreigners, to be a friend to them and to do so without grumbling and complaining, and when we realize the implication is that we do this in the context of our home, our personal sanctuary, we might start looking for ways to turn this command into a metaphor. But that would be playing Twister with Scripture.

Our modern, enlightened minds have told us that we are the number one priority in our lives. Existence begins at home, Descartes might have put it. We have been taught from and early age that what we want and how we feel are the two most important things in our life. It is our desires and our self esteem that make up the bulk of reasons that lie behind the actions of our everyday lives. I want ice cream, and ice cream makes me feel good. Therefore I will go have an ice cream. Innocuous enough. But in the context of the end of the world, in the context of strangers and foreigners, in the context of loving all without ceasing, perhaps there are other considerations that need to be made before we go get ourselves an ice cream. Now, I am not saying there is anything wrong with getting an ice cream. What need to be challenged, or at least brought out into the daylight and examined, are the unconscious gears that churned out that particular action. Was it merely to satisfy personal, fleshly foodlust? Perhaps to gratify the "You deserve a break today" thought that we have been inundated with these past decades? What drives our actions? What lies behind our motivations to do whatever it is that we do? Paul calls us to consider the needs of our neighbor more important that our own, to consider others as more important than ourselves. How does this factor into our thought processes? Is "Does this bless others?" a box that we check off before we do anything in particular? More to the point of this verse, does "Is my house a place where others feel comfortable?" every cross our minds? How about this: "Is my life, and thereby, my personal space focused on blessing me, or on blessing others?" Or this: "Do I actively pursue blessing others with my goods and my spaces, or do I think that blessing others chiefly means staying out of their way?" What is the aroma of our homes? Is it welcoming and inviting, comfortable and outward focused? Or is the outside of the front door the only space we are willing to share with strangers? What is our own attitude, an extension of our personal space, homes in miniature we might say, as we move in and through society and culture? Are we good hosts?

Important questions that are not often asked. Especially when life is busy with work and family and hobbies. All good things with which the Author of Life has loaded up our plates. But our Author does not load up our plate simply to see if we can get through it all. He is more interested in how we get through it all. What is the fundamental attitude we carry through life? Do we make ourselves Grand Central Station, with everything starting here, with us, and then moving out? Do we decide what we export and import, and how much, and when? Or are we simply a railroad car, carrying cargo from the true Central Station, from Him, out into the world, traveling on the tracks He has laid for us? There are only two orientations in the world. Either we are looking at self or we are looking at the Father. Furthermore, there is not one area of life where this orientation does not manifest itself. Even in eating an ice cream.

As with everything we rely entirely on the Gospel. First and foremost because we do not have the right orientation in and of ourselves. We cannot live in such a way that puts others first unless we have been born again of the Spirit. Only with new hearts can we look outward. The cargo container, which is our life, must first be picked up and placed on the train. Then we can live oriented in the right direction. But if we have been born again, and the Spirit is at work in us, in what ways do we impede His work? In what part of our gardens do we refill, with the dirt of our sin, the holes He has dug to plant new fruit trees? How are we getting in His way? To stay on topic, we do not live 'gospel-y' lives when we see our homes as belonging to us. When we take private property to the absolute, and declare our homes free from the annoying interference of the Spirit, we are most definitely getting in His way. When Jesus bought us with His blood, He did not just buy our souls, keeping our name on the books until we get to heaven, as if salvation is merely reserving a table for Friday night at 6:30. He bought our entire lives, and He bought them for the here and now. Even our salvation is not intended for us. Our salvation plays a small bit part in a much larger story. We have been repurposed. When He bought our entire life, that included every extension of it. It included our homes, our own sacred personal sanctuaries. In other words, our homes are not our own to do with as we like. They belong to God, to do with as He likes. On the broad scale this means He can take it away from us at any point in time, and we can still trust His goodness. But this is covered in the first command, to be sober minded in all things and to not place the substance of our hope in these material things we are surrounded by. But what about the home He has allowed us to keep? What about the home He has obviously put us into? How do we reflect the Gospel there?

