“Association with the name of Jesus and the group spreading across the Mediterranean did not make an individual popular with his or her neighbours.  On the contrary, being dedicated to one and only one God, choosing a new primary reference group (namely the church), and being committed to live out the ethical values of this God in community with fellow believers made the convert appear antisocial and even subversive.  In almost every region, Christians appear to have faced their neighbours’ attempts to rehabilitate them, to cajole and pressure them back into a more acceptable way of life.”

Do we ever feel, as followers of Christ, that we are lacking motivation in life?  Do we ever feel that we could really use some encouragement?  The 1^st letter of Peter is a letter which serves to counteract pressures that followers of Christ are facing. Over the next several weeks, we are going to be reminded of who we are in Christ and what this means for us as followers of Christ.  Living hope.  Living stones.  Living love.  Who are we, and on what hope is our identity founded?  What does it mean to live that hope?  What does it mean that we are living stones?  This letter, of course, is from the man who was given the nickname “Rock” or “Rocky” if you prefer to think of Peter that way.  Authorship is disputed, as it is in many NT letters.  We’ll be moving through these weeks under the assumption that this letter was written by the apostle Peter.  It has been speculated that the letter was written by a community that Peter founded or perhaps edited by Silvanus. There is no way of confirming any of these positions, and it shouldn’t matter in terms of what this letter, written under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, had to say to a group of 1st-century believers in modern-day Turkey – along with what this letter, written and read under the guidance and presence of the Holy Spirit of God has to speak to our hearts today.

Living hope.  Living stones.  Living love.  Let’s ask for the Holy Spirit’s help as we consider God’s word this morning.  Let us pray.

Peter begins with matters of identity and honour.  Remember, you followers of Christ, who you are.  Remember whose you are.  Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.  That’s it.  That’s all he needs, really.  No talk of Christ’s inner circle or anything about his biography.  The one who saw Christ transfigured. The one who denied him.  The one who ran to the tomb to find it empty.  The one who was re-commissioned by him over a fish breakfast on a Galilean beach.  One of the groups who saw Jesus taken up into the clouds and heard the angels say, “Why are you standing around?  He’ll come back the same way!”  Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ.  At the Last Supper, just before Peter’s declaration that he will follow Jesus anywhere, even to prison, even to death, Jesus tells Peter this: ³¹ ‘Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, ³² but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” (Luke 22:31-32)  And so we pray that we may be strengthened as we hear the words of Peter.

Who shines the spotlight directly on Christ.  We ask questions like how then will we live?  How will I be able to cope?  What is the thing that will make me resilient?  There is a lot of talk about resiliency in our world and the need for it.  If there is one aspect of the human condition that is universal, it is the fact that suffering is our lot.  Uncertainty is our lot.  Things being beyond our control is our lot.  We all know what it means to hurt, and if we don’t, then we will.  Everybody hurts sometimes.

Even followers of Christ.  The invitation to take up Christ’s call to follow him is ever before us, of course.  Every day, for the 10,000^th time or the 1^st time.  Even in the following, we hurt.  Peter does not shy away from speaking about reality.  In his opening, he addresses his readers as exiles of the Dispersion.  Scattered.  The word for exile here really has more to do with being a foreigner in another country.  A stranger in a strange land.  It’s a famous image.  Used of Abraham literally (Gen 23:4).  Used by the Psalmist metaphorically (Ps 39:12).  Used by the songwriter of “Wayfaring Stranger” metaphorically with the addition of movement thrown in.  A pilgrim people making our way home together.  It’s a condition that some of us have experienced in our lives.  Being a stranger in a strange land.  Without all the rights that go along with being a citizen.  The difference here is that there’s no possibility of moving toward citizenship.  There’s simply an unsettling feeling of strangeness here for the follower of Christ.  It may be manifested in persecution – it does in many parts of the world.  It may be manifested in being socially shunned or shamed.  It may be manifested in looking around us as we go through our days and feeling a disconnect between what we value the most in this world and what we see going on around us.  If we don’t feel any of this, we may need to consider how much we’re buying into the world around us.

So Peter writes to the strangers, exiles, the foreigners, the pilgrims, and here things take a turn… the chosen.  Strangers yet chosen.  Exiles yet chosen.  Foreign residents yet chosen.  One of the tensions in which we live as followers of Jesus.  Exiled/foreign yet chosen, privileged, set apart for holiness by God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  This is a tension that, as a theme, will run through this letter.  I have to say at this point too, that we are not to abandon the world or leave the world to it’s own devices, just as God did not abandon the world and leave it to it’s own devices.  How do we live in such a tension?  Do as Peter does and turn the spotlight directly on God before we do or say anything else.  Let us put first things first, as Peter does here at the start of his letter.  “Who have been chosen and destined by the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ, and to be sprinkled with his blood.”  Chosen.  Known.  Sanctified.  Made new.  Being made in the very image of Christ.  Forgiven.

This is who you are.  This is your honour, dear brothers and sisters.  This is who we are; this is our honour.

