I Peter 2:13-25 "Mission Grace" Scott Hoezee

If even once you have seen the photo, you know you'll never forget it. Not so long ago in this country, it was both legal and commonplace to post signs in public places designed to cordon off some people from others. And so a drinking fountain in a hallway might be labeled "Whites Only." A little farther down that same corridor you might find a public restroom labeled "Coloreds." Eventually in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, a key way to protest such segregation was exemplified by Rosa Parks, who silently took a "Whites Only" seat on a bus. Other such examples abounded eventually.

The photo to which I just made reference was taken at a lunch counter in a diner. The barstools along that lunch counter were "Whites Only." But one day some blacks sat down there anyway. The manager refused to serve them, of course, but they also refused to move, sitting in silence. Eventually the other customers began to hoot and jeer and curse at these people. But they sat stonefaced. So, just to add to the fun, first one person and then another began to pour ketchup and mustard onto the heads of these people. Then someone tore open a bunch of sugar and creamer packets and emptied them out onto the already-sticky heads of the protesters. Then someone snapped the now-famous photo. There these hapless people sat with mustard streaming down their cheeks, their hair matted with ketchup, their faces blotchy with coffee creamer and sugar. They took the abuse, but they did not move.

At Martin Luther King, Jr's urging, the Civil Rights movement tried to achieve non-violent civil disobedience. But this idea hadn't originated with Dr. King. King was himself a student of Mahatma Gandhi, who pioneered the method known as Satyagraha, which means "loving and truthful firmness." Satyagraha, Gandhi said, is a way to be strong but not with the strength of the brute but with the strength one gets from God. As such, Satyagraha aimed for the vindication of the truth "not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but on one's self." But as Gandhi knew, not striking back at those who strike at you requires enormous reserves of self-control. Still, Satyagraha said that if words alone did not convince someone, then perhaps they would be convinced by humility, purity, and honesty. An opponent, Gandhi said, had to be "weaned from error by patience and sympathy." Those who stand against us must be weaned, not crushed; converted, not annihilated.

It is no wonder that Gandhi has sometimes been called the most Christian non-Christian who ever lived. Indeed, as Louis Fischer wrote in the classic biography of Gandhi, for many years Christian missionaries to India tried to convert Gandhi to Christianity. Gandhi, speaking in a soft voice, often tried to do the same for them! It is also no surprise, then, that even the Christian preacher Martin Luther King, Jr. saw in Gandhi's words some of the same dynamics that come through the Bible in places like I Peter 2.

On this evening of Mission Emphasis Week, Peter directs us to think of missions in a very different way from how we usually conceive of mission activity. Because this evening Peter suggests that sometimes our most eloquent witness comes not through what we say but through what we do not say. Sometimes we carry out the mission of the gospel not so much through formal programs we launch on the world as much as by how we react when the world inflicts its program on us. But in order to get at that vital lesson, we need to deal with a passage that has a controversial history behind it. As you could tell in our reading of I Peter 2 a bit ago, Peter's words here raise a cloud of questions in our minds.

So let's straightforwardly list this passage's challenging features. First, we confront here something that weaves all through the New Testament; namely, the tacit acceptance of slavery. Peter appears not to bat an eye over an institution that we explicitly reject--indeed, we now reject slavery on biblical grounds. That fact alone makes us squirm a little. We wonder why Peter didn't flat out say what we would now say, and that is that it is morally reprehensible to own another human being, to treat a person as chattel, as property.

But I Peter 2 challenges us even more. Because Peter not only tells slaves to stay put and be obedient, he tells them to suffer in silence even if a given slave's master is an evil tyrant who beats and verbally abuses his slaves. Peter goes so far as to say that the real test of Christian character comes not when you have a kind master who treats you well but when you have a wretch of a master who is grossly unfair and unjust. This is the feature to this passage that has long worried Christians who are passionate about social justice issues.

Today the CRC has an office devoted to social justice, and a good bit of this office's work aims to protest unjust governments, agitating for change where people are abused. But when Christians engaged in that kind of advocacy look at I Peter 2, they fret. Because here Peter seems to be saying that the best way to be a Christian in unjust circumstances is not to protest, not to seek change, not to confront the abuser. Instead Peter says to just take it. Just stand there and take it the way Jesus took it. But many find that troubling.

