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Struggling With Strangeness
As Christians living in America we have trouble understanding what it
means to be what the apostle Peter calls Christians in his letter, strangers and aliens
in this world. At least not compared to our brothers and sisters who today live in
the Middle East and Asia, or who previously lived in Soviet block countries, or
certainly those who lived in the first 2 to 3 centuries of Christianity. By God’s
grace we’ve enjoyed a time of blessing and freedom not before seen in history.
Having said this, clearly we are moving into what some call a post-Christian
society in America. What will the next decades bring? No one knows. History has
seen every great civilization eventually fall or at least become much less dominant,
from Rome to Europe to England. Is that ahead for America? Maybe, maybe
worse! My Facebook filled up recently with predictions of a world- destroying
comet, financial collapse and other catastrophes all occurring by September 15!
On the other hand history has taught us that seasons of revival can come
even in times of immorality and wickedness. Former times of religious deadness
and immorality preceded remarkable religious awakenings, the 1st and 2nd Great
Awakenings of the early 1700s and 1800s, more recently the Jesus movement of
the ‘60s. Our God has changed the hearts of pagan kings and emperors and their
nations. God is sovereign, so anything is possible. So what should we do? The
same thing Christ has always called us to do: be in the world not of it, working in
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our world to make productive changes, being wise as serpents, harmless as doves,
but also never forgetting Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. Perhaps most of all
we must learn how to be strangers and be willing to struggle with that strangeness.
And because of all this it seems appropriate to look at an event in the life of
Peter as he struggled with being strange and had to ask himself, “Am I following
Christ, or am I trying to make Christ follow me?
“You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!” It was a great moment for
Peter: a sudden flash of spiritual insight from God. Jesus had asked Who do men
say I am? It was one of the few times Peter answered a Jesus question correctly.
But Peter didn’t get to enjoy the moment long. It took only a few verses to reveal
that while Peter’s vision of Jesus as the Messiah was right, his vision of the
Messiah was wrong. Jesus went on to say, the Son of Man must suffer many things
and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he
must be killed and after three days rise again. And Peter took him aside and began
to rebuke him. Peter, took Jesus aside, and rebuked him?” Are you kidding me?!
Peter had a very different vision of what Jesus should do. He had seen
Jesus’ power. He had seen Jesus heal the sick. He had seen Jesus cast out demons.
He had seen Jesus walk on water, even made it possible for Peter to walk on
water, well, a few steps anyway. He had seen Jesus calm a raging sea, feed
thousands miraculously he had seen the crowds grow rapidly. People were starting
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to talk. “We’ve never seen anything like this.” It was so clear to Peter. Without
doubt, Jesus was the promised one, the anointed one, the Messiah: another Joshua
to drive out the unrighteous in the promised land; another David to bring in another
glorious kingdom. Perhaps Peter thought Jesus was another Judah Maccabee, who
200 years before rose up to fight the Greeks. They called him the Hammer! What
nickname would Jesus get. The script was clear to Peter, who Jesus was, what
Jesus must do. But Jesus was off script, way off! “The Son of Man must suffer
many things and be rejected and be killed?” Who wrote that? Suffering!
Rejection!! Killed!!! It didn’t make sense. Jesus was a strange Messiah and Peter
was struggling with that strangeness.
Why was Jesus acting so strange? Jesus explained it himself. “My kingdom
is not of this world.” And if you choose to follow me, if you choose to belong to
my kingdom, you will look just as strange to people in this world as I do. We do
things differently in my kingdom. In my kingdom you don’t conquer your
enemies; you love them. In my kingdom you don’t get vengeance; you give
mercy. In my kingdom it is the rich who struggle most to get in, not the poor. In
my kingdom you have to lose your life if you want to keep it. In my kingdom even
the king suffers, gets rejected and dies.
Peter heard this and basically said, “You’re kidding right? What kind of
crazy kingdom is that!?” Can we blame Peter? After all, Jesus’ kingdom sure
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didn’t sound anything like Rome. For that matter it didn’t sound anything like the
kingdom of Israel Peter had heard about since he was a little boy. It didn’t sound
like any kingdom Peter had ever heard of. Of course it didn’t. That’s the point.