Because we are not called to do any of this or be any of this on our own.  May grace and peace be yours in abundance.  Because we need grace and peace.  How else will we live?  What does it mean to live in the grace of God – the unmerited, undeserved favour of God?  What does it mean to be living hope in the midst of uncertainty or fear or being shunned?  To experience peace in the middle of it no matter what our circumstances?   Peter is shining a spotlight steadily on Christ, and he begins his letter with one long sentence in the original – from verse 3 all the way down to verse 12 in our Bibles.  The sentence starts with praise.  We all praise something.  Someone.  I watched a lot of the US Open and was struck by the reaction of the crowds to exploits of the players.  Standing.  Clapping.  Cheering.  Yelling.  I’m sure a lot of them are otherwise very staid people!  I’m not saying anything against sports.  I like sports.  I’m saying that a life lived where the only praise we give publicly is at sports events may come up rather lacking.  A life lived without praise to God may end up rather empty.   I have to praise you, Lord!  We have to praise you, Lord! What else could we do in the light of God’s mercy?  We’re called to do this praise together.  This is why we sing.  This is why we repeat Psalms of Praise together.  This is why we throw up our hands and say “Amen” and dance.  We are formed by what or whom we praise.  We’re formed together as followers of Christ in praise of Christ.  It’s important that we understand this when we consider the complete and utter necessity of gathering together for worship meaningfully and regularly.  Doing some guest preaching this summer with a family of faith that I hadn’t seen in some time, I was struck by how much each service of worship together is like a little family reunion.  We have been born into a new family by the mercy of God, sisters and brothers.  What else could we do but praise Him? So here it is: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead.” (1:3)  Our praise doesn’t have to be loud or demonstrative.  Our praise can consist of repeating this verse.  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  By his great mercy, he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead.  This is the gift of God.  Unmerited.  Undeserved.  A gift.  A new birth.  A gift just as the birth of any child is a gift – we did nothing to plan or earn being born.  A new birth into a living hope.  Hope not simply a wish for or even a longing for, but the confident expectation of good, no matter what is going on.  Hope that is in no way based on myself or any of the things in this world in which we might place a confident expectation of good, but based on the work of God in Christ and in the Spirit. 

Before we can understand how to live in our situation and how to react to our situation, we need to know what our situation is – along with what our situation will be.  The word narrative has become so overused, and at times, it seems that to say “narrative” means little more than “spin.”  This is the divine narrative, though.  This is the divine story (which these days is maybe a better word) into which we, as followers of Christ Jesus, have been caught up.  This is who we are in God’s story.  Members of a family whose birthright is an inheritance.  “Will we be mentioned in the will?”  is a question that’s often on people’s minds.  Countless film scenes (mostly murder mystery-type films, it seems) depict the reading of a will along with positive and negative reactions on the part of family members. Peter reminds his readers (and us that the inheritance of which he speaks is not based on goods which perish or something of such fleeting value as money or even land (as difficult as that may be to see in our current economic climate).  The inheritance into which the follower of Christ is born is rather “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1:4-5)

Peter takes the long view. “The last time,” he calls it.  The renewal of all things.  But the long view affects the here and now.  My inheritance as a follower of Christ is one of salvation.  Deliverance.  Rescue.  Deliverance from a life which lacks meaning.  Deliverance from a life of despair.  Deliverance from death itself.  What do I have to fear?  This salvation will be known one day in its fullness, but we know it in part every day.  All of this through the mercy of God.  My hope is living. My hope is alive because Christ is living because Christ is alive.

This is why we make such a big deal about Easter every year.

Peter has been speaking a lot so far about what God has done, but the matter of our own reaction to God’s story is brought up by him here in v 5 with two words – “through faith.”  “…you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time.”  Through faith.  Through trust.  God has chosen.  God adopts us.  God makes us new.  God bequeaths.  God protects.  God delivers.  The call on our lives as followers of Christ is trust.  Followers of Christ, let me ask you a question.  Has God not proven Himself worthy of all your trust? “Although you have not seen him, you love him, and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy.”  We used to sing a hymn when I was younger in which we sang about joy unspeakable and full of glory (and the half has never yet been told).

It is on this note of rejoicing that we’ll end.  Peter does not shy away from the reality of his readers’ situations. We will all face situations, and we may be facing them right now.  “In this, you rejoice, even if now, for a little while, you have had to suffer various trials so that the genuineness of your faith – being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1:6-7)  We’re not talking about a false grinning and bearing it, but a recognition that joy is a gift of God, and we have the right to know it as followers of Christ no matter the trial.  Trials are not simply something we need to deal with or cope with, but we may definitely rejoice in them.  We’re not just sloganeering here.  These are not simply empty phrases.  Someone has put it like this:

“These claims can sound like religious jargon, but anyone who has immersed himself (or herself) in life long enough has tasted the bitter pains that life hurls at humans. Again, it can sound like rhetoric, but it was not rhetoric for Peter. He walked with Jesus and suffered arrest and threats for the crime of telling the truth about him. To be sure, we can deceive others and deceive ourselves with vapid talk of joy, but it is good and right to have peace at 3 A.M. when troubles interrupt our sleep.”

“You are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1:9) 

Peter speaks in our passage of a salvation that is ready to be revealed.  The word for ready is the same one that was used in the context of a group of people being called to a table that is ready.  We’ve been invited to the table.  We can smell the goodness.  We know the goodness of the One who has prepared it.  May each of you accept the invitation each and every day, and may this be true for us all. Amen