1 Peter 1.17-23, Easter 3, St. Paul’s L’Amoreaux
If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile
I like sports movies. Not all of them, but there are a few that I’ve always loved.
One of them is Hoosiers, the story of a small-town Indiana basketball team under a tough but determined coach. Together they go all the way to the state championship and win.
Another is Remember the Titans, based on the true story of two Virginian high school teams merged as a part of school desegregation in the early 1970’s. They, too, go on to great accomplishments. But as the account of it goes, their willingness to work together had a lot to do with two weeks spent in training at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the famous Civil War battle site, where they were pointedly reminded about the enormous sacrifice in America in pursuit of a nation where people of all races could live and work together in peace. Their small struggle, of black and white football teams, was part of a much larger national struggle, which they could either let slide into defeat or work hard for in pursuit of a much larger victory.
And another is Coach Carter, based on the true story of Coach Kenneth Carter who went into a rough and rundown high school in Richmond, California, explaining that any kid who wanted on the basketball team had to sign a contract promising to attend practice, to dress up in suit and tie on game day, to attend classes, to sit in the front row, and to maintain a 2.3 grade average, three points higher than the minimum. If the average wasn’t maintained by the whole team, the whole team wouldn’t play any basketball at all.
He meant it. And in 1999, Coach Kenneth Carter made national headlines when he locked the gym doors in the middle of an undefeated season. Grade averages had slipped below the minimum. Not only was the basketball team stopped from playing, but in the whole school anything to do with basketball - in gym, at recess - anything! - was stopped. The team forfeited its next two games, but in the meantime, certain basketball players did their homework. Grade averages went back up, and the doors to the gym were unlocked.
But there’s a beautiful scene in the movie about Coach Carter’s first season and one young player who wants nothing to do with the discipline and academics. He’s in a tough neighbourhood with an older cousin who deals drugs. Big cousin has figured it out,. Timo Cruz doesn’t need the headaches and nagging of Coach Carter and he’s soon off the team.
Until one night, Timo is out on the street with his cousin and members of a rival gang drive by and shoot his cousin dead in a brazen attack. Suddenly, the constant warnings of Coach Carter are driven home. In tears, Timo knows of nowhere else to go and on Coach Carter’s doorsteps, he throws himself into his arms, begging the coach to get him off the street, begging him for a chance to get back on Coach Carter’s team.
There are two words I’d like you to notice from our lesson in 1 Peter.
The first is the word Father. 1 Peter is a letter which moves effortlessly back and forth between the history of Israel and the developing story of the new Christian churches. Because for Peter, as for all of the New Testament, this is not two different histories, but one. And mention of the Father is meant to take people back not just to Jesus, praying to the Father in Heaven, but to God the Father of Israel, building a people who would be blessed by him in order to be a blessing to the world.
He began with an old man and an old woman to prove that love was the reason for what he did. Will you boast because of your vitality? No. You will boast of the love of God who has power over death.
He delivered slaves from Egypt. Will you boast of your strength and reputation? No. You will boast of God’s compassion on the least of all, freeing them from slavery.
And he gave them the law and made the downtrodden into a people. Will you boast of your self-reliance and ingenuity? No. You will boast of God’s grace. You will give thanks for God’s care. You will treat with reverence and fear the law that God gave. For as it is so eloquently stated in Leviticus:
I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect. (Lev. 26:13)
Or, as St. Peter puts it:
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Pe 2:9-10)
All of which is to say, that like a coach who truly respects his players will insist that they live dignified and worthy lives, this Christian community Peter addresses lives before a Heavenly Father who loves them, and wants them living a life of dignity and strength and blessing to others.
The first word to notice in our lesson from Peter is Father, because the story of this Christian community is the continuing story of God’s great work of building a people, strong in heart, mind and soul, through whom God’s love will be extended to every corner of the world.
And the second word is fear.
On Wednesday evening a new group met to begin the study entitled ‘Encountering Jesus’. And in our first session, we studied the passage from John about the time a Samaritan woman encountered Jesus. And the study guide we use noticed an interesting transition that occurs. You may remember that Jesus offers the woman water that will quench all her thirst. Naturally, she requests it and Jesus replies by asking her to go get her husband. In so doing, he lays bare the fact that she’s already had five husbands, and she is now living, unmarried, with a sixth. It is a sad revelation but as you read, you can also feel how the encounter is deepening, question by question, step by step.
And then she appears to change the subject. You Jews worship in Jerusalem. We Samaritans worship on Mt. Gerazim.
You can smell a whiff of self-defense as if a greater grievance might distract attention from a lesser. Another wound is exposed. The sad and bitter of division of a people once united. The Irish of the north from the Irish of the south. Koreans of the north from Koreans of the south.
To which Jesus answers, this division is not the final word, for the Father seeks those who worship in spirit and truth.
“I know,” says the woman, “that this will happen when the Messiah comes”.
“I am the Messiah,” Jesus says to the woman.
It is a majestic scene. And maybe this is obvious to you, but it struck me with new force. In his encounter with the woman, he offers hope not only for the personal hurt, sinfulness and sorrow. He offers hope for the national hurt, sinfulness and division. He has come to offer salvation for both.
And it casts light on our understanding of the fear of the Lord. Fear here is not simply terror. It is fear, and reverence and regard for the purposes of God for the world and for each one of His children.
There is a temptation to lose the connection between these two. God came to save the world, but God begins by saving us as individuals. God came to reunite a divided nation and and a divided world, but he began with foot-in-mouth Peter and a Samaritan woman with five marriages gone bad.
It was the great vision of one like Martin Luther King Jr., whose memory we commemorate this weekend. A dream not only of individuals rising to their true status as men and women created in the image of God, but of a nation rising to its truest and deepest aspirations.
“I have a dream,” he said, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
“I have a dream,” he continued, “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
“I have a dream,” he sang, “that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.’”
In the movie Coach Carter, there’s a great, ongoing exchange between the coach and the players. “What is your greatest fear?” he keeps asking.
And finally, one of the players answers, quoting a poem by Marianne Williamson:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate . . . It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
C.S. Lewis has a similar Christian taunt in his works. The work of the Gospel is not to suppress human ambition that is going hog wild. Rather, it is to enlarge our desires, to gives us a glimpse of God’s vision that extends to every corner of the world. It is, I think, the lovely encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. “I am he, the Messiah come to heal the ancient grievances. And I have come to speak to you.”
If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile . . . love one another deeply from the heart. [For] you have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.