Jesus’ Kingdom was not of this world. Those who would become a part of this
kingdom must be willing to suffer many things, be rejected and maybe, even die.
Now don’t misunderstand. It wasn’t that Peter was afraid to suffer or face
opposition, or even die. Remember it was Peter who drew a sword and challenged
a Roman guard. Peter was ready to fight, ready to risk his life for his king. But
Jesus wasn’t asking Peter to risk his life; he was asking Peter to lay down his life.
There’s a difference. To risk something means trying not to lose it. To lay
something down means to give it up willingly. That difference was hard for Peter
to understand. It was hard for his fellow disciples to understand. It’s still hard.
Think about it. How hard it must have been to watch this man who had the
power to still a raging sea, surrender to a Roman centurion? How strange was it to
watch this man who could walk on water, voluntarily be led to his own slaughter?
How in the world could a man who had the power to raise the dead, allow himself
to be raised on a cross to die? Jesus could win it all. No guarantee of course, but
no one had ever come along who brought so much to the table as Jesus. With a
few breaks who knows, the return of the old kingdom just might be possible. But
Jesus had no interest in returning old kingdoms to power. He brought a new
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kingdom, unlike any kingdom anybody had ever known. And the way to bring it
was clear, painfully clear. The Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected
and be killed. What a difficult message to hear, much less to accept.
There’s a reason why it was difficult. As much as Peter hated Rome, he was
more like Rome than Jesus. My kingdom is not of this world. Those who follow
me will be, must be, different from the world. Peter thought he was different from
the world, different in a thousand ways, his diet, his clothes, his religion, his God.
He was after all a son of Abraham not of Caesar. But Jesus taught his disciples
over and over that the children of Abraham and the children of this world had more
in common than they were willing to admit. It wasn’t just those rotten Romans
whose hearts lusted for power. Lord when you come into your glory can we sit on
your left and on your right. It wasn’t just those petty pagans whose hearts reeked
of vengeance and hate. Lord do you want us to call fire down from heaven and
destroy them? It wasn’t just those unbelievers who were unfaithful. Jesus had said
to his disciples more than once, O ye of little faith.
It took a while, but Peter finally began to understand. Following Christ
means being like Christ, not like the world. And that means when we suffer or are
persecuted, even when we’ve done nothing wrong, we are not shamed or
humiliated; we are refined, our faith made more fine. Peter learned that being
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God’s chosen people is not a guarantee to become rulers in this world; it is a gift to
become servants to this world. These were very hard lessons for Peter to learn.
They are no easier to learn today. But we need to learn them because we
have so much in common with Peter. And it appears our world is becoming more
like Peter’s world all the time. Like Peter we too feel our land is invaded and
desecrated by unrighteousness. Like Peter we too look for our own Joshua who
will lead us into battle to regain power and establish a better kingdom. Like Peter
we too think of ourselves as different from the unbelieving world around us.
But, like Peter, we too are much more like our world than perhaps we are
comfortable admitting. We are certainly much more like our world than we are
like Jesus. Jesus is still a strange Messiah to us and, like Peter, we too struggle with
that strangeness. We really don’t want to be strangers in our own land. Oh we
may sing “this world is not my home, I’m just a passing through” but the truth is
we are far too much at home in this world. We may sing, “I’m satisfied with just a
cottage below, a little silver and a little gold.” But our cottages and our 401ks and
our comfortable lifestyles may beg to differ. When this world mistreats us because
of our faith, when we lose our status or our job or our benefits for no reason except
that we are Christians, when we see our beliefs rejected our values ridiculed, we
are sorely tempted to respond in kind, rather than be refined.
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We are tempted to seek our security in winning elections more than being
God’s elect. At times, rather than love our enemy we’d just as soon level them.
We hear the Son of Man lay out his agenda for how to change the world, how to
save the world: suffering, rejection, death, and sometimes it’s just too much to take
in. Frankly it sounds naïve, foolish, even irresponsible. It is almost exactly the
opposite of what every fiber within us wants to do. And so, just like Peter, we are
tempted to take the Lord aside, rebuke him and say, “No way. Are you crazy?”