One last issue comes through in verses 13-17. As noted on the handout I distributed a few weeks ago, there is a lot of disagreement as to when I Peter was written. But in one sense it hardly matters: pick any time period in the mid- to late-first century, and you would find the same thing: the world was ruled by a sometimes-brutal Roman Empire, many of whose first-century Caesars were horrid figures like Emperor Nero. Yet in tonight's opening verses, we heard Peter talk about the governing authorities as though they were fully trustworthy, punishing only bad and guilty people. But how could Peter trust the same authorities who, through the "normal" functioning of their well-oiled system of government, punished and killed as an evildoer no less than the Lord Jesus Christ himself?

The acceptance of slavery, the advice to take abuse rather than try to protest or end it, and the rosy view of the governing authorities: these are just three features to I Peter 2 that can trip us up. Too much about our own perspective runs counter to this. Thus, this lands us squarely in the area of biblical hermeneutics. After all, we own no slaves, we work to correct social injustices, and we live in a democratic system where we often agitate for change. Given our situation, we need to discern the difference between the culturally conditioned portion of Peter's words and the timeless principles that we can apply to our lives as we also seek to make an impression for Christ on the world around us.

So for the balance of this sermon allow me to lift up two ideas. The first is that in our conduct before the eyes of the watching world, all of our words and actions need to be a grace and never more so than when we are hurting or suffering. Because the second idea is that we should expect some measure of suffering in this life and when we do suffer, we need to connect this to the cross of Christ.

We begin with the need to be a grace. Twice in this passage the Greek word charis or "grace" occurs in a most intriguing way. You can't see this in the NIV's translation, so let me show you where "grace" comes up here. It happens in verses 19 and 20. In verse 19 where the NIV says that "it is commendable" if someone suffers unjustly, the Greek literally says that if we suffer unjustly but, for the sake of God, endure it without hitting back, then this reaction is "a grace." At the end of verse 20 when in the NIV Peter says that suffering for doing good is "commendable before God," the Greek says this is "a grace before God."

Most commentators are quick to point out that although this is the exact same word used when the Bible speaks about being "saved by grace," the precise meaning of charis in I Peter 2 is different than that redemptive gift of God. That is true, of course, but having made this disctinction, too many commentators then act as though there is no connection between saving grace and this version of grace, and I think that's a significant mistake.

As you have heard me say often, the New Testament makes clear that all who receive the saving grace of God should, as a result, lead a life filled with little gracelets. Getting graced by God in Jesus makes us gracious people in return. We lead good lives and do good things not because we are trying to earn our way into God's favor after all and not even only because we are grateful to God. We exude gracelets because this is the inevitable result of having received the big Grace that saved us. Getting graced by God is like getting dipped into a vat of perfume: the residue of the fragrance should waft off of you from then on.

Peter is saying that when the world throws its worst at us, when we get unfairly criticized or, as we talked about last Sunday morning, when the world caricatures our faith as being childish and immature, this is when we need to be the most mindful of our God and of the grace he has given us in Jesus. But this is not "grace under pressure," as you sometimes hear that phrase used. This isn't some generic poise or the ability not to get flustered. The grace we show when we are persecuted connects directly to how we got God's grace in the first place: through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

Our memory of how Jesus willingly suffered without lashing back prevents us from striking out. And when we can resist that natural tendency to seek revenge, then this is a grace in God's sight. God sees it as a grace because we ourselves display the result of our having received the grace of God. The grace Peter talks about and God's grace are linked.

Precisely that connection is what leads us to our main point regarding missions and witness tonight: wherever we find ourselves in life, we will witness best when, mindful of how we were saved by grace, we display that same grace to the world. But never is that more difficult to do than when we suffer, are criticized, or actively persecuted. And contrary to the sunnier promises made by altogether too many evangelists on cable television, the gospels and the New Testament generally pretty much promise that some kind of suffering will be part of the deal in terms of what it means to be a Christian.

The Bible doesn't tell us to seek suffering in some masochistic way. But the Bible does tell us that even as Jesus suffered, we may do so as well. Despite what Peter here says to slaves with cruel masters, the wider witness of the Bible tells us that we are correct to speak out against social injustices and that we are right to try to stamp out unfair systems. Furthermore, if I hear about a wife who is being battered by her husband, I will not use I Peter 2 as a rationale to send this woman back into the house.

