Sunday, May 18, 2014

Fifth Sunday of Easter

1 Peter 2
2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
4 As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house[a] to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.


If you resent Tim’s addition of the Iced Capp, you might be a purist.
If you’re still mad about expanding beyond the original six, you might be a purist.
If you prefer Public Enemy over P. Diddy, you might be a purist.
If your shirts are cotton and your pants are wool, you might be a purist.
If you adhere to the Original Trilogy and think Jar Jar Binks is an abomination, you might be a purist.
If you refuse to live in anything built after 1900, you might be a purist.
If you think LEGO should be a bunch of blocks and nothing more, you might be a purist.
If thou thinkest the Bible soundeth best in the tongue of Elizabeth I, thou might be a purist.
And If you think putting pineapple on pizza is the devil’s work, you might be a purist.

So what’s wrong with being a purist? It seems everyone has a little purist in them, otherwise we’d all be wearing polyester and cheering for the Columbus Blue Jackets. And being a purist comes with a long and storied tradition—which is kind of what being a purist is all about. So for today we’ll embrace our inner purist, and try to determine where this impulse comes from—seek the source, again, a very purist thing to do.

Of course, the author of 1 Peter is kickin’ it old school:

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (2.9)

Throughout this passage, the author is giving us image after image to reinforce the idea that this community is unique. To be the church is more than simply a collection of believers, it is a call to be a distinct community—a community set apart for a purpose. And even the word community might be inadequate, and we might turn instead to something stronger like household.

“You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (2.5)

The first question, then, is why all the metaphors? What was the need to be met by the constant generation of images? We know from our friend Dom Crossan that this was an assembly of “nuisances and nobodies,” a new religion made up of people at the bottom of the ladder. Slaves, ex-slaves, women—anyone who lacked power and status—tended to find the message of Jesus Christ compelling.

So it follows that such a diverse and mutually distrusting group would need some glue to bond together, some new way of understanding themselves that would lead to a sense of community. Only together could this movement flourish, and we might argue that only together could it exist at all.

And so the author of 1 Peter, and nearly all the other authors of the New Testament, return the community to the language of ancient cultic practice, the language of priesthood, as a means of forging this common identity, a common way of understanding themselves.

Why priesthood? First, the role of priest in the religion of Israel was not unlike what we associate with an order of leadership in the church. Maintaining the tradition, instructing the faithful, guiding people toward purity in practice. For Israel, the role of priest was to ensure a continuous sense of God’s presence before the people, and you might even go further to say the religious practice was a way to ensure that God was present to the people at all.

So priests ensure purity, and it is purity that will give this diverse community its identity. And this is, in fact, where the passage begins, when the author insists that “like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. (2.2-3).

And back to our theme, this is nothing new. The aptly-named “priestly tradition” of Israel was all about first principles, going back to the beginning, and finding the purest form of faith. Walter Brueggemann points to the ‘great narratives’ that make up the priestly tradition, and he begins at the beginning:

Genesis 1 and the blessing of the sabbath, both as an important practice but also as a defining characteristic of this people.
The flood story, purifying the earth and also creating a covenantal understanding of the relationship between God and humanity.
Circumcision, an outward sign of continued covenant and identity, and
The promise of land, the aspiration and hope of this people God has chosen. (Reverberations, p. 151)

Then Brueggemann goes a step further by reminding us that much of the Hebrew Bible that defines this tradition came together in exile. Just as early Christian writers confronted the challenge of forging unity under difficult circumstances, the priests who gave us much of the Hebrew Bible did the same. Carried off to Babylon, these writers and thinkers needed to find stories and images to unite a people, to give them a common sense of identity, and to keep them pure before God.

In effect, there are three sets of exiles in this story, beginning with the priests of the priestly tradition, giving birth to this renewed sense of identity. Next, the early church, defining themselves outside the mainstream, in a form of exile from the way the world around them worked. And then to us, like the community of 1 Peter we are in the world but not of the world, citizens of heaven by living here on earth.

Of course, if you are uncomfortable with this language, this ‘other-worldly’ notion of the faith, you are not alone. It has been used in many unhelpful ways, from Christian exclusivism to ignoring the needs of the natural world in favour of the heavenly realm instead. Yet, even evangelicals have rediscovered the environment, and decided that you can look forward to the coming Kingdom and care for the world God made at the same time.

Obviously, we too struggle with this idea of Christian identity, of what it means to be a ‘holy nation and God’s special possession,’ and we are led to believe that this endemic to our faith. From the very beginning, from the moment God chose to be in covenant with a particular people, the struggle to define and maintain a unique identity began.

It troubled the first believers to look up and count the stars, clinging to the promise of chosen people.
It troubled those in exile, separated from temple and tribe and never giving up on the promise of return.
It troubled the early church, choosing Jesus as Lord when Caesar had such a pressing claim on the known world.
And it troubles us, in a strange kind of double exile, no longer citizens but consumers, and never fully citizens but rather ambassadors for Christ.

In trouble, we turn to each other. And this seems to be the heart of 1 Peter: forging an identity as believers in community. A royal and holy priesthood, not a collection of individuals that share a common faith, but fellow guardians of spiritual household, receivers and givers of mercy.

Jesus said “peace I leave you, my peace I give to you—I do not give to you as the world gives.” We walk with the Risen Christ, confident that we are united in seeking the pure, spiritual milk of the good God we serve. Amen.

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