Our Imperishable Inheritanc - 1 Peter 1:3-9

Peter addresses his letter to the exiles in the diaspora, which is to Christians who live in the far reaches of the Roman Empire. The Christians to whom he wrote were living in a world in which the accepted norms of daily life were contrary and often times adverse to the way of life which Christ calls his followers to live.

The empire in which they lived called for its people to honor and revere it leaders, even worship the Emperor. It called for everyone to place the good of their society above all else. The values their culture upheld and honored could often be in direct opposition to the way the Gospel called for believers to live. Because of this living the way Jesus called for them to live was difficult, especially since the normative way of life in their society seemed to make sense. It was what they were used. The values seemed to be legit. There did not seem to be anything wrong with the people all around them lived. It was familiar. All this made it hard for them to eschew the norms and values of their culture and instead cling to the so very foreign, and controversial values espoused by Christians.

I don’t know about any of you, but the situation of the Christians, to whom the book of 1 Peter was written, is quite relatable. Their world, their society, may be very different from our own, but it also seems it was just as different from the way Christ was calling them to live, as it is for us today. We, also, live in a world, a society which calls for us to honor and respect certain people; actors, famous athletes, politicians, multi-million dollar heads of corporations. These people in of themselves may not be bad people, but the kind of honor and respect our society has for them at times is a form of idolatry which is out of place in the life of a Christian.

 The values to which our society holds can also be contrary and counterproductive to living a life totally committed to embodying and sharing the love of God with our world. We live in a world in which a person’s value is often found in being consumers, that is in what a person is able to purchase and thus contribute to the economic stability of our nation determines their value. And to another extent people are valued by what they are able to produce, how what they do for employment, adds to society. And whether or not what a person does for living, is valued by our society often times determines how “valuable” they are.  The CEO of proctor and gamble holds more societal value than the person who picks up your garbage each week (although it is interesting to note, in these times, which of these two is considered and “essential worker” right now) The ways our culture values does not line up with they ways Jesus calls us to value people. Whereas our society values people differently, Jesus calls for us to value all people, but especially the “least of these,” that is we are to value the very ones our culture and society values the least.

It is to people who lived in a world so very different from ours, yet experienced the same kind of dissonance between the way their culture and society called for them to live and the way Jesus called for them to live that this book is written. The struggles these Christians faced, are not all that dissimilar than our own and because of this the book of 1 Peter feels as if it was written to people “just like us.”  

We are Christians scattered to the far reaches of the globe, just as these early Christians, were scattered to the far ends of their known world. These Christians were living at a time in their history when they were trying to figure out who they were, what it meant to live the kind of lives they were called to live in their culture, and in their world. As a part of a Christian community, they were trying to navigate their identities. These are Christians who had no direct contact with Christ, they did not know him in his life, death or resurrection. Their faith was based on the truth of the Gospel which had been shared with them. They were trying to navigate what it meant to be Christians so very far removed from the place and time that the very things they believed in happened. They looked to the past for their faith and for guidance. They past they were looking to being the truth of the gospel of the resurrected Christ, but they also looked to the future as they worked together as communities of faith to discern their identities as people and communities of faith, in the places, and the world in which they lived. In these ways they are also not all that much unlike us.

Every church in every generation is faced with these kinds of questions, with these kinds of dilemmas. Who are we?  Who is God calling us to be?  Who are we becoming as Christ is shaping and changing us?  Every Church every generation of Christians needs to navigate who they are in relation to their culture. The Church in all the places it exists should always be evaluating our culture, the norms of the society around us, the things it honors, and the things it values to see how these things are embedded in the lives we all live. We must especially examine how these things influence us as Christians working to live as Christ calls for us to live. And how they inhibit us from being the people God desires for us to be.

It is easy for us to take the embedded values of our culture for granted; to see them as unexamined truth. THIS is just the way we live. It is easy to assume that since these values and ways of living are not inherently harmful, and make sense to us, the values, the hidden agendas, the assumptions of our culture and our society must be Christian. BUT in fact they are not. And very well may be contrary to the Christian way of life.

We are not called to just accept the values and norms of our society. We are not called to just live as good citizens of our country, or our culture, we are called to live Holy lives, lives which reflect the life of Christ, lives that exemplify the love of God. We are different, because Christ is different.

We are called to be different, in that we are called to live lives of Living Hope. Hope in a world that is better than the one in which we now live. Right now hope in a world better than the one in which we now live, sounds pretty good. We have a living hope, a breathing hope, an eternal hope which cannot be struck down by a virus, which will not be killed by the darkness all around.  We live, knowing the God who resurrected Jesus Christ from the dead, promises us abundant life, a life which is full and rich and free, a life of hope.

As resurrection people we live out God’s love, sharing this hope with the world around us. And it is with this hope and this love we seek to be able to infect this world; by sharing the truth of Christ and the love of God in such a way that it is contagious, so that others too will choose to love the God we love and live the kind of lives we live. It is our hope that this world can be filled with people living God’s love; filling this world with the love of God. We live in hope that we can infect this world, and it will be overrun with God’s love.

