1 Peter 2: 19-25 (links validated 4/19/23)

I never fully understood this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson until our family spent a day with Helmut and Krystal Haase in Wittenberg, Germany. Helmut was the pastor of the church that Martin Luther pastored after he left the Roman Catholic Church late in the fifteenth century. Until 1989, Pastor Haase’s church lay in communist East Germany. He told us that because he was a pastor who had contacts throughout the West, authorities recorded every one of his telephone calls. Later someone in the government told Helmut that his “file” with the Stasi, East Germany’s notorious secret police, was the largest in his area. What’s more, authorities also relentlessly harassed the Haases’ son. While he was a talented competitor in the Olympic sport of judo, the authorities prevented him from competing at a high level. What’s more, because the younger Haase was both a Christian and a pastor’s son, he wasn’t, in the authorities’ eyes, a “good enough communist.” So they forced him to serve twice as long as anyone else in the East German army. By God’s Spirit, through this all, the Haases persevered with great grace. They never lashed out or retaliated against their persecutors, even after German reunification offered them opportunities to do so. Helmut, Krystal and Kristoph patiently endured their unjust suffering for doing good, for Jesus’ sake. In fact, when offered the opportunity to review the files East Germany’s secret police had compiled on him, Helmut refused. He knew, after all, that they would reveal who’d spied on his family and him, and then reported them to the secret police. Helmut didn’t want to know which members of his church had helped the authorities make him suffer for doing good.

always good insights!

Thomas More was England’s Chancellor during the reign of the mercurial Henry VIII. After being convicted of failing to support the king as head of the Church over even the pope, the authorities unjustly sentenced More to be executed. Some say it was his finest hour in a life filled with days, months and years of far less than moral finery. Just before More’s execution, he prayed, “Almighty God, have mercy … on all that bear me evil will and would me harm … and make us saved souls in heaven together where we may ever live and love together with thee and thy blessed saints.”

At Martin Luther King, Jr’s urging, the Civil Rights movement tried to achieve non-violent civil disobedience. But this idea hadn’t originated with Dr. King. King was himself a student of Mahatma Gandhi, who pioneered the method known as Satyagraha, which means “loving and truthful firmness.” Satyagraha, Gandhi said, is a way to be strong but not with the strength of the brute but with the strength one gets from God. As such, Satyagraha aimed for the vindication of the truth “not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but on one’s self.” But as Gandhi knew, not striking back at those who strike at you requires enormous reserves of self-control...

Texts like this one were the main biblical reason the German church did not resist the Nazis as they inflicted unjust suffering on millions of people. Only a few like Bonhoeffer dared to not only speak out, but actually plot the death of the terrible Fuhrer. Today’s church condemns that church and praises Bonhoeffer as a hero of the faith. For the sake of justice for others, Bonhoeffer appeared to violate this text. But when it came to his own life, he obeyed both its letter and spirit. He endured, and he died trusting the Shepherd and Overseer of his soul. Picture a teacher showing her very young students how to write the alphabet by giving them paper cutouts of the letters and having them trace around those paper patterns. That’s the literal sense of the word “example” in verse 21. Christ’s suffering was a upogrammos, a pattern, an outline that we should carefully trace as we learn to live new life in Christ. We “should follow in his steps,” meaning literally “put our footprints in his.” This reminds me of Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ.

Henry Maxwell, the pastor of the First Church of Raymond, Kansas, was working at home on a Friday morning, trying to put the finishing touches on his message for Sunday. He had been interrupted several times and was growing nervous as the clock ticked away. Finally, he had to ask his wife to "run some interference" for him, and let anyone else who called know that he was exceptionally busy and could not be disturbed. But she said she was going over to the church kindergarten and he would have the house to himself. So he kissed her goodbye, went back to his study and closed the door. He began once again to concentrate on his sermon. It was based on that text in I Peter: "For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps." He was about to flesh out his outline when the door bell rang. Henry looked out the window to see who was there. It was a young man, very shabbily dressed. Maxwell went to the door. The one who looked like a tramp spoke first: "I'm out of a job, Sir. I thought you might put me in the way of getting something." "I'm sorry," said the minister, "I really don't know of anything. Jobs are scarce right now." But the young man persisted. "I thought you might be able to give me a line to the city railway or the superintendent of shops, or something," as he shifted his hat nervously from hand to hand...

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