However, insofar as suffering may be unavoidable and inasmuch as sometimes we may suffer more precisely because we adhere to a faith that some deem old-fashioned if not downright dumb, Peter's words here remain vital. Because it's when we suffer that we are the most tempted to forget about grace and instead go with our gut. A lust for revenge rises up easily in our hearts. Opting instead to forgive does not come easily. When we are frustrated by the political process, it's easy to reach for the hot, sometimes angry, rhetoric of politicians. Opting instead to speak the gospel's words of peace is not so easy (and may even seem a sure way to lose an argument!).

But in this passage Peter says that Jesus has left us an example. Peter directs us to place the cross front-and-center in our thinking especially when we are being unjustly roughed up by the world. Why does Peter do this? Because the cross reminds us that however we react to suffering, we will never provide a witness to Jesus if that reaction involves hostile words, violent acts, vengeful deeds, or an angry heart.

In this year of 2004, we need to face the reality of the time in which we are living. We need to realize that in a good bit of this world, even in places like Nigeria where our missionaries serve, there are cultural clashes that involve Christians and Muslims. The war on terror in which this country has been engaged so seriously since 9/11 sometimes teeters on the brink of being framed as a war between the "Christian" West and the Muslim East.

Of course, it's been this way before. The Crusades of the Middle Ages were wars launched against the so-called Infidels, the Muslims who had taken over parts of the Holy Land. Along the way, while these Christian warriors were getting ready to slaughter the Muslims, they figured they may as well wipe out as many Jews as they could, too, and so murdered about a third of all the Jews alive in Europe at the time. Those warriors went into battle with crosses painted on their shields. But if I Peter 2 tells us anything, it is that you will never witness to Jesus and his cross if you put that cross onto an instrument of violence.

In our own context, we also won't witness well if we wrap the cross in the flag. Recently you may have received a brochure in the mail for a fundamentalist conference on the apocalypse. Of course, as Reformed people we've got dozens of theological reasons to disagree with dispensationalist teachings about the rapture and such, but that's not what upset me about the brochure. Because on four of the flyer's six pages, an American flag could be seen wafting overtop of everything. Two of those images showed a picture of Jesus as the Lion of Judah but even this Aslan-like depiction of Jesus showed the Lion standing beneath the flag of the United States.

That's just wrong. It confuses national causes with some Christian stance, and adulterates the true message of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. The government needs to fight evil in its own way, and as the New Testament makes clear, God has entrusted the government with the sword for a reason. But he has given the church not a sword but a cross and has charged us to be a grace to the world around us. The mission of Christ's Church is ruined the moment we confuse those different tasks and roles.

As we have seen and will continue to see, all through I Peter we are told to lead holy lives. As Peter says in verse 15, one reason is to silence those eager to engage in "foolish talk." Peter knew what we know: there are any number of people out there just waiting to point the finger at us, waiting to have a good chance to accuse us of hypocrisy, waiting to catch us in some inconsistency so that they can then say, "You see, you see! Those religious folks are no better than anyone else. In fact, they're worse than most!" To avoid that, Peter recommends that we let Jesus make a difference in our lives--a graceful difference that will never be on more brilliant display than precisely at those moments when hardship, hurt, or criticism tempt us mightily to react in ways that are decidedly un-Christlike.

Those mustard and creamer-coated people at the lunch counter weren't trying to witness to Jesus necessarily, but something in their example does highlight what Peter said in tonight's passage. It may have been difficult to discern at the time what good, if any, just sitting at the lunch counter was doing. But it is all-but certain that they did more good doing nothing than if they had turned around and started smashing mustard jars on the heads of their jeering and leering persecutors.

Last Sunday Rachel Bos reminded us that we are all missionaries wherever we are. She was right, even if her words caused some of us to wonder in our hearts, "How? How can I be a missionary?" Peter tonight provides a partial answer: you are a missionary for Christ's gospel when you lead such a good life, especially in the throes of suffering, that you provide a grace to the world. Because when people see grace displayed in us, there will be times when at least some of the folks around us will want to hear more about the big Grace that made us God's people in the first place. That is our mission. Amen.