Colleagues,
Dr. Michael Hoy is your writer today, and for the next two weeks as well. Lots of you will recognize the name. Mike has been writing for Crossings for well over a decade. You’ll see innumerable examples of his work under both the “Text Study” and “Newsletter” tabs of our website. In recent years he has served as chief steward of Robert W. Bertram’s theological legacy, bringing previously unpublished work to light from his papers, ushering two books (A Time for Confessing and The Divorce of Sex and Marriage) into posthumous publication, and assembling a definitive bibliography of Bertram’s writings.
Mike serves these days as pastor of First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Decatur, Illinois. Last year he was invited to deliver a paper at the annual assembly of his ELCA synod, Central/Southern Illinois. He was lately gracious enough to share that with us so we could pass it along to all of you. It’s a fairly hefty piece of work, so we’ll do the passing in three segments, starting today with an extensive introduction.
Have you read enough of Bertram’s work to recognize his style? If so you’ll be quick to catch echoes of it in the work of his cherished student. Better still, you’ll encounter some continued careful thinking around a few of Bob’s key themes. Mike reminds us that nothing has happened in the nine years since Bob’s death to detract from their urgency.
Peace and Joy, Jerry Burce, for the editorial team
“‘Like Living Stones’: Chips of the New Rock”
Confessional Reflections on 1 Peter 2:1-10 for 21st-Century Lutherans
Central Southern Illinois Synod, ELCA
June 2-4, 2011
Throughout this season of Easter, we have been treated to the marvelous epistle of 1 Peter. Just two weeks ago, our second reading was from 1 Peter 2:2-10. And for some reason, the lectionary writers chose not to include the ethical imperative of the first verse, “Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander.” (NRSV)
To be sure, in the context of the first hearers of the Petrine community, this would have been an encouragement to stay on their path of non-conformity with their previous way of life. The first word of this text, “put aside” or “get rid of,” can mean in some senses “taking off” the old garments of our sinful nature, and taking on then the clothing of righteousness. Would that it were that easy as changing clothes!
In his exposition of this text from 1 Peter 2, Luther perceived a struggle: “St. Peter says: Be armed in such a way that you guard against sins which still cling to you, and that you constantly fight against them. For our worst foes are in our bosom and in our flesh and blood. They wake, sleep, and live with us like an evil guest whom we have invited to our house and cannot get rid of.”
This corresponds with how the Reformers understood the nature of the problem we are up against and from which Jesus the Christ came to save us. “Since the fall of Adam, all human beings who are born in the natural way are conceived and born in sin. This means that from birth they are full of evil lust and inclination and cannot by nature possess true fear of God and true faith in God.” Hence, the removal of these rags of evil, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, slander, and whatever else there is in our sinful nature, requires radical surgery-getting to the root of our problem. As Luther says, our sinful nature “still clings to us.”
By contrast, the balance of our text in 1 Peter 2 speaks glowingly about the community of faith: Through their new birth as “newborn infants,” they progress to becoming a holy priesthood, a chosen race, a royal priesthood and holy nation, and living stones. All of this so that they may be witnesses—confessing witnesses—who proclaim that they are no longer in darkness, but in God’s marvelous light. They who had no hope as “no people” and those “without mercy” may proclaim that they are God’s people with God’s mercy.
How does one move from the old to the new, from the old radical roots in Adam to the new radical roots in Jesus the Christ?
The author of 1 Peter 2 suggests an answer that has baptismal overtones: “Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk” of the gospel. The phrase harks back to the baptismal reference in chapter 1, “By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” (1:3) We start where we are founded in baptism, where our roots with Adam were drowned into death with Christ, and we rise again with Christ as new creatures.
