Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright May 29, 2011 Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A 1 Peter 5.6-11

            You know it’s a crisis when the Brits call off a cricket match.

            On Saturday, May 21 a concerned citizen in Hampshire, England phoned the local bobbies to report a white tiger lounging on the fairway of a local golf course. Presumably it was not waiting to play through. The cops ordered golfers off the links and halted play mid-innings at an adjacent cricket pitch. They scrambled a copter and called in help from the nearby Marwell Zoo. As officers closed in, thermal-imaging cameras noted that the prowling predator threw no body heat. Then it tumbled over in a downdraft from the chopper blades.

            It was a life-sized stuffed toy.

            Peter holds out no such possibility as the church engages in spiritual warfare. In what may or may not be a mixed metaphor, Peter juxtaposes a lawyer’s word, “adversary,” with the image of a man-eating lion to describe the danger that confronts the Christian community. Our enemy gives off heat kindled by Hell’s own flames and seeks to flesh his fangs in the bodies of believers.

            But, Peter reminds us, this is all part of the deal. In what, again, may or may not be a mixed metaphor, he goes from lawyers to lions to the IRS: “the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished,” a verb that refers to the payment of taxes. Believers embrace the worst the tiger can inflict – until the big cat finally rolls over dead beneath the onrushing gust of the Holy Spirit.

Hold That Tiger!

Doug

Collect

God of all comfort, you call us to cast our cares on you. Grant us grace in the face of our trials to stand firm with our fellow-saints around the world and throughout the ages that in our sorrow and suffering we may become more like the crucified Christ in whose name we pray, Amen.

Benediction

May the Lord humble you,

            In order to exalt you.

May the lion stalk you,

            In order to strengthen you.

May the Lord perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you,

            In order that you may bring glory to God forever and ever.

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.

Fidgeting Until We Die May 29, Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A 1 Peter 3.13-22

            Noted psychologist Martin Seligman likes to play bridge. He’s good at it (he once took second in a national tournament) and he enjoys it, but he does not pretend that it has great significance. “I worry,” he admits, “that I am merely fidgeting until I die.” Similarly, author Neil Postman wondered back in 1985 whether we aren’t just Amusing Ourselves to Death.

            Peter admits up-front that the logic of a sinful world may in fact lead to the illogical punishment of good people. This, he warns, won’t be any fun, but does redeem our days from the emptiness of amusing fidgeting. He offers a couple of suggestions for making the most of such attacks.

            The first response is intellectual: Defense means an answer given under cross-examination. The apostle advocates apologetics as an appropriate response to persecution. Better still, however, is the argument from incarnation: a good conscience beats a good argument any day.

            All of this comes down to taking Jesus’ example seriously. Calvin Miller tells the tale of a converted car salesman, a born-again Barnum who incorporated the plan of salvation into his patter but did not eliminate lies about the vehicles he touted. The pastor pointed out to him that, “while it was noble of him to love Jesus, it would be equally valuable to act like him.”

            Peter dares to commend this kind of Christ-copying in the very shadow of the cross. Jesus’ death, far from invalidating his sacrifice, made saving love retroactive clean back to Noah’s flood. Following Jesus might get you killed, Peter admits, but death can’t get in your way. It’s all there in your baptism, the fisherman explains: that wasn’t a bathtub; it was a grave.            

            Fidgeting may distract you from death but it won’t keep death from coming. Crucifixion, by contrast, puts death up-front and thus replaces amusement with meaning.

We Are Not Amused!

Doug

           

Collect

Everlasting God, You save us from death and by means of death. Grant now that we who live by the death of Christ Your Son might die to self and live with Him so that the world might so clearly see Christ in us that all their arguments fall silent and only praise remains. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Benediction

May the Lord make you zealous for what is good,

            That the world find no reason to harm you.

May the Lord let you suffer as one who is good,

            That the world would see Christ in your suffering.

May the Lord drown you deep by baptism unto death,

            That the world would see the risen Christ in your life.

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Spirit,

Amen.

Shuffling the Deck May 22 Fifth Sunday of Easter, Year A 1 Peter 2.2-10

            “Saying something is like a dog,” warns G. K. Chesterton, “is another way of saying it is not a dog.” And yet sometimes revelation beggars logic and forces the theologian to fall back on poetry.

