Homily for Lent 1, Year B, 2015
Sunday, February 22nd, 2015
Trinity Anglican Church, Bradford, ON
The Rev. Daniel F. Graves
Text: 1 Peter 3:18-22
“Christ suffered for sins once for all.” – 1 Peter
3:18
I think one of the great struggles people have
with God is they wonder how an all-powerful God who created the entire cosmos
could love and care about them? When we
contemplate the expanse of time and space on a cosmic scale, my life is but a
blip. Even when we move from the cosmic
perspective to a human perspective, our lives can seem still quite
insignificant. I do a lot of genealogy, and it is amazing how completely a
person can be forgotten in just a hundred years, or even less. It is humbling
for me to look at that gallery of clergy hanging at the back of this church and
think about how little we know about some of those people and that in sixty or
so years, people with look at my picture and say “who was he?” and likely no
one will remember. If I will be
forgotten in less than a century, who am I that the God who created the cosmos
should love me and care about me?
And
yet, God does love me and God does care about me. God does love you and God
does care about you. Today, on this
first Sunday of Lent, we hear in the First Epistle of Peter about that love and
care God has for us, and God brings purpose and meaning into our lives. Some
scholars believe this letter was written to a group of early Christians who
found themselves in exile for their faith.
Some may have been persecuted or even killed for their belief in Christ
Jesus. It would have been very easy for
them to have become discouraged. Yet, Peter wrote to them to give the courage,
to strengthen their faith, and remind them of the purpose God had given them, when
they asked does God really love me, does he really care about me?
To
all of this Peter responded with an encouraging reminder about the foundation
of their faith, Jesus Christ and his saving work. He told them to remember that Christ also
suffered, and that it was the suffering of Christ that brought them to God,
unworthy as they were. What a remarkable
proclamation this is; God came to us in Christ Jesus, although we were
unworthy, to bring us closer us to God.
As stated at the
outset, many people believe that they are unworthy of God’s love and care
because they have made mistakes, sinned, or hurt others. Some just have a
general sense of unworthiness before God.
Indeed, one of my first deeply religious experiences was when I was on a
school trip in grade eight to Quebec City, and we visited that great church of
St. Anne de Beaupre. As you walk into that church you see crutches hanging from
the arch of the nave, no longer needed by people who received healing at the church. In that church is a relic, allegedly the arm
(encased in gold) of St. Anne, the grandmother of our Lord. As a child I looked at that relic and was overcome
by the greatness of God, the magnitude of God, and as I stood in the presence
of a holy relic of a great saint, I felt myself somehow in the presence of God,
and found myself unworthy. Many people
describe religious experiences in which they come to a sense of awe and wonder
of the almighty nature of God and sense their own unworthiness in the presence
of the Almighty. But God does not leave
us there. I am reminded of the story of
Isaiah found in chapter six of that book. Isaiah has a vision of the throne
room of God and sees the angels around the throne crying Holy, Holy, Holy is
the Lord of Hosts, and Isaiah is overcome by his own unworthiness and his own sinfulness.
He cries out “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live
among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of
hosts!” Who among us would not respond
as Isiah did? But God did not leave him
there. An angel touched his lips with a live coal from the altar of God and
proclaimed that with the touch of the coal to his lips, all his sin had
departed him and his guilt had been blotted out. Isaiah then felt free of what
burdened him, free of the weight of unworthiness, so freed in fact, that he
when he heard the Lord ask “Whom shall I send?” he called out bravely, “Hear I
am: send me!”
It
seems to me that Peter was reminding this very same thing to the exiles to whom
he wrote. He reminded them that in Christ Jesus, their guilt had been removed,
their sin had been blotted out, and that in Christ their lives had new purpose and
meaning. He was telling them that no matter their broken histories, and no
matter their present suffering, in Christ Jesus they had been made worthy of
God, and worthy to proclaim his gospel.
Jesus, who was righteous, suffered for the unrighteous, to bring them to
God.
And
how magnificent and how powerful is the work of God in Christ that guilt might
be removed and sin blotted out? As we
read on Ash Wednesday from Psalm 103, “So far as the east is from the west, so
far has he removed our sins from us.” That is a long way! Peter, however, takes this even one step
further, for he tell us that after his death, Christ went to proclaim good news
to the spirits of those in prison. This
passage is considered one of the most difficult passages in Scripture, and what
does it mean? According to Peter, they
were the ones from former times, the ones who did not make it onto the Ark when
God was waiting patiently for their repentance, who disobeyed the word of
God. Peter is actually telling the
Church that God’s mercy is so great that it extends to those who have
died. It says to me, that there is no
one who is so sinful, so miserable, so broken that he or she is beyond the
bounds of God’s grace, in this life, or the next. What a wonderful thing to contemplate. If we
believe not only that God is all-powerful, but all-merciful and all-loving,
then we must believe that his power stretches not only from the heights but to the
depths as well. His love extends beyond the grave. This is why the Easter Icon
of the Orthodox Church shows Jesus trampling down the gates of hell and
rescuing Adam and Eve, the primordial sinners, our ancestors in unworthiness,
from its clutches. St. Peter makes no
bones about it, for he says Christ suffered for the unrighteous.
This
is good news for us today. We have a
great privilege in the land in which we live. We can love and serve God without
persecution, unlike the early Christians, and unlike Christians in some other
places in the world today. Indeed, the heavenly throne room recently received the
souls of 21 brave Coptic Christians, who would certainly have deemed themselves
unworthy of the witness of martyrdom to which they were called, and yet through
the power of Christ Jesus proclaimed their faith even to the last. We have not been called to such a witness,
but that should never be taken for granted. For although we are all unworthy in
and of ourselves to proclaim the gospel of life in a culture of death, Christ
Jesus makes us worthy witnesses. The point of all this is not to say that we
are all called to such martyrdom. Indeed, God desires a world in which such
martyrdom was not necessary, rather it is to say that Jesus has joined us in
our suffering that in his victory over suffering and death, so too are we
victorious.
The
ultimate point of Peter’s message to the Church is that the God, before whom we
feel unworthy, looks upon us in our sin, in our brokenness, in our sense of
unworthiness with great compassion and deep love. How do we know the almighty
creator of heaven and earth cares about us? We know because in Christ Jesus, he
came to us, to be with us, and in one supreme act of love participated in our suffering
that we might participate in his glory.
He loves us so much that he chose not only to be with us in our worst, but
to join us to him in his best. The
vision of Isaiah becomes our reality. In Christ Jesus, God turns the
unworthiness and meaninglessness of our lives into worthiness and meaning.
Where once we called, “who am I?” we now call “Here I am! Choose me!” In Christ Jesus, we are made fit for joyful,
meaningful, loving service, even when we shall meet hardship and trial.
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