Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-december-4-2023
I Peter 2:11-21 and 3:1-7
Living Godly Lives in a Pagan Society
11 Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
13 Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. 15 For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. 16 Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. 17 Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the king.
18 Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. 19 For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. 20 But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. 21 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
3:1Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, 2 when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. 3 Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. 4 Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. 5 For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, 6 like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.
7 Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.
As you might imagine, this is a reading I approach “with fear and trembling,” at least the latter part. It’s not really in keeping with our current attitudes about human relations. I know some women and people of color react angrily to what the apostle wrote about slavery and the dynamics of marriage.
I get that. But I also think we have some obligation to wrestle with the whole Bible – including its more disturbing passages. For some reason, the Holy Spirit led our spiritual ancestors to include those disturbing passages in the scriptures as we receive them. So let’s see what Peter has in mind here.
The apostle Peter begins by writing that we followers of Jesus should think of ourselves as “aliens and strangers” in the world, and that we should live such virtuous lives that people around us will be led to glorify God.
It’s been said, and I think very wisely, that being a follower of Jesus should transform all of our relationships. The way we relate to our spouses, our children, our parents, our friends, our customers, the people who wait on us in stores and restaurants – every relationship we have should be colored by the fact that we are followers of Jesus. It seems to me that what Peter writes in this passage is meant to illustrate that principle.
Peter says we should be respectful of the governing authorities. That’s a little tricky for us as citizens of a democracy, because we’re free to criticize our elected officials and their policies. But what Peter says here would suggest that even so, we followers of Jesus should conduct our public discourse differently from others. Whatever our political views might be, we should be more moderate in our rhetoric than has become the fashion in our culture. Every liberal is not a socialist, and concern for social justice is not the same as excusing criminal behavior. Every conservative is not a fascist, and concern for public morality is not the same as oppressing minorities.
When people hear followers of Jesus talking politics, they should hear something of Jesus’ voice through us, and not just know we’re Christians because we stridently hold forth on a few hot-button issues.
When it comes to Peter’s advice to slaves, we need to keep in mind that he was writing in the first fifty years of a church that was growing within the Roman Empire, which was a slave-based society. There was absolutely no chance that slavery would be abolished within the lifetime of those who read Peter’s letter. But it was entirely possible that slaves who came to follow Jesus could live in such a way that their respectful service could actually bear witness to their new faith. Some slaves, like Onesimus, went on to become leaders in the church.
And if they were treated unjustly, Peter reminds his readers who were slaves, they would have the consolation of knowing that their ultimate master, Jesus, had also been treated unjustly.
Which leads us to the question of relationships between husbands and wives. Peter was writing to people who lived in a system which valued people unequally. Submissiveness was considered a feminine virtue of the time, and Peter advised women to adopt that spirit – the “gentle and quiet spirit” we associate with Jesus himself. That spirit would have been regarded as good citizenship by the pagan neighbors of the first Christians.
But there’s a part of what Peter writes here that’s genuinely subversive. That part is Peter’s teaching that men be considerate and respectful of their wives, and treat them as “partners and heirs with you of the gracious gift of life.” For male believers to regard their wives that way would have been very different from the norm in the Greco-Roman world. It would have represented a genuine real transformation of the typical relationships in marriage.
Today, our faith tradition teaches us that men and women should be regarded as equals. The Christian faith just about everywhere teaches that slavery is an absolute evil. But the church still embraces the central principle of what Peter wrote here: that following Jesus should transform and color every relationship we have. Whoever we’re dealing with on any basis, we should be aiming to demonstrate the love of Jesus in our dealings with them.
Let’s pray. Lord, let your spirit make us quiet and gentle, respectful to everyone we meet, and committed to being instruments of your love in the lives of those closest to us, those we see once in a while, and those we meet only once. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
(The listed readings for today are Psalms 105 and 106; Amos 2:6-16; II Peter1:1-11; and Matthew 21:1-11. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
Recent Comments