[Fr. Ajit opened this sermon with a matter related personally to us at St. Matthew’s that lends itself to a feeling of being in exile. That matter, because it is personal, has been excluded from this public blog post.]Easter 2A, 2014 – Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
If we are feeling this morning that we are in a state of exile, so to speak, then the epistle of 1 Peter is for us.
This letter does not fall into the group of New Testament letters written to a particular church in a particular city, like Thessalonica or Philippi or Rome. This letter is instead, written to a collection of dispersed congregations, “God’s elect, in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia and Bithynia”, as the opening lines of this letter say. It is a letter of general application and its message is so enduring that it has encouraged assembled congregations of Christians ever since it was first written at the end of the first century.
I cannot think of a better tonic for ours or any other congregation at a time of testing than to look closely at this fragment of the letter and to consider well the glory God has prepared for us, as a result of Easter – an inheritance that this letter describes as imperishable, undefiled and unfading – words that sum up the glory of the Risen Lord Jesus.
Testing and trials may come, says this letter, but our faith in God’s promises and God’s purposes will refine us, as gold is refined and will bring glory and honour on that final day when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Such a great promise as this is meant to shape our identity as a church. We live in a world where we come up with our identities from the inside out. Our innermost desires, we are told, give us the truth about who we fundamentally are. We see this very clearly in the current debates over sexual identities. This is upside down for Christians and for Christian churches. We shape our identity by reaching for something far greater than ourselves – something we couldn’t have dreamed up. The letter of 1 Peter on several parts, not just in this opening segment, tells the harassed congregations in Asia Minor who feel ‘exiled’ to fix their consciousness and their identity in Jesus, risen and glorified. As we read and re-read this dense-packed first chapter of 1 Peter we see that the churches were reminded then, and we are reminded now, that every church is defined by God’s mercy (verse 3). It is mercy undeserved by which, despite wandering perhaps in some other belief system, or in no system or in simple indifference, we have been able to believe in the risen Lord. Not having seen him we believe that Jesus is our Lord and our God as Thomas said in that wonderful passage from the gospel of John. That’s new birth – such basic faith.
So it is for every church. By his resurrection on Easter day Jesus has given his people a new birth into a living hope which reaches for, strains for, and is identified by the resulting inheritance: imperishable, undefiled, unfading.
But there is another dimension to this mercy of God that contributes to our identity and which is set out in 1 Peter. It’s God’s promise that we will be taken through the inevitable trials and challenges that will come our way. And even more than mere survival, we have God’s promise that we will as a people arrive safely at the end. We will, says this letter, see what the resurrection means for the whole long journey. That new birth that we shared together in baptism, that enables us to love each other within the body, to reach out to a suffering world, that new birth will last, says this letter. The church’s identity gained through the rising of Jesus on Easter day – of new birth and a living hope according to this letter – will be found at the end ‘imperishable, undefiled and unfading’.
That promise that comes from outside. It is given by someone who sees the beginning from the end. That promise that is not affected by the ups and downs of our life together and it locks in an identity that is truly glorious and life-giving. For this reason alone we should join in several loud Alleluias at the dismissal each Sunday.
But as great as this promise and identity is, the letter of 1 Peter gives us also a dose of down-to-earth reality. Our faith is tested and tried over time. “Look at the work of every goldsmith,” says the writer. Faith like gold must be refined and tested and purified. This is a fairly common image in the Bible. The prophet Zechariah proclaimed that the Lord would put a third of the people into the fire, refine them as one refines silver and test them as gold is tested. They will call on my name, said the Lord, and I will answer them. I will say “They are my people” and they will say, “The Lord is our God,” (Zech 13:9). The refining of gold into something precious and fit for divine service is something every human culture has understood for centuries.
Hidden away in the mountains of Colombia before the coming of the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century was an elaborate Muisca culture, the only remnants of which are the highly refined gold figurines unearthed beneath layers of rubble. One modern goldsmith in a documentary I saw last week, has been trying to replicate the ancient process with a small clay bowl and a blow torch. The process is incredibly intense. The finished product, however, was not just stronger and purer but fashioned into a work of beauty. After hundreds of years when everything else around it had crumbled these beautiful gold figurines survived.
So also, the writer of 1 Peter is suggesting that the burnished faith of the church and the love that emerges from trials will last for a very long time – until Christ gathers all things to himself. This is a very great promise when we face trials of all kinds.
Such trials are no accident according to this letter. I found the way J.B. Phillips translated this portion of 1 Peter deeply meaningful and I trust you will too:
“I know, even though at present you are temporarily harassed by all kinds of trials and temptations. This is no accident – it happens to prove your faith, which is infinitely more valuable than gold…This proving of your faith is planned to bring you praise and and honour and glory in the day when Christ reveals himself.”
What is interesting in the letter’s treatment of the testing that would refine and deepen faith, is that the process is not highly personal and bound up in the individual believer. The letter makes constant reference to the response of the first collections of disciples and the new birth of the whole community: “The faithful are ever in the process of being born again,” said one commentator. “The first step toward the New Jerusalem began with the resurrection of their saviour, Jesus Christ, and through their faith in his sacrifice they will surely reach their divinely appointed destination.”
We are all moving together, as one people, toward that glorious day and that glorious kingdom but not without a little testing and refinement along the way. If we had the time to read further on in this letter, we would find these words at verse 22: “Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.”
The pure refined gold of any congregation is the DNA of genuine mutual love. That is the best evidence of the new birth that comes to us in the resurrection of Jesus.
So let us prayerfully and humbly and with deep gratitude ponder our identity and our inheritance in our risen Lord. “Do not afraid,” he said to his disciples, “I will be with you till the end. You will see that the inheritance given, stayed with you imperishable, undefiled and unfading.” Amen.