The first principle to always remember is that all things are gift. Everything you have, everything you eat, everything you see, everything you smell, everything is gift. This world is gift. Every minute in the day, every day in the year, every year of our lives is gift. This lies at the heart of understanding the world and our part in it through the lens of Gospel. We deserve nothing that we have received. Even the hard and painful consequences of our sins are gracious gifts, for every sin deserves instant and immediate death, followed by eternal and unending separation from God. But this is not what we receive. Far from it. We are given breath every day. We are given the means to live, every day. Beyond that we are given unnecessary joys and blessings every day. Gift. Complete gift. This is what grace looks like: a thrice holy God who cannot stand the sight of sin, becoming a man and living in the very pit of sin for 33 years. Surrounded by sin daily. Watching it express itself every minute. And then, taking all that sin and putting it on like a cloak, He bares the shame that sin carries with it. All so that you and I can continue to breath, without fear of death. This is grace. This is gift. A gift always has a giver. The giver of all these things is the Father. He actually does deserve everything, and yet His orientation is to give. Therefore Christian. What do you do with this gift? Do you also give? Do you also look a sinner directly in the face and give? Give of yourself, give of your property? If our very lives are a gift to us, is it not height of arrogance to not give of our lives to others? Remember, our lives were bought for a purpose. Our lives were given to us, not for us to keep for ourselves. We were granted breath, both physical and spiritual breath, with the purpose of taking life to others. Every aspect of our life, not one of which we can declare ours by right, is purposed for others. This includes, most inconveniently our own homes. So what do we do with them? How do we love and befriend the alien and stranger with our homes? Once we have answered that question, all that is left is to not grumble about it. He who complains is giving with his hands while grasping with his heart. But both hands and heart were bought by the blood. And so with every part of our self, none of which belongs to our self, with every extension of our self, none of which belongs to our self, let us give and make gift, and let us do so cheerfully. In light of the empty tomb, how can we do otherwise?

Resurrection Day 2012

We feasted last night. A royal feast it was too. Succulent lamb, slow roasted over open coals with a rosemary-white wine-mustard sauce. Potatoes Rosti with garlic and rosemary. Onion Gratin with gruyere. Butter lettuce with pear and gorgonzola. We feasted with joy and laughter. Delight was at our right hand, and festal pleasure at our left. It was a feast to remember. Grand though it was, last night was a mere preamble to this morning. All of last night was an appetizer, a small plate, shared among friends as we awaited the main course. Last night was the teaser plate the waiter brings to show off their specials. Last night, our mouths watered at the sight of it. Today we feast for real.

Its hard to imagine what the women in the garden must have been feeling that first of all Sunday Mornings. We have been living for 2000 years in Resurrection light and so our eyes have grown accustomed to the beauty. But for them, the sun had only just risen, as Mark's Gospel says. This new daylight was foreign to their eyes. Staring, open mouthed at the stone rolled away, terror must have filled their minds. Not only was their teacher dead, but now someone has stollen the body. Even the rights and privileges of the mourner were taken away from them. As they stooped to enter the tomb to make sure the body was not still there, they received a shock. The tomb was filled with light. Not light from the day outside, nor light from an oiled wick. A different kind of light altogether. A light that made our own sun look like shadow. It was coming from a young man dressed in white, apparently having waited just for them. The light must have thrown them to their faces. Even reflective glory is too magnificent to look at for long, when the glory comes from Him. Then words were spoken. Unthinkable words.

Today we feast at the table of our Lord. He himself has laid the table with his own pierced hands. From His pierced side came water and blood. We have been washed in that water, made clean and fit, granted access to this table. As we sit we find our goblets filled with His lifeblood, and on our plates, the bread from Heaven. It is on the body and blood of our Risen Lord that we feast. Only the Risen Body can make such a feast. Here we find true life. Life full and rich. Lasting life that sustains well beyond the grave. Life that gives us empty tombs as well. Therefore as we worship our Resurrected Lord today, let our worship be strong. Let our cheeks grow red with laughter. Let us feast with Joy, for Joy himself has come and joined fellowship. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.