To begin, I want to come back to that note of praise with which Peter started his letter.  The note of praise which speaks of where everything must start – with God.  “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 Jesus Christ from the dead.” (1:3)

I attended the CBOQ Annual Assembly this past June.  A lot of Baptists gathered together at the **** Hotel in Mississauga.  One of the first big gatherings since the pandemic – certainly the biggest since the pandemic.  We watched a video featuring a pastor from a Hispanic church in Montreal.  This pastor had to flee his native El Salvador in the early 80’s.  For many in his country at the time, it was either be killed or flee.  He fled, wanted to come to Toronto, but ended up in Montreal.  His own experience of being a stranger in a strange land affected the rest of his life.  He has a special place in his heart for the stranger, for the immigrant, for the exile, for the displaced.  He knows what it’s like to arrive in a new country with all your possessions in a suitcase. 

In reflecting on what we looked at last week as we started the 1^st Letter of Peter and thinking of Peter’s image of the follower of Christ as stranger/resident alien/exile, we were able to have conversations about what being a stranger looks like literally.  Many of us, as we said, have this experience – whether we’re experiencing it now or have experienced it in the past.  Unsettling.  Uncertain.  Displacement.  Strangeness.  If we haven’t experienced displacement personally (like myself), may we learn from our brothers and sisters who have?  What are the sorrows?  What are the joys?  What are the things which make life difficult?  How may we support one another in these difficulties?  How can we join with one another in celebrations? Because here is the thing.  For the follower of Christ, the situation in which we all find ourselves is one of foreignness.  We said that for followers of Christ, this may be manifest in persecution.  It may be manifest in social shunning or even estrangement.  It’s hard!  Here’s the thing, though.  We have family around us.  We have kin all around.  Peter is writing this letter of encouragement to a group of people he hasn’t met.  Remember who you are, he told us last week.  This week is “Remember what this means in your lives.” Not because you aren’t already, because there’s no hint from Peter that his readers/listeners aren’t doing these things.  You’ve been born into a living hope.  An inheritance if yours, and that inheritance is deliverance which you are experiencing right now and which you will experience in its fullness. How, then, should we live in the face of these wonderful truths?  We’re going to look at four imperatives that Peter gives us.  The first three have to do with our relationship with God.  Hope completely.  Be holy.  Live reverently.  Love deeply.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we look at God’s word this morning. 

Hope Completely

“Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring when he is revealed.” (1:13). Hope completely.  Hope is expressed in this first chapter of Peter as both a noun and a verb.  Hope is something that we have.  We have been given a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead.  Hope is also something that we do.  Set all your hope.  Hope completely.  Hopefully.  All of this hoping is based on the one who has been raised from the dead.  Hope not as wishfulness or wistfulness, but hope that is great expectation.  Hope in God who has time and time again proven himself worthy of our trust, worthy of our confident expectation of good.  Peter describes how we should be hoping in two ways in this first verse of our passage.  “Prepare your minds for action” is how our NRSV has translated the first way, with a note in our Bibles that describes the image he actually uses here – “Gird up the loins of your mind.”  What’s that all about?  It’s a description of how an outer garment would be cinched up around one’s waist when it was time for action.  We might say something like, “Roll up your sleeves.”  I spent many of my formative years in the country, as many of you know, and our experiences shape us profoundly.  One of the legacies of that time is this pair of boots that I keep by the side door at our house.  When it comes time for any work outside, it’s time to put my boots on (I have liners for them for winter too).  Gird up the loins of your mind.  Prepare yourselves.  Get your boots on.  Resolve to take our hope seriously.  Be serious.  What would happen to us if we really took all of this God stuff seriously?  Discipline yourself is the second way that Peter describes how we should be hoping as followers of Christ.  Sober up!  Avoid indulging in anything that would take us out of our heads.  Prepare your minds and discipline yourselves does not mean that we’re talking simply about an intellectual exercise, but as the part of our life that determines how we conduct ourselves.  This word for discipline denotes restraint, moderation, the avoidance of an excess of rashness or confusion.  Self-control, as Paul describes it in his Fruit of the Spirit list.  Someone has put it like this – “Peter wishes his readers to avoid any form of mental or spiritual intoxication that would confuse the reality that Christ has revealed and deflect them from a life steadfastly fixed on the grace of Christ.” 

