Still Our Revolution--May 17, 2023

Still Our Revolution--May 17, 2023

"But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord.  Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame." [1 Peter 3:14-16]

The first Christians weren't naive.  They knew that the world was a dangerous place and their presence in it would provoke hostility and hatred from others.  And yet knowing that, they made the choice in advance not to lash out at the meanness of the world, but rather to answer evil with good.

This was their revolution.  It is still our revolution.

I don't say that to be melodramatic, but quite sincerely.  The early Christians did something truly radical by deciding together not to let themselves be provoked into fear, hatred, and hostility of others, even when the outside world treated them with scorn and intimidation.  They prepared themselves for the likely possibility that naming the name of Jesus would get them into trouble.  They steeled their resolve ahead of time not to let fear make them violent, and not to let the anger of others provoke them into being rude or dehumanizing in return.  Those early Christians, to whom the letter of First Peter was written, took so seriously that Christ's kind of love doesn't hold grudges or keep record of wrongs, that they were willing to stake their lives on living the same way in a dangerous world.

That's what this passage from First Peter, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, is really doing.  It's training followers of Jesus to be prepared for encountering hostility in the world, and it's equipping them [and us] for responding without becoming hostile ourselves.  And at the bottom of all of it is the core conviction that Jesus' way of responding to others' animosity was not to sink to their level or keep clinging to resentments for their mistreatment.  Because Jesus' love didn't keep score that way, then we Christians who claim to be Jesus' followers will respond like him. And the key to that, as First Peter tells us, is to be prepared for it.

To do that, First Peter helps his readers [including the twenty-first century ones] think through different scenarios, and to use our faithful imaginations to game out what it could look like to respond with the kind of love that doesn't hold grudges.  So, for example, if we find ourselves suffering for doing what is right [say, standing up to bullies, or speaking up for the outcast, or being made fun of or called "weak" or "losers" because of our commitment to love like Jesus], First Peter reframes the situation to say, "These are exactly the kinds of situations and people that Jesus called "blessed."  And what do you know, but that is exactly the sort of re-imagining that Jesus does in the Beatitudes--declaring that the persecuted, the peacemakers, and the lowly are blessed.  That doesn't excuse what others might be doing to you, but it gives us a way of responding that doesn't sink to their level. It's a way of saying, "I won't let your poor treatment of me lead me to treat you poorly in response.  I will not go low just because you do.  I will go high."  It's much like that insight of Robert Hayden, who said, "We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, through monsters of abstractions police and threaten us."

First Peter knows, too, how easily we are led to return evil for evil or violence for violence when we are afraid--when we let the "fight or flight" impulse control our actions and choices.  So he reminds us that we do not have to fear what they fear, and instead, we can respond in ways that show Christ.  And then when he directs us to be ready to give "an accounting for the hope that is in you," he follows it up with the reminder that we are called to speak in ways that are gentle and reverent, rather than mocking, belittling, belligerent, or crude to others.  That's important, especially in this age of social media trolls and anonymous commenters, because it is easy to think we have to attack others into faith, or view evangelism an argument to be won rather than a love to be shared.  In a time when everyone else is lobbing insults and profanities at the people they don't agree with, First Peter calls us to break that cycle and to refuse to do the same back to someone else just because they've done it to you.  We offer an alternative by embodying love that doesn't return meanness for meanness and hatred for hatred.

And that's it: we don't really change things if we amplify people's rottenness toward us with more rottenness of our own.  We have to subvert the tactics others use by offering a different way, something other than fight or flight.  Like the 20th century Jesuit writer Pedro Arrupe put it, "To be just, it is not enough to refrain from injustice. One must go further and refuse to play its game, substituting love for self-interest as the driving force of society."  That's what makes this ancient document hiding out in the back of our New Testament so revolutionary--First Peter's voice has been training the followers of Jesus on how to break the cycles of vengeance and vindictiveness for twenty centuries by daring us to respond to the hostility of others with the love of Jesus.  Growing in love is going to do that do us--it is going to make us more like Jesus, more capable of responding to the dehumanizing tactics of others with the genuine humanity of Jesus, the incarnate presence of God-with-us.  And for a world that is tired--exhausted--while it looks for an off-ramp from the spiraling cycles of getting-even and hitting-back, this is just the revolution we need.

Let's get to it.

Lord Jesus, give us the calm to our spirit to think, prepare, and respond to the meanness of the world with the goodness you have shown us--and let it change everything.