“All That the Light Touches”

Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? 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. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. 

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

Do you ever read something and get to the ending and thinking, “wait what did I just read?” So then you go back to the beginning and you tell yourself, “this time, I’m really going to focus” and you get to the ending again and you still have no idea how to make sense of what you just read? That’s how I felt when I first read today’s passage and I took an entire class on 1 & 2 Peter in college! The constant fog of quarantine brain means that I am not the preacher I was three months ago. But you are not the congregation you were three months ago. We have all been changed by the pandemic and we can either try to fit our new lives into the standards of our old ones, or we can have grace for ourselves and allow God to work in us just as we are. 

            1 Peter is a letter written to early churches in what is now Turkey who were facing intense persecution. They were Christians at a time when being a Christian was wildly unpopularly, if not illegal. The passage is jam-packed with different ideas that all build upon each other. It’s… a lot for this morning. So, I’m not even going to pretend that we can get to it all. But the Spirit meets us wherever we go.

Our reading this morning picks up with the question, “who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?” I like that Peter gives his audience the benefit of the doubt that they are eager to do what is right and what is good. He doesn’t give them a big argument about why they should do what is right, he just assumes that they already want to. Assuming that strangers have good intentions, isn’t always our first instinct, is it? Especially when we are stressed, anxious, and afraid, our defense mechanisms go up and we can quickly convince ourselves that other people are full of bad intentions. I feel this tension and anxiety almost daily now. Everything is so polarized and even listening to the advice of doctors and scientists has become a political statement. As I read this first verse, I thought to myself, “do I believe that my neighbors are eager to do good?” But then, of course, we also have to ask, “what does it mean to do good?” If we go back a few verses in chapter 3, Peter tells the readers:

“Have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing. It is for this that you were called.” 

We may think of some of these as attributes—a tender heart or a humble mind. But in my lifetime of desperately trying to be good, I have learned that are not attributes like blonde hair or white skin. These are choices we must make—to choose sympathy for those responding differently to this crisis than we are, to choose unity with those we disagree with, to choose tenderness instead of building walls, to choose to let the cycle of violence end with us. Notice how doing good is different than being good. The question for Peter is not “are you a good person?” It is, “are you doing good? I find this distinction essential. The question “am I a good person?” has run through my mind as long as I can remember. Am I a good person? Am I a good person? How do I even know? The problem with that question is it presents a rigid binary—good people and bad people. You are in one category or the other. Depending on your definition, you may or may not be able to change categories. It’s almost certainly harder to become a good person than it is to lose that title.

            But doing good? That is about our everyday choices. But those choices don’t result in neat and tidy categories. In one of Mister Rogers’ most popular songs, Fred sang, 

 Sometimes people are good,
And they do just what they should.
But the very same people who are good sometimes,
Are the very same people who are bad sometimes.
It’s funny, but it’s true.
It’s the same, isn’t it for me…
Isn’t it the same for you?

Despite our eagerness to do good, sometimes we make bad choices. And let’s be honest, doing what is good can be difficult. There’s no way around it. In a world marred and stained by sin, choosing to repay evil with a blessing takes extraordinary strength. And it’s not as if Peter has encouraging words about the benefits of doing good. We are far from the prosperity theology that says following God means all your dreams come true. Peter almost promises that Christians will be maligned and abused for doing good. Our radical acts of gentleness and reverence will not be understood by the world around us.

            And yet Peter says that Christ suffered for our sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous. That’s us, all of us, the unrighteous. But then Peter goes on to say that he also “went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah.” This is a strange verse because there is little biblical context for “spirits in prison.” Most theologians believe that Peter is referencing those who died before Christ came to earth. This verse is one of the scriptural references for the line in the Apostles’ Creed—“he descended into hell.”

