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The Catholic Telegraph
April 19, 2002We continue our series of readings from First Peter. At the beginning of chapter two the author had given directions to the general membership of the Church about the demands of Christian life in the world. In this Sunday’s reading he addresses a special category of Church members: the slaves. Probably a high percentage of early Christians were either very poor free persons or slaves, completely subject to the will of their masters and not unacquainted with mistreatment and cruelty. In our passage they are given some guidance about how to react to their misfortunes. (This passage comes to us out of order. According to the sequence of the full letter, it should follow next Sunday’s reading. Probably it was moved up one Sunday because of the allusion to God as shepherd at the end of the passage which thus ties in with the gospel for Good Shepherd Sunday.)
At the beginning of verse 20 (not included in our reading), the author tells Christian slaves that being patient under suffering that they deserve is not meritorious. However (as our passage begins) if they are patient when they suffer undeservedly, i.e., for doing good, this makes them pleasing to God. It wins them God’s approval for two reasons.
First of all, because patiently suffering injustice is part of their Christian calling and makes them similar to Jesus. Here the author quotes one of the suffering servant songs from the book of Isaiah (53.9) which Christian tradition saw early on as foretelling the mission of Jesus. He suffered to show us that the innocent and upright person does not respond to unjust treatment by insults and threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself to the justice of God Who would bring about final vindication.
But there is more to the suffering of Jesus (and therefore to the unjust suffering of His disciples) than giving an example of patience. Jesus’ suffering also brought about salvation for us. Although innocent, He suffered what would have been appropriate for a sinner. He made up for the wrongdoing of sinners and thus gave them a chance to live in His righteousness. We had all gone astray in our sinfulness, but the suffering of Jesus healed our wounds and brought us back to the health and safety of God’s flock. (Implied here is that the innocent suffering of the mistreated slaves somehow made them participants in Christ’s work of salvation.)
There are several levels of question and subject matter in this reading. Some readers will find themselves wondering why the author doesn’t just tell his readers that slavery is wrong and that they should not put up with their servitude. Of course, he couldn’t and it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had. His purpose was not to undo the evils of the society in which he found himself, but to give some practical guidance to people who needed it here and now.
That’s what this passage is about at its most obvious level. How should Christian slaves conduct themselves? Obviously they shouldn’t misbehave so that punishment was called for. But if they were punished unfairly, should they resist the wrong that was being done to them in view of their new life in Christ? The author says no. Take what comes to you, he seems to say, and make the best of it because it somehow makes you like Jesus.
Underneath all this is one of the most basic questions of all: the suffering of the innocent, whether "the innocent" be a mistreated first century slave or a prisoner in a Communist gulag or the victim of a flawed judicial system, or a virtuous man or woman suffering a painful and incurable disease or an abused spouse or the victim of a drunk driver. Why do the innocent suffer? Why does God let things like that happen?
There’s no full and final answer to that question, but this passage of God’s word gives us some elements to ponder. First of all, we are not to look for full and final justice here and now. Even the Son of God had to endure pain and derision until the final intervention of "the one who judges justly." The world is a sinful and unjust place, and only God can finally remedy that.
Secondly, the most virtuous and perfect human being who ever walked the earth, Jesus, Our Lord, did not live an effortless and painless life. When God became a human being, He came into an existence that He knew would bring suffering and insult. We can’t fully understand that, but we know that - if we are supposed to be like Jesus - suffering will be part of our life, suffering that we are to endure without recrimination.
Finally there is a "pay-back" dimension to human suffering. None of us can say that we deserve to be fully free from pain. We have all overstepped our boundaries again and again. We need to be brought back to where we belong. We have to pay the price of our sins. The only one free of the debts of sin was Jesus, who nonetheless suffered, not because of His misdeeds but because of ours.
There is an inherent element of mystery to the suffering of the innocent, an imponderable dimension that involves injustice and sin, but that also involves the Lord Jesus and salvation.
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Conversation Questions.
To what extent have I suffered injustice?
Is there any sense in which my sufferings are salvific like Jesus’?
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