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May 3, 2002At the end of chapter two, the author of First Peter addressed directions about Christian behavior to the slaves in his audience, as we saw two weeks ago. Following that, in the full text of the letter, came directions for spouses, then some general principles of Christian behavior. Now he instructs these new Christians about how to deal with suffering.
Just before our passage, the author tells his readers not to be afraid if they are mistreated because of their faith. Rather (as our passage begins), in the forum of their hearts they should venerate or reverence Christ as their Lord. Exteriorly they should be ready to explain their way of life to non-christians. This dialog should be conducted with courtesy for the questioner and with reverence for the God whose initiatives are being explained. Believers should conduct themselves in a way that makes mistreatment and slander inappropriate. Their behavior should offer their opponents no pretext for punishment. If mistreatment and punishment are inflicted, it must not be for any evil they have done.
After all, Christ was totally innocent of wrongdoing, yet he suffered, and, in so doing, brought salvation to the world. But suffering was not the last word for Christ. He was brought "to life in the Spirit" by His Father (a life that His followers were presumably invited to share).
We have already seen that these new Christians to whom this letter is addressed were not suffering full-fledged persecution and torture and death. Those things had not yet begun. What they were suffering was insult and defamation and vilification. They were resented because their faith made it inappropriate for them to live like their pagan neighbors. They were "different," and "different" people are often suspected, despised, and made unwelcome.
First Peter’s advice to them is not to withdraw from the world, to betake themselves into separatist defensiveness. On the contrary, they were to be ready and willing to enter into association with their pagan neighbors, to speak with them about their faith and their commitment to Christ. This communication should take place in an atmosphere of cordiality and friendship. They were to be conspicuously gentle. Arrogance, aggressiveness, belligerence were not to be part of the mix. They were to invite interest rather than to provoke animosity.
This advice of First Peter to these unidentified early believers is still good advice for us today. Our situations are similar. We live in a mostly pagan world, a world whose goals and values are different from our own. We may not like to admit it, but most of the world around us has different ideas than we do about success and failure, about the purpose of our existence, about sexuality, about marriage and family life. Things that horrify us, such as abortion and assisted suicide, are taken for granted and looked on as a basic human right by our contemporary American society. Our enunciation of other values, our protests against what is nothing other than murder are not kindly received by the world around us. We don’t get arrested or punished for what we believe and say, but it certainly doesn’t make us popular in many circles. We are looked upon as antiquated, unhelpful, retrograde, socially irresponsible, if not downright subversive.
In a context like this, there are some choices that could be made. We could take ourselves out of the mainstream of society and live apart from the rest of the world, waiting for the wrath of God to descend on everything around us. But that has never been the Christian option.
We could also stand up and fight, spending our lives in open opposition to and defiant rejection of the world in which we live, preferring even to die for our beliefs rather than live in a context of sinfulness. There have been some such persons in the history of the Church, men and women who went around trying to provoke civil authorities into making them martyrs. But people like that have never been proposed as a model for everybody.
There is another option, the option of quiet and determined witness. God wants us to live in the real world, a world populated by blasphemers and sinners. This was the world that Christ lived in, the world He came to save. We are to live here not as participants in all the world’s sinfulness and vanity, but as women and men who look to a further horizon. We are called to be conspicuous not by our pushiness or pugnacity, but by our goodness and love toward those around us, by our reverence for the Lord we serve. God expects us to know what we believe and why, to be clear about how we are called to behave and why. And all this is not to be held in secret like a hidden treasure, known to only a few. It is rather to be proclaimed as a gift intended for all, a gift whose beauty and worth we are skilled at describing. We believers of today, like the believers of old, have been gifted with a wonderfully full way of living, with magnificent future expectations. To us, as to them, God’s word speaks: "Be ready to explain the reasons for your hope to anybody who asks."
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Conversation Questions.
In what ways have I suffered because of my faith?
How do I communicate the good news of Christ in my life?
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