I Peter 3:1-7 "Household Hope" Scott Hoezee

It won't be news to anyone here to note that marriage has been much in the news these days. But the buzz has not been about soaring divorce rates and how to fix them. Nor has it been because there has been a surge in marriage enrichment seminars. No, the furor of late has concerned the very essence, meaning, and definition of what constitutes a marriage in a day when many same-sex couples want to claim that moniker for their own relationships. All in all, it has been a reminder of how precious an institution marriage is and has long been. But if you think I'm going to get into the current controversy this evening, you're wrong! I've got enough dicey stuff to deal with just in this passage!

When I was making the schedule for this series on I Peter, I considered just skipping these seven verses and then seeing if anyone noticed. But I knew you all are wily and savvy and would chide me for skirting around this text. But that was tempting because these words once again highlight some of the same cultural distance from the text that we encountered also last week when dealing with Peter's acceptance of slavery as an institution.

In this case, we have Peter addressing the form of marriage that was common in his day, replete with many ancient cultural assumptions and definitions. But Peter comes at this from the newly minted Christian perspective. At least some of what we have to do tonight is to ponder not so much how these words fall on our ears in the year 2004 A.D. but how they might have been received long about the year 60 A.D. Once we unearth some of how this would have been interpreted then, we can apply this to our marriages now.

Because we do now have a very different take on marriage. If you attend a wedding these days, as I did last evening, the odds will be good that the couple standing up at the altar will be people in their mid- to late-twenties. Very often they will both be college graduates or they will both still be attending college or graduate school. When the minister invites them to share a kiss following the reciting of their vows, the odds will be good that both of these people will have shared romantic kisses with at least a few others in their dating days. Both will have had other dating relationships as each sought to find Mister or Miss Right.

The bride will be marrying this particular man not because her parents told her to, not because they arranged it, and not because the groom had ordered her to marry him. She will have chosen him of her own free will even as the groom had done the same for this particular bride. And seeing as both bride and groom will often have a similar level of education and perhaps also some individual career hopes and aspirations, the two will likely treat each other as spiritual and intellectual equals.

In fact, when you see a bride and groom, it is likely that they had spent some time getting pre-marital counseling. What's more, such counseling will have aimed at fostering an egalitarian relationship through nurturing communication, being very open genuinely to listen when the other person speaks and to respect the wishes and dreams he or she expresses. Marriage vows today are less likely to contain language of "honor and obey" and more likely to contain phrases like "I will encourage your unique, God-given talents."

Both in terms of the run-up to a marriage and in terms of what that marriage then means, this is an exceptionally different atmosphere than the one Peter addressed. Most marriages back then were pre-arranged by parents. The bride and groom may not have had much to do with one another prior to their marriage. It's possible the bride would have often been much younger than the groom, and both may have been teenagers. The bride's family will have paid a dowry to groom's family, implying that this woman was now being sold to a new family who would henceforth hold the deed and title to her life. It was hence assumed that the bride turned wife would obey her husband in all things seeing as he more-or-less owned her. She would also adopt his religion, whatever that faith happened to be.

Peter knew the contours of marriage in his day and he quietly accepted these in a way similar to how he accepted slavery in the text we looked at last week. But just because we don't necessarily embrace everything Peter assumed, we can still draw out of this passage some rich insights, some of which we must apply to our situation today.

A first thing to note is that the only marital situation that Peter addresses in terms of wives is one that must have been fairly common in the early church. Peter here clearly assumes that most of the women who would read this letter were living with husbands who were not Christians. It was a ticklish situation for the reasons I just mentioned. In that day, a wife was all-but required to adopt her husband's faith. Peter had to encourage these Christian women because they were in a double-bind: not only were they in danger of looking defiant for not kow-towing to the faith of their spouses, as Christian women they actually needed to go the other way to try to convert their husbands to Christianity!

