AT THE DROP OF A HAT

 

        Can you put into words what you believe about God? What about Jesus Christ? Could you tell someone who had never heard of it, what the Holy Spirit is?  If, as you were leaving church this morning someone asked you why you had just spent the last hour  sitting in this room, what would you say? How would you describe the God you believe in? Why do you believe in that God? In what ways is your faith tangibly evident in your life? How does your faith inform your everyday life? Why have you just spent an hour in church?

        In verse 15 from this passage in 1 Peter we have just read, it reads, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you.” Stated somewhat differently, Peter is encouraging his readers to be ready with a word of explanation for their faith at the drop of a hat.

The context Peter was writing to is important to keep in mind as seek to understand what its message may be for us today. We know that his first readers lived in a thoroughly pagan culture ruled by Rome. At this time Christianity was an outlaw religion. It did not have the same legal standing as Judaism, which was marginally tolerated by the Romans.

So, then, as an example, if these early Christians didn’t attend the community religious festival worshiping the Emperor and a neighbor wanted to know why they hadn’t joined the rest of the community, Peter wanted them to know what to say when confronted by their neighbors. Peter wanted these Christians to know how to respond to their pagan neighbors and friends. In response to the question of why they couldn’t attend the community festival celebrating the emperor cult, they could say, “Christians can’t worship anything except the God we have come to know through our Lord Jesus Christ, including the most powerful man and office in the empire.”

Or, when persecuted and derided by others for their trust and belief in a God who could not be seen and a lord who had been executed on a cross like a common criminal, Peter wanted these converts to have the ability to express their faith in clear and credible ways. Moreover, Peter wanted them to respond in such a way as to entice the other person into the fellowship of believers, and ultimately into a relationship with God that was grounded in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For us to truly hear what Peter meant as he wrote these words of encouragement we first need to grasp the context in which these Christians lived. While there is much we do not know about the historical circumstances and authorship of this letter, it is clear that this letter we call 1 Peter was written to a group of Christians who lived as what we can call –“resident aliens” in their communities.  That is while they lived and worked alongside their pagan neighbors, their faith, their discipleship, set them a part from the larger community. They lived in their world, but were not fully a part of their world.

This issue remains with us today. In our contemporary world, Dr. Stanley Hauerwas an ethicist and theologian from Duke University has made this term “resident alien” quite popular through his work. In his book by the same name “Resident Aliens” he and his coauthor describe the challenges we face in this time and place as we seek to live faithful lives of discipleship in a world that dismisses our values as unfounded and unwarranted.

Thinking specially about this letter, how do we know who Peter’s original audience was? Well, based on internal textual evidence contained in the letter, most scholars agree this letter was written to Gentile converts living in the sparsely populated interior sections of Asia Minor, or modern day Turkey.

We can safely assume that these Christians stood a part from the mainstream religious and cultural activities of the communities they lived in. Their faith in the risen Christ had changed their entire outlook on life and the challenges of everyday living. 

        The majority of these relatively recent converts to Christianity were in fact former Gentile pagans who had, until their conversion, participated in the mainstream economic and cultural life of their communities. However, their conversion to Christianity effectively separated them from their former social and economic circles. They became “resident aliens”. In their world, but apart from it at the same time.

Unlike many of us today, these Christians could not simply blend into the fabric of society unnoticed. Their faith set them apart, and Peter wanted them to be prepared to defend that faith at any moment.

        The antagonism these people faced was not the organized government sponsored persecution against Christians recorded by historians as taking place several decades later as the Roman Empire became increasingly intolerant of diversity.

Apparently, the conflict these Christians in Asia Minor faced was more along the lines any minority faces when its ethical and ritual practices deviate from cultural norms.

        Indeed, the source of this conflict in Asia Minor has its roots in our basic human nature. Sociologically, it is in our genes to fear that which is different or unusual from what we are accustomed to in life. Adopting a life of Christian discipleship tangibly set these men and women a part from their former friends and neighbors. We can say with confidence that it was their “different-from-the-norm” behavior that caused conflict with the surrounding community.

Fundamentally, we can see the same phenomenon on elementary school playgrounds, in middle school lunchrooms, and anywhere people interact socially. Groups are basically intolerant of anything that is tangibly different from the group norm.

        On the surface of it, our cultural context today is radically different from the pagan cultural context of first century Asia Minor. Not many of us face antagonism from our friends and neighbors because we are professing Christians. Ostensibly, our Christian worldview and value structure is the dominant belief structure in our culture.

So, then, what can Peter’s encouragement to be ready at all times to give a defense of our faith mean for us?  While we may not face persecution or antagonism for our Christian faith, nonetheless each day presents us with opportunities to live in our faith in the risen Christ, or to reject or ignore it. Essentially, this is what Peter was talking about in this passage. Through our faith, through our discipleship, we are called to place our lives into God’s hands.

In turn, our faith and trust in Christ then gives us a certain freedom about our lives. It is Christ who has made us righteous, or reconciled us to God, not our pitiful efforts at obedience. It is Christ who will ultimately defeat and destroy the power of evil in creation. It is Christ who judges our actions and the actions of other. As Christians, our hope is in Christ alone, not our faithfulness, not our ability to root out and destroy evil, and not our ability to judge and punish those who wrong us.

Our faith in Christ teaches us that God is with us and for us. Moreover, as our passage reminds us God’s power is unlimited, there is no realm in all of creation that is beyond Christ’s power to redeem us and make us his very own. This power extends even to the realm of death as Peter draws on the example from the days of Noah in verses 19 & 20.

This is not abstract theological pondering by Peter, it is down to earth guidance on how to face everyday of our lives. Practically this means that as we face the various challenges of life, such as a battle against a terminal disease, or the pain and suffering of a betrayal from one we love, or whether we are suddenly unemployed and filled with anxiety over the future, or whether we feel overwhelmed by the conditions of our lives, through our faith and trust in Christ we can face every situation with the confidence that God’s power is with us.

Peter’s encouragement is not pie-in-the-sky idealism, nowhere in this passage does he promise his readers that the challenges they face will disappear, nor does God promise us that when we place our faith and trust in him will our particular challenges go away. That is not the promise of the gospel. Rather, the promise is that Christ is with us, and that not even the power of death can defeat or overcome God’s love for us and God’s desire that we be with him for all eternity.

Let us then heed Peter’s exhortation in verse 15, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you.” Let us be ready at the drop of a hat to acknowledge God’s sovereignty over our lives.  So may it be. Amen.

 

                Reverend Marc V. Mason

                7th Sunday of Easter

                May 1th, 2005

                Tinity PC

                Travelers Rest, SC