But might the same also be said about our Lord’s supper? Recently in a first communion class I was discussing the meaning of the phrase, “the forgiveness of sins.” One young girl raised her hand and said, “I don’t have any sins.” Her mother, who was sitting nearby, chuckled. I wondered at this point whether it would be appropriate to suggest what Luther did, that one should beat one’s hands against the breast to see if one is still flesh and blood. But instead, I chose a more personal and penitential direction. I told her that as her pastor I knew better about myself. And that is why I value coming to this table of our Lord for his sacrament of forgiveness, to have cancelled and crossed out all the truth of all my sins, and to do so publicly, together with all my brothers and sisters who also come to Jesus’ table. The sacrament is both mortifying and liberating at the same time. But as we go from this meal, we go with a promise that frees us to say—to say what?—well, maybe what you just said, “I don’t have any sins.” Those I have given to Jesus; and instead, I have what he in his body and blood came to give me—righteousness and life.
Sticking with this value of penance, this leads me to yet a third possible sacramental answer. Repentance and forgiveness, I would like to suggest, are not only at the roots of our own practice of baptism and the Lord’s supper, but as the Reformers themselves claimed, they are a third sacrament. Their deeper value, as I hope I will have us come to see, is that they bring healing amidst brothers and sisters, even when those brothers and sisters cannot seemingly come together otherwise. Robert Sanderson, the Bishop of Lincoln, England, in the early 1600s, was cross-examining the pride of the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee prays, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people,” and then he goes on to list who those “other people” are, including the tax collector. Sanderson remarks on how this Pharisaical attitude still pervades today: “Am I any better than he? Of better mould than he? Or better tempered than he? Am I not a child of the same Adam, a vessel of the same clay, a chip of the same block, with him? Why then should I be high-minded, when I see him fallen before me? Why should I not rather fear, lest my foot slip, as well as his hath done?”
His expression, “chip of the same block,” is an early precursor to our expression, “chips off the old block.” When we confess our sins, we confess that we are, indeed, the same old “chips off the old block” with Adam; in hearing the absolution and forgiveness, even making again the sign of the cross, or sharing the words with brothers and sisters, “The peace of the Lord be with you,” the same words that they share in return, we hear and embrace Jesus’ gospel-ing proclamation upon us, that he, THE Living Stone, now makes of us his “living stones,” or as I have suggested, “chips of the New Rock.”
How we move then from the universal truth that in Adam we have all been part of a fallen humanity to the new truth which is also meant to be universal in Christ—this new birth, election, and holy, promise-proclaiming priesthood—comes by way of the cross, penitentially, but with forgiveness.
Karen, my spouse, had just come back from St. Louis where her father is dying from cancer and is now at the time of his own final crossing in home hospice. I could see she was understandably restless and anxious with it all. We talked and prayed late into the evening, and then I made the sign of the cross upon her forehead. “You did the same thing for my dad, too,” she said. “Yes,” I responded, “it’s finally there—on his cross—where we can let all of this rest.”
We trust THE Living Stone who takes upon himself this decaying garment of our sins and makes them his through the cross, and gives to us instead the new clothing of his garment of righteousness and life, which, as Luther said, is “now completely yours through faith”—all other garments and evidence to the contrary.
And yet what did all this promise get Jesus the Christ as he lived and proclaimed the message of the gospel, as the very Living Stone and Foundation for the world? Rejection: “the very stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner.” (2:7) Such rejection is also part and parcel of the living stones that follow after him: “those believing in him will not be put to shame.” (2:6) It implies that shame was something they experienced. Later, the author of 1 Peter will be more explicit about this: “They are surprised that you no longer join them in their excesses of dissipation, and so they malign you.” (4:4)
Yet note the paradoxical blessing that comes despite the rejection. As when Jesus was persecuted and could hear the mocking sound from his critics, “good riddance,” he himself faithfully and lovingly stayed deeply connected with them on the cross, even for their very sake. When 1 Peter 2:1 says “rid yourselves” of the evils, he does not encourage separation from the neighbors of this world, but rather encourages us by faith and through faithful loving to embrace our neighbors and their world. It is as Luther lifted up in his opening expository remarks about 1 Peter 2: “We have said often enough that a Christian life is composed of two parts: faith in God and love toward one’s neighbor.”
Both of these elements, faith and love, are testified to in our confessional writings, and as faith-confessors today we seek to stay in the world with our critics, risking in faith, and loving beyond barriers that would prohibit us.
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