I Peter 1:1-12: a message of hope from the hopeless

After countless blogs on the gospel of Mark, I have transitioned to I Peter.  The reasoning behind the decision is simple.   When we read I Peter, we are reading the testimony of the same man we saw bumbling his way through the gospel of Mark.  Who was Peter?

-          He was one of the first ones called to be a follower of Jesus Christ.  He was called with his brother Andrew.  He had been there from the beginning.

-          He had accompanied Jesus throughout his ministry, and had heard his teaching on multiple occasions

-          He had also experienced his share of setbacks, disappointments, and even failures.

In many ways Peter is like us.  Things don’t always go the way he wants.  Sometimes he is his own worst enemy.  And yet, what we’ll see from this letter is quite simple.  Peter has changed.  The resurrection has prompted Peter to respond in ways we would have thought unimaginable while reading Mark.  He still isn’t perfect, but when we listen closely we can hear the words of Christ in Peter’s writing, and we can see how his entire outlook has been radically altered because of the power of the Holy Spirit working in his life.

So with all this in mind, we sit up and take notice when Peter says that we are “born again to a living hope”.  We talked about how Peter had things in his past, things he wished he could undo, or redo.  I can’t help but wonder if as he writes this phrase, he doesn’t think of those low-points in his life- the boasting, the violence, the denial.  If anyone understood the power of being born again, of having a living hope, it was Peter.   There is no doubt that he delighted in this phrase, “he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”  That implies more than a fresh start, it implies a different start.  Becoming a Christian isn’t about getting a mulligan.  It’s not a second chance to get things right, it’s coming to the understanding that we can’t get things right on our own.  In John 3 Jesus tells Nicodemus that we must be born again/from above.  For whatever reason, the translators usually chose either “born again” or “from above”, subjecting the alternative to the footnotes.  However, I don’t think Jesus was using the word because of its ambiguity, but because of the dual meaning inherent in the word itself.  We can’t only be born again, because then we would be destined to re-live our life in the same limited way we did the first go around.  Similarly, we can’t be born just “from above”, because that fails to reckon with our need for renewal. 

So what does this look like in Peter’s life?  Peter didn’t like it in Mark’s gospel, when Jesus mentioned the Messiah suffering.  Peter’s concept of the Messiah probably included Jesus riding a large war horse, not a donkey; it involved him sitting on a throne, not hanging on a cross.  And yet here we read of Peter describing an eternal kingdom well worth the enduring of temporary suffering, and momentary trials.  The inheritance of the Christian who perseveres is incorruptible, in that it will not rot or decay.  It is undefiled, in that it is morally and religiously pure, not requiring us to compromise our morals in order to obtain it.  And it is unfading, in that its beauty doesn’t slowly slip away like that of a flower.        

It would seem from reading this letter that Peter has come to realize the value of trusting in what we cannot see.  I am reminded from a scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where Indiana comes to a pivotal point in his quest to find and rescue his father.  Before him stands a large chasm, a chasm that can be traversed only by a narrow foot-bridge.  The problem is, the footbridge is invisible.  Motivated by his love for his father, Indiana takes what is literally a step of faith.  Just when it appears he will fall to his death deep into the dark void, his foot lands upon the unseen ledge.  After walking across, he turns and throws dirt on the bridge, a visual reminder that though unseen, the