The people of the Old Testament longed for a good land, a land flowing with Milk and honey. When God called to Abraham to follow God to the land to which God would show him, God promised him a land, rich with natural resources, teaming with life and full all the good things a Bedouin man would desire. When God called the Israelites up out of the land of Egypt, they followed God to a promised land, a land which was flowing with milk and honey, a land which contained all the good things a nation of people wanted or needed. The promised land was a promise of a land where God reigned, where the goodness of God filled all things, a place where they could live as God called for them to live, as individuals, a nation, a society; a place where the love of God filled the world around them. A place where life was lived differently because the people lived lives which reflect the character of God in their day to day lives, in how they treated one another, and how they cared for one another. It was land which would be filled with a people living out the holy character of God, so that the world around them would see God in them and know God through them. This was the inheritance promised to the people of God.

God took those first Israelites to an actual land filled with actual animals which grew actual food and actually was filled with earthly goods. Here are the beginnings of 1 Peter, these early Christians are called to hope in an unperishable inheritance, one that cannot be defiled, or fade with time. They are no longer promised an actual land with physical good things, their inheritance as Christians is different than that promised to their Israelite forbearers, yet the same. They are promised something unfading, which cannot be defiled, something imperishable. Their inheritance is a new land, a new world, a new society, which is ushered in by Christ which is perpetuated, by their very lives, by living the Gospel, by being living breathing examples of God’s love, by following example of Christ in their world. And thus they bring God’s world, God’s society, God’s values to bear on the society in which they live. The land they are inheriting, the “heaven” they are promised is brought about in them and through them as they live Christlike lives and make disciples of Christ of the people around them. They have hope in this inheritance in this land, where God reigns, where all the world lives in Christlikeness, this is the living hope in which they exist, the hope for which they strive together with God for. They do this  knowing full well this salvation is not simply of their own selves, their faith communities, their little corner of the world, but the salvation, redemption of the whole world. They live knowing they are a part of the culmination of God’s salvation of the world, that by living as Christ lived and loving as Christ loved they are bringing heaven to earth, they are bringing God’s kingdom to this earth, in their lives, in their words, in their actions, one by one, moment by moment infecting this world with the truth, the grace, the mercy the love of God until, the infection takes over and the whole world filled with it.

The Christian life at its heart is evangelistic; it longs to spread, to share to infect the lives of those all around. The desire is for the lives our loved ones, our friends, our neighbors, our neighborhoods, cities, countries, and our whole world, to be contaminated with the love of God through us.

Yet although we live these lives of living hope, live this lives of infectious love, looking forward to the inheritance of a world corrupted with the love of God, and cleansed of all that is not grace and mercy and love, this is not easy. Our faith, these lives of Christlikeness is ultimately at odds with our world. Our world does not understand a God who requires so much, expects obedience and commands lives of full, unfettered, love. Lives that reflect the life Christ lived, lives which are lived dependent upon God, and in service to others do not makes sense to the majority of the people in our society.  They do not understand this kind of commitment, do not understand this kind of selflessness. For most, a way of life which constantly uplifts the disenfranchised, which cannot tolerate injustice, which speaks up for the voiceless, which touches the untouchables and cannot even stand to live with hidden sins, or the forgotten misuse of others, is radically out of place. Our world does not understand how One man dying can bring life to us all. It does not understand how your life of love, my life of love, our call for justice and fairness and love can make a difference, can change the world, can bring about anything.

Because the world does not understand, because the things God calls for us to stand up for, because what it means to love everyone with the love of God, because of what it means to live lives which embody God’s love, are so often contrary to norms and values of our society, this life to which we are called is not easy. There are trails and struggles we have as we attempt to love God and love those around us, to love as Christ loved, to live as Jesus lived, we are reminded that these very trails, these very struggles, refine us.

In our very struggles to love as God loves, to live as Christ lives, in the ways our culture and our society rub against us, we are refined like gold, we are purified. When we see our lives of love in stark contrast to the norms and values of our society, instead of bending and reflecting the society around us, we are able to better live, and thus better reflect the love and grace of God. The gold of our faith will shine in the bleakness of the mundane world around us.

As a body of people seeking identity we find identity in our inheritance, in the promise of our inheritance in the hope of that which will one day come. Even as our world is at odds with the lives of love to which we are called, we know that in this opposition we are refined and shown to shine like gold, but not simply so that we can shine and sparkle but so that we can infect the world around us. We infect, we share, we rub off. We are called to live lives set apart, marked by love, but not simply to be different, to live in contrast, but so that we can hope that by loving and living this love, we can call those around us to live life like ours. The heart of our faith is a hope for all to love God and love others with the love we are sharing with them. Love because we are called to love, love because God loves and love because by loving we call others to love as we love, to love who we love. Our identity in this society if first and foremost to love at all costs, to love where all other loves fail, to love those who are “unloved” to reach out and be the love of God in the darkest places, to those who seem the least worthy of our love, to those who do not desire our love, to those whom others refuse to love, to those whom others forget to love, to those whom others do not even realize are being unloved. We live this love not simply for love’s sake but in a hope that by loving in these extreme, unfathomable ways, others will hear the call to love, and they too will love as we love and love the ONE whom we love; living Christlike lives of love. Our lives of love are the evangelistic call which reaches out and calls the world around us, our neighbors, our friends and our families to come join us, love God and love God’s world as we love, as God loves.