            In this passage Peter runs his metaphors through a mix-master until they don’t know if they’re coming or going. He shuffles his similes and deals from the bottom of the deck like a carny sideshow sharper. The believer is a baby, then a building, and then an ethnicity, a clergy, a country and a kinship in such rapid-fire succession that it dizzies the imagination. What does it mean to follow Christ? Pick a card, any card!

            But two themes thread these diverse descriptions into a single fabric: unity and welcome. The notion of unity unifies this farrago. Newborn believer babies suckle at the single breast of God’s one life-giving word. The Master Mason mortars believer-bricks into the single solid wall that shoots its angles from a common Corner Stone. The remaining imagery seeks the sameness among otherwise diverse individuals: common genes, common liturgy, common law, common customs. The Christ who calls individuals never calls them to individuality. Community marks the Christian confession.

But even to an outcast clan, Peter emphasizes the mandate to include. Beverly Gaventa rightly reminds us that “the intractable human temptation to convert a gift into a possession” leads us to read this text as if it offered us a boundary to defend instead of an escape hatch to proclaim. Peter’s kaleidoscope image of the church is more Underground Railroad than Maginot Line, more Schindler’s List than Checkpoint Charlie.  We form a family so we can midwife newborns. We erect a temple so we can welcome worshipers. It is true that some will stumble on a stone that lies athwart the wide way to Hell, but even the Christ-crushed we now invite to limp their way into life.

In the Kingdom of Heaven everyone is so much the same that no single simile can capture their diversity. In the Kingdom of Heaven the boundaries serve, not to keep people out, but to make it clear how to get in. And the Church is a shape-shifting stability that flashes Christ from every facet. How’s that for a royal flush?

Ante Up!

Doug  

Collect

Great God, you nurse us like a loving mother and join us like a master builder. Grant now that we who are many may become truly one, not by the conquering conformity of outward habits that blurs Your individual creations, but by the inward life of our risen Lord who makes us truly one by making us truly ourselves. This we pray in the name of the One who by being Three is truly One, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God now and Forever, Amen.

Blessing

May we who are many drink one Word,

            That we may grow into one family.

May we who are many build one wall,

            That the world may see one Savior.

May we who are many offer one worship,

            That all the nobodies may join in one body.

In the name of the One who is

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

Now and Forever,

Amen.

Your Best Cross Now May 15, 2011 Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A 1 Peter 2.19-25

            When members of the Shouwang church in Beijing showed up for Easter Sunday services, the government arrested them. The reason they only locked up thirty or so was that they had already slapped an additional five hundred under house arrest to prevent them from attending in the first place. At last report no one had heard from pastor Jin Tianming and the authorities had eighty-sixed the church’s website.

            It wasn’t as if the congregants didn’t see it coming.

            The Communist state has persecuted them steadily because Shouwang is an unregulated house church that refuses to submit to official control. In his last sermon before he disappeared, Pastor Jin told his flock, “For everything that we have faced, we offer our thanks to God. Compared with what you faced on the cross, what we face now is truly insignificant.”

            For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps.

            Example translates a Greek word that referred to the outlines of a sketch that another fills in. Calvary sets fort the cruciform paradigm of the Christian life; each congregation adds the details of its own expression of suffering. One thing, though: in this case, it is not acceptable to color outside the lines.           

             The cross lays down the contours of Christian action. “Christ also suffered for you.” Usually we read the preposition as meaning “instead of,” and that is true; but Peter clearly means that Christ also suffered as our model, to give us a demonstration of what life ought to look like.

            So when we find ourselves seeking Scriptural excuses to slide off the blood-soaked wood of Calvary, we should remember a Chinese church whose members saw more in Christ than a get-out-of-jail-free card, who dared to take 1 Peter 2.21 at face value: “For everything that we have faced, we offer our thanks to God. Compared with what you faced on the cross, what we face now is truly insignificant.”

Collect

Crucified and risen Lord, you suffered on Calvary both to give us life and to show us how to live. Grant now that we may find in you not only our escape but our example, not only our substitute but our guide, so that by showing our world crucified Christians we might point them to the crucified Christ in whose name we pray, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Benediction

The Lord calls you to submission,

            That your suffering might find God’s favor.

The Lord calls you to suffering,

            That you might truly be made like your Savior.

The Lord calls you to salvation

            Through the wounds of the One whose submissive suffering saves you.

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Hoy Spirit,

Amen.