We have so much to learn from Peter. We need to read again his letters to
the churches in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, churches we have
more in common with each day. Those church members were good people, good
citizens. They loved their neighbors. They fed the hungry in their cities. They
cared for the sick. They took care of the people others did not care about. They
laid down their lives for others. Their cities were better off because of them. And
yet they were rejected and ridiculed and even persecuted because they followed
Jesus and tried to live their lives in a way that honored his teaching. Peter wrote to
them to share with them what Jesus had shared with him, what made so little sense
to him at the time. “Peter, you must be in this world but not of this world.”
Peter’s letters are filled with instructions on how to be people who live in
this world but whose lives are different from this world. Peter says you should
converse with people in this world, but your conversations should be different,
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because you belong to Christ, because you belong to the Kingdom. So get rid of
all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy or slander. Win arguments not by shouting
louder but by living louder, by being good and doing good. It is by your goodness
that you will silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Be respectful to everyone;
honor those who rule over you. I know rulers can be difficult. But submit to those
who rule, not just to those who are considerate but also to those who are harsh. If
we suffer for doing good, and we endure it, this is commendable before God. We
need to live such good lives that even the people who disagree with us will have to
admit the goodness of God.
Learn to live like the Lord lived. When they hurled their insults at him he
did not retaliate; when he suffered he made no threats, instead he entrusted himself
to the one who will judge justly. I know it sounds strange, believe me, I know. It
was strange to me when Jesus told me. You wouldn’t believe the arguments I had
with Jesus. If he told me once he told me a thousand time, “Peter, I know it sounds
strange; it is strange; my kingdom is not of this world.” You see beloved, when we
became followers of this King, we committed ourselves not just to belong to him,
but to be like him. Once we were just ordinary citizens in ordinary countries, but
now we are citizens of the Kingdom of God. Don’t you see, we have been chosen
to be a holy nation inside our nation. We’re called to be different, and by our
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difference, to show the difference between living in darkness and living in the
light. We must learn to be strangers and aliens in our own land.
I know it is hard, believe me, I know how hard it is. It took me forever to
get on board. It was so hard to trust Jesus. There was a time when his teaching got
so strange that many left Jesus. I remember he turned to us, the twelve, and asked
if we were going to leave him too. To be honest, I didn’t really understand Jesus
yet. I was still wrestling with the way he was leading us. His way seemed a sure
way to lose everything. But deep in my heart I knew, somehow I just knew his
way was better. So I spoke up. “Where would we go Jesus? You have the words
of eternal life?” I’m not sure I even understood what I was saying, I just knew I
wanted to follow Jesus.
Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t afraid to fight; my problem was I wanted to
fight the wrong enemy. I wanted to fight people. At times I wanted to fight Jesus.
One time I rebuked Jesus. I told him just how wrong he was. Then he rebuked
me. He spoke to me as if the Devil himself was in me. I will never forget that. It
broke my heart. But Jesus was just trying to show me who the real enemy is, not
people. Our enemy is the devil. Oh Brothers, the devil is powerful, he is like a
lion devouring people. He devours us by making us like him, by tempting us to
hate people who hate us, people who want to make us suffer, people hard to love.
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Dear brothers, I know sometimes it seems like Satan is winning because we
are suffering. But suffering is not losing; suffering is part of being saved. If the
Son of Man came to suffer, can we do less? It is when we suffer that we discover
if our faith is real or not. Trust me. We are winning. Even now we are receiving
the salvation of our souls. So don’t worry; don’t be afraid. We can do this. His
divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our
knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. He has given us
great and precious promises so that through them we may participate in the divine
nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. So, dear
brothers and sisters, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to
goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self control; and to self-control,
perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness.
If we possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep us from being
ineffective and unproductive in our knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Brothers
and sisters, we must make our calling and our election sure. If we do these things,
we will never fall. Far from it! We will receive a rich welcome into the eternal
kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So let us humble ourselves under
God’s mighty hand that he may lift us in due time. Let us cast all our anxiety on
him because he cares for us. Stand firm in the faith, because you know that your
brothers and sisters throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of
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sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ,
after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong,
firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.
This is what our apostle Peter had to learn. It was a hard lesson for him to
learn. This is what we have to learn. It is no less hard for us. May God give us
the strength to be what he has chosen us to be and the wisdom to know how to be it
in our world today.
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