You remember a few years ago when civil war broke out in Syria a huge refugee crisis erupted. Here in the Owen Sound area, many small groups began organizing to sponsor refugee families to come start a new life. The people in these groups made sacrifices of time and finances to help these folks come here to start a new life, the old life having been destroyed by war.
When the New Comers got here they had to learn how to navigate a new culture, which meant learning English, Canadian currency and banking, Canadian laws, Western Judeo-Christian values. They all seem to be doing quite well. They are very grateful to their sponsors, grateful for the shot at new life they’ve been given and they show their gratitude by working hard to succeed and trying to contribute to the community. They are also very keen to share bits of their culture – coffee, food, gifts, crafts. They know that every eye is upon them, that there are prejudiced people who don’t want them here, yet they have chosen the high road and sought to give back to the community. They are living lives proper to the grace they have been shown knowing that sacrifices were made so that they might have a new life albeit as resident aliens in a foreign land.
In our reading from 1 Peter, Peter makes the analogy that Christian life is like living as resident aliens in a foreign land. His main point is that we must live our new lives with a sense of reverent fear or proper awe towards the One who has given us a new birth and the way we do that is to show genuine mutual love to one another, loving one another deeply from the heart and without ceasing.
I’m going to unpack this passage for you and it is very rich in imagery and each of those images need their dimes worth of time in the parking meter, but where we’ll come out is that we are human beings who were once slaves to worthless living but who have been given a new birth. We were redeemed out of that life and born into a new family – the family of God – at the price of the life of the Messiah Jesus. Therefore, we live accordingly in genuine mutual love.
The first image we need to work with is that of new birth. We are born anew. In the Roman world this meant that you were newly begotten by a god. It’s the language of conversion kicked up a notch. It didn’t mean you just switched a religion. Begotten meant that you had been newly sired with the seed of a god.
This is your chance to snicker uncomfortably. The funniest funeral I have ever attended was for a man who literally wrote the book on artificial insemination in pigs. Several of his friends from that field of work said a few words and the innuendo abounded and everybody laughed robustly. So also, siring is not a topic we generally discuss from the pulpit especially about our relationship to God but that is the language being used here. If you feel uncomfortable, snicker.
We are born anew, sired anew of the imperishable seed of the God whom we call “Father” and are now part of a family line, a progeny, that is all together a new, and imperishable humanity. The seed by which God has sired us is the Holy Spirit. God the Father has sired us anew with the seed of the Holy Spirit and has made us to be his own progeny, brothers and sisters of and in Jesus Christ.
Now, for God to sire us anew, God had to speak a new word of creation. Verse 23 reads: “You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable through the life-giving and enduring word of God.” When God speaks a word things are put to right and something new comes about. In this case, the word he spoke was the one that raised Jesus from the dead and by this word all Creation will be made anew and the New Creation will endure forever. We share the hope of also being raised from death and therefore we live now in faithfulness to God.
For us to share with Christ Jesus in the progeny of God and in Resurrection at the New Creation coming and in new life now, Jesus had to become as we are as sinful humans and share in the futility of death. There are a couple of things on this topic that some early theologians in the church said quite well and quite simply. St. Irenaeus of Lyons in the 2nd Century said, “He became what we are so that we might become what he is” which simply means God the Son he became human so that we can become children of God and he meant that quite literally. By God the Son becoming human as Jesus of Nazareth, God impregnated creation with his very self and one of the outcomes of that is that in Christ we become children of God filled with his life, healed with his life, and are being changed by his life in us.
Another early theologian Gregory of Nazianzus in the 4th Century said, “The unassumed is the unhealed.” God the Son became fully human as we are with all our spots and blemishes so that by the life-giving power of his divine nature humanity, indeed the entirety creation, will be healed. By becoming sinful humanity, he has healed us, indeed the entirety of Creation, of sin. By dying our death, Jesus healed us, indeed the entirety of Creation, of death. This goes way beyond any simple legal transaction where we gleefully sing, “Jesus died for me. He paid my penalty and now I’m forgiven and free”. It’s way more. That’s just an external transaction. What God did as Jesus was to get internal. He got inside us in the power of the Holy Spirit to change our very being.
This leads us to one more image to unpack: Jesus indeed paid the price of giving his own life for us. Verse 18 reads: “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ.” Redeeming is what you did to free a slave. It gives freedom, worth, and dignity back to someone who has become worthless or has made themselves worthless. In this case the condition of worthlessness was so extreme and the slave owner so vile that Jesus had to say take my life (which is of greater value) in place of all of theirs.
To close, the God who freed us, restored our worth and dignity, and gave us new birth as his own progeny at the price of the life of his Firstborn Son is, as Peter says, the One who impartially judges the worth of every deed. We call the God of gods “Father” as Jesus taught us to – “Our Father, who art in heaven hallowed (holy) is your name.” If we are going to call upon God our Father then we must in everything we do show God the proper love and respect he is due.
Verses 14 -16 read: “As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’” Over the centuries the church has gotten puritanical and judgemental over this teaching and lost its central point. The central point is love. God is holy not because he doesn’t do bad, naughty, dirty things, but because he is love. To be holy as God is holy is to live according to the unconditional sacrificial love he showed us as Jesus and the way he gave his life for us.
Therefore, in everything we do we must be mindful of the question, is this love. This pandemic is giving us who are the progeny of God the opportunity to show the love of God. In love, we practice social distancing in order to protect our elderly and vulnerable, in order to keep our healthcare system from becoming overwhelmed so that if somebody has a normal health crisis like a heart attack they can be treated. Yes, the economy is and will take a hit and that means that we, the progeny of God, in love need to be generous. Fortunately, here in Canada our Federal and Provincial governments are doing their best to look after the basic income needs of everybody rather than saying let’s get the economy going again as soon as possible because the wealth of wealthy people is all that matters.
Faith is our participating in the sphere of reality where the promises of God are coming about. We do this through showing love, living our lives in proper awe of the one who in love gave us a new birth into a hope-filled life. There are big-haired, big church pastors down in the States who say “We have faith that God won’t let the virus get us so let’s meet for church”. That’s not faith. That’s delusion, ego-mania, greed, and just plain evil. When Satan was tempting Jesus, he challenged Jesus to put God to the test by throwing himself off the highest part of the Temple because Scripture promises that angels would catch him. Putting God to the test is exactly what those ministers are doing. True faith is what love does. Amen.