            This verse is hard to make sense of on its own, so I tried to make sense of it by looking at all the lectionary texts for today. Although we only read one or two passages each Sunday, the Revised Common Lectionary has four passages of scripture for each Sunday. So why were these four texts put together and what might God be saying to us through all of them today? For this is how we receive the Word of God—not as disjointed fragments to be plucked out at random depending on their usefulness, but as a cohesive book in which each part informs our reading of all the others 

            All four passages are all messages of hope to different audiences. First, Psalm 66 speaks to god-fearing listeners with the encouraging reminder that God has heard our prayers and has not rejected us or removed God’s steadfast love from us. The good news comes to those who turn to God.

            Then in the gospel text of John 14, Jesus tells his anxious, struggling-to-believe disciples that God the Father is sending one to be will be with us forever—the Advocate. We are not orphans of a far-away god who created us and left us to suffer and die. Jesus tells us that the Spirit of truth abides in us. We are not alone.  The good news comes to those who are afraid.

            In Acts 17, Paul gives a great rhetorical argument to the extremely religious Athenians explaining that the “unknown God” they have not known how to name is, in fact, the living God in whom we live and move and have our being. The good news comes to those who are searching.

            And finally, the gospel is proclaimed by Jesus himself to those who have died. As theologian Michael Bush writes, “If the gospel can come even to the dead, is there any situation, any culture, any life Jesus cannot claim and make his own?”

            I believe this is what God is saying to us this morning—there is no situation or person that is beyond God’s reach. There is no one, no place, no time outside of God’s love. In a day in which we cannot turn on the news without hearing of mass causalities the likes of which our generations have not seen since the second world war, it can seem like God has left us with no hope.

            What are the things that make you question if people are redeemable in Christ? What situations or systems seem so broken that you doubt if God can heal them? I confess, my own list is long. And when it is, when my fear is great and my mourning for lost lives is greater, I turn to perhaps my favorite passage in all of scripture—Romans 8:38, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

            Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Not even death. Jesus is so determined to love us that he has preached even to the dead that they might know him too. The story of the gospel is that death does not have the final word. Not for the unrighteous in the days of Noah, not for Jesus in the tomb, and not for those we have loved and lost. The gospel of Jesus Christ means that life is precious, and death is a tragedy that we mourn and grieve, but it, not our ending. 

            It reminds me of the second scene in the classic version of Disney’s Lion King, where early in the morning, Mufasa shows young Simba all of the kingdom, the Pride Lands. Mufasa tells him their kingdom stretches to all that the light touches. After a brief pause of amazement, Simba asks, “what about that shadowy place over there?” Mufasa tells him he must never go there. 

            But Christ is no lion cub. In the Kingdom of God, there is no place that the light does not touch. Christ, the Light of the World, touches every part of this world and the world yet to come. There is no shadowy place that God does not reach. In fact, Christ has gone so far, not only to preach to the gospel to the living and the dead, but Christ has made us the light of the world. We bring the light with us and with it we banish the darkness that gives way to fear. What a gift. 

            People of Southminster, you have received the good news of the gospel. You know that you are known and loved by God. You are so deeply loved that Christ died on the cross for your sins that you might be reconciled to God. You know that even death cannot stop God’s love from reaching us. My deepest hope is that the knowledge of this love will change you forever. In his letter, Peter tells the early Christians to “always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is within you.” He’s saying, be ready to tell people why you have hope when the world seems to offer none. Be ready to explain the light that shines from within you that others cannot help but notice. 

            Friends, there is no place in this world that is beyond God’s reach. There is no person who has lost God’s love. Every day, God is reaching out to us. In the waters of baptism, we have been called God’s beloved. In the waters poured over a child’s head, we have proclaimed that God acts first. Everything we do is a response to the great love of God that has always been ours to receive. As you look at the world around you, a world in desperate need of God’s love, may you rest in the knowledge that you are always God’s beloved. And may you joyfully get to work, sharing the love, sympathy, humility, and tenderness that is within you, for you are the light of the world.