It was at least a dicey situation but, given the untrammeled authority men were accorded back then, it was even a potentially dangerous situation. That is why I Peter 3 teetered on the brink of being revolutionary. It is not surprising that Peter tells wives to be submissive. Everybody in his day did that, and examples from also secular literature of the first century bears that out. What is striking is that Peter quietly draws a line in the sand here: the wives were to be submissive except when it came to submitting to a non-Christian husband's religion. On that point, a wife could not compromise.

Again, that could have opened up these Christian women to great criticism. They could have been labeled as uppity and rebellious. But Peter knew that those traits could not be associated with the gospel without having a true witness to that gospel ruined. So in the case of a woman being married to a non-Christian man, what could offset this danger of the woman looking rebellious and rude? Peter's idea is that in every other way, a wife needed to be the epitome of grace.

"Don't browbeat your husband with constant verbal harangues over breakfast," Peter essentially says. "Stop sticking gospel tracts into his pants pockets and don't refuse to serve him his dinner until he recites the Lord's Prayer with you. For the sake of Jesus, be in every way as lovely a wife as you can be." Peter says to fit then-current conceptions of what a wife should be. Be such a good wife that your husband can't criticize you. Be so wonderful that even your refusal to take on his religion will look too petty to talk about.

Peter also addresses this matter of outward adornment. Contrary to how this passage has been used over the years, however, you might notice that Peter does not tell Christian wives they may not wear pretty clothes, put on a pair of earrings, or get their hair done at the salon. Those things are not forbidden here. So far as Peter was concerned, a Christian wife could still be a striking beauty. His only point is that that kind of beauty had to be relativized over against the beauty of the inner person. If a Chrisitan woman wanted to grab her husband's attention, it was more important she do so by letting the Christ in her heart shine through than by dabbing an extra dash of perfume behind her ears. A man is not going to come to believe in Jesus as Lord because his wife is sexy. But a true conversion to Christ might be possible if a man is smitten by the inner grace of a wife who is clearly a disciple of Jesus through and through. Let that be your focus, Peter recommends.

Peter also has some words for husbands. In this case it's not clear whether or not Peter was thinking that the wives of these men would be Christians but probably the assumption was that they would be because that was how things were done. But I want you to notice something very curious, almost subversive, about what Peter says here. Of course, some might be offended by Peter's labeling women as "weaker." And to state the merely obvious, that is not how most couples frame their marriages today. But certainly in Peter's day, a woman was weaker in terms of status and social position. There is a reason why Peter doesn't have to tell husbands how to convert non-Christian wives: women were simply expected to follow the husband's religious lead and could be forced to do so if need be.

But look how Peter frames this here. He tells husbands to be mindful, considerate, gentle. But that undercuts the idea that a wife should be forced to do something, starting with becoming a Christian. But then he calls wives "heirs." Peter makes it clear that Christianity is not some gift the husband was in charge of doling out. Peter elevates the status of women by calling them "heirs," which was radical since women inherited nothing ordinarily. But in this case women received the life in Christ in the same way as did men.

Peter says that this co-equal view is necessary "so that nothing will hinder your prayers." But here's a lovely thing the English language cannot convey: the pronoun "your" in that verse is in the plural. But I don't think the plural is used here because Peter is addressing more than one husband at once. The structure of this verse makes it clear that this "your" refers to the prayers that a husband and a wife offer together. A better translation to convey this would be, "so that nothing will hinder your prayers together."

In short, Peter tells husbands that if their wives are fellow Christians, it is not because the husband imposed his will or flexed his muscle. It is because of the gift of God's grace of which all Christians are co-heirs. What's more, husbands had to remember their equal status before the Lord because that was the only way they could pray together in a lovely, lyric, and sincere way as true partners in the gospel. So even though it is not very overt, the fact is that if both wives and husbands tokk the advice Peter gives, the resulting marriage would end up looking very different from what was common in the rest of society back then.

But now, how can we apply this to ourselves? Well, we're all different. Some of us couldn't be happier in our marriages and that's been the case for decades. Others of us are just starting out in marriage and we're having too much fun just being together to worry about much else. Others of us know the tragic pain of a struggling marriage. Some of us are sadly divorced, and still others of us are single. If we are single because we chose not to marry, then we perhaps try to do what we can to support our friends who are married. If we are single but not by choice, then I realize that all this talk about marriage may be a painful thing to hear, increasing our longing to have such a relationship ourselves.

