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Easter V

1 Peter 2
2 Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, 3 now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness.
4 You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honour.
5 And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God.


You don’t need to find a good metaphor—it finds you.

In part, a good metaphor lines up with our experience, confirming something we already know. If a scientist or a politician talks about “the battle against COVID-19,” it lines up with our present experience, and it speaks to our deepest hope that the virus will be “defeated” in our collective “war” against it.

A good metaphor will also test our experience, and pose questions about the nature of our relationship to the topic. In this case, my examples are the various metaphors present in our reading from 1 Peter. I’ll share a quick list—which may not catch all of them—and suggest that one or more of them will light up for you.

Pure spiritual milk
Taste that the Lord is good
Christ the living Stone
And you, like living stones
Built into a spiritual house
You are a holy priesthood
A chosen and precious cornerstone
A chosen people
A royal priesthood
A holy nation
God’s special possession
The people of God

Maybe we should step back for a minute and hear the textbook definition of metaphor. "The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”* In other words, seeing things we didn’t see before because we never saw them side-by-side. I’ve read this passage many times, but the metaphor of being ‘living stones built into a spiritual house’ speaks to me in this moment. We can’t meet in our regular spiritual house, but together we are the spiritual house, as living stones—each of us.

Likewise, on Mother’s Day, this passage leaps of the page:

Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness.

The metaphor tells us a number of things at once. All of us, even the most seasoned believer, need the pure spiritual milk that only God can give. Our continued growth depends on it, to fully understand our salvation. And we should cry out for it, and never imagine that we can somehow wean ourselves from this heavenly kindness.

The other thing this passage tells us is the importance of God the Mother, overshadowed in our metaphorical approach to God, but never diminished. Even at the beginning of creation, we find God brooding over the waters of creation, waiting to bring us to life (Gen 1.2). Then God lifts us to her cheek, and bends down to feed us (Hos 11.4). And “as a mother comforts her child,” God said, “so I will comfort you” (Isa 66.13). Time and again, we are being nurtured, sought, and sheltered, “gathered as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Mat 23.37).

As I said, a good metaphor finds us. It finds us in a time of deep need, it finds us in the midst of longing, it finds us when answers seem remote or absent. One of my mother’s enduring phrases was “be careful,” something she would offer as response to most situations, but mostly as a farewell. I would tease her about it from time-to-time, wondering what hidden dangers she saw lurking in my immediate future—since it remained her blanket advice to every situation.

In many ways, her perennial advice is tailor-made for the present age, with hidden danger all around us. You might even say that in the present age, all that childhood advice has finally come into its own: wash your hands, cover your mouth, don’t stay out, and usually a question about doing something foolish just because my friends were doing something foolish. All good advice, and all rooted in the brooding, sheltering, and comforting love that we need.

Back to 1 Peter, there is another message hiding in plain sight, and that is the message of adoption. The context of 1 Peter is advice to new believers, those who have found the “wonderful light” of God. Here is his summary: “Once you were no people, but now you’re God’s people.” We are God’s “special possession,” chosen by God, chosen based on our need for God and God’s love. Anyone with the same need can be adopted into the household of God: nurtured, sought and sheltered by the Mother and Father of us all.

In a time of longing, or separation, or sadness, we turn to each other—our spiritual housemates—and minister to each other. We remind each other of the taste of God’s kindness, and embody the comfort that God gives, now and always, Amen.

*Lakoff & Johnson, p. 5

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 1:18 PM