Remain fixed and grounded in our hope.  Remain fixed and grounded in the promises of God.  I like to ask the question, “What are some of the promises of God that you have found to be most meaningful or that you find most meaningful at this stage of your life?”  Our hope in Christ is not wishfulness or wistfulness but a confident expectation of good.  Remain in that hope completely.

Be Holy

“Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance.  Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct: for it is written, ‘You shall be holy as I am holy.’” 

“How then shall we live?” is the question that always needs to be before us.  It’s the question that we should always be discussing.  What does grace call for here?  What does love call for here?  We’re going to get quite pointedly to love at the end of this passage, but it permeates all of it.  The operative image here goes back to that of family.  We’ve been given a new birth into a new family.  The call on our lives is to bear the family image.  As he who called you is holy.  “In all your conduct” simply means “In your whole way of life.”  Peter does not write a virtue list here (though we’ll see next week that he describes what holiness does not look like in God’s family).  We have a responsibility as family members, just as we do in any family.  Do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance.  “Do not be conformed to this world,” as Paul puts it in Romans 12:2, “But be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”  Be transformed by being made new in this family. 

Our God is completely holy.  Our God is wholly other.  Our God is not just separate from sin but without parallel.  Without competition.  Without any confusion between the Creator and the created.  You have been called by this God to be set apart, to reflect God’s ways.  Let us be who we have been called to be.  We acted in ignorance.  We followed desires or cravings that were self-seeking, whether it was money or power or pleasure, because we thought that was where life was found.  We’re reminded of this constantly, aren’t we?  Let us satisfy our own desires for our own ends, and who cares about the ramifications for others or for the earth itself?  There’s nothing wrong with desires or cravings.  The problem is when desires or cravings get misdirected.  We’ll talk next week about the pure spiritual milk which we are called to crave as followers of Christ.  We’ve been called into a new family.  Let us become together who we are in this family, dear sisters and brothers.        

Live Reverently

“If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during your exile.  You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.  He was destined before the foundation of the world but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake.  Through him, you have come to trust God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.” (1:17-21)

Followers of Christ are to be focused on Christ in a seriously exclusive way, as someone has said.  Pin all your hopes on God.  Be all in on God.  Allow the holiness of God to guide the way you conduct your life in all of life.  Live all of life in reverence.  Reverent fear is the way our NRSV Bibles translate it.  Do not let familiarity with God breed contempt or apathy, or indifference.  Leave room in our lives and in our worship spaces for reverence and awe out of a deep sense of gratitude and wonder at what God has done.  He has bought us.  He has freed us.

He is our loving Father.  It’s not unknown for us to ignore loving parents, though, or to take them for granted, is it?  He is our Judge.  When we’re talking about reverent fear of God, we’re not talking about abject terror or debilitating fear that God is a divine figure ready to throw a lightning bolt at us should we go wrong.  Anyone who has ever stood before a judge knows that, to some extent, their future is in the hands of the judge.  We live confidently and expectantly in the mercy of God.  There is room for fear and caution to exist side by side.  As someone has said, “There is a kind of fear that does not contradict confidence. A confident driver also possesses a healthy fear of an accident that prevents him or her from doing anything foolish.”  Let us live in reverent fear during the time of our sojourn.  

Love Strenuously

Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love love one another deeply from the heart.”

The first three imperatives have to do with taking our connection with God seriously.  The final imperative has to do with taking our connection with one another seriously.  Love deeply.  Love constantly.  Love strenuously.  The word for how we are to love signifies an all-out, no-holds-barred effort.  In the Greek translation of the OT, the people of Nineveh “yelled up to God strenuously.” (Jon 3:8)  In the book of Judith, this is the reaction of the people of Israel when facing Assyrian invasion – “And every man of Israel yelled up to the Lord in great strenuousness, and they humbled their souls in great strenuousness, themselves and their wives and their babies and their cattle, and every sojourner or day-labourer, and their slaves… and fell on their faces toward the Temple, and put ashes on their heads, and stretched out their sackcloth before the Lord and draped the altar in sackcloth and yelled up to the God of Israel in unison strenuously.” (Jud 4:9-12) Love one another as if everything depended on it.  Love as not simply a feeling but a way of life.  Love as a choice that we make moment by moment.  Love that we show not just in word or speech but in deed and in truth.  Because love is of God. Although you have not seen him, you love him. All talk and action of love based on who God is and how God loves us.  Because we have been born into a new family, while we may be strangers in a strange land, we have family here. We have family here.  May God help us all to continue together to hope completely, be holy, live reverently and love deeply.  May this be true for all of us.

Amen