A sermon like this can't cover all those bases and scenarios. But whoever we are tonight, we all know that in the best of marriages, in the most rocky of marriages, and in every state of marriage in between, marriage is a relationship so intimate that the potential for great blessing and joy is equally as great as the potential for horrendous harm and hurt. It is such a precious relationship that it is not at all a surprise that in the epistles of the New Testament, marriage is often singled out. Because if being a Christian cannot make a difference inside our homes, then the whole Christian faith begins to look like a sham.

Peter knew what we must know: our wider witness to the world, our ability to be transparent to Jesus, cannot happen effectively unless it all emerges from the context of healthy lives and solid relationships that are themselves molded by the hands of Jesus himself. Hypocrisy has been the Achilles' Heel of our faith for a very long time now. And never are we more prone to be hypocritical than when in the privacy of our own homes.

"A man's home is his castle," the old adage says. But if that means that a Christian man tries to exude compassion and kindness when out in public only to go home and slap his wife around, abuse his kids, or just generally behave like a little Hitler, then Peter wants to tell this man to start putting a whole lot less stock in his castle and a whole lot more stock in being Jesus to his wife and kids. Whoever we are as husbands and wives, as singles or widows or the divorced, we all know that as soon as we get home and close that front door, a lot of what motivates our actions when we are out and about in society falls away. The boss isn't watching. The minister can't see us. All peer pressure is lifted.

The good side of that is we all need the chance to let our hair down, put our feet up, and just relax. We should be able to "be ourselves" when at home without having to expend the energy it takes to keep up appearances. To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, in all of life we know that there are proper ways to dress. You dress yourself one way to go to church, another way to go to a garden party, and still another way when loafing around the house. When at home, it's nice to be able to slip on comfortable, nearly worn-out, jeans and your favorite old sweatshirt. But, Lewis said, even at home we need a proper "attire." It's one thing to wear your favorite old shirt around the house but it's another to wear it until it stinks. So in our behavior: you shouldn't have to be on your best behavior in the den the same way as when sitting behind your desk at the office but you don't need to turn that more relaxed atmosphere into an excuse for atrocious behavior, either.

The core notion here is that we must be Christians to each other first of all, and never more so than when in private. Many commentators over the centuries have noted that in the early church, there was a tradition of seeing a husband and wife praying together as a kind of church in miniature. Clement of Alexandria once interpreted the New Testament line, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I present in the midst of them" as referring not to a small evening crowd at church but as referring to husband, wife, and perhaps also a child. The "two or three" could be a family. And if the church gathered on Sunday is to be strong, then the church in miniature that gathers around dinner tables and in rec rooms the other six days a week must also be strong.

Today there are enormous pressures that pull at all of us, and the level of busyness in my own household is part and parcel of what so many of us experience today. The pace of modern life is not conducive to the kind of thoughtful spirituality that Peter holds out for us here. But perhaps that only makes Peter's hope for a Christian view of each other in the home all the more essential. Above all Peter does not want anything to hinder our prayers.

So tonight I ask all of us to pray. If you are single, widowed, divorced, or for whatever reason are not living in a relationship with someone right now, pray for all who are even as we all together pray for Christ to be present in all our friendships whether we are married or not. If you are retired and enjoying a slower pace of life now that the kids have moved out of the house, pray for us husbands and wives who are very much in the trenches. Pray that we'll find time for each other, that the hectic pace of life won't eclipse our sense of being co-heirs of God, that we'll find time enough actually to be with our over-extended and hyper-scheduled kids so as to model the Christian life for them.

And if you are like me and are a husband, a wife, a father, or a mother whose weeks pass by altogether too quickly in a haze of soccer games and piano lessons and making school lunches, let us together pray for courage and strength never to forget that we can be, in our own homes, the church in miniature. It is difficult at best. But if we can keep our prayers for one another from being in any way hindered, there is more than a little power in those prayers. And in our households, that must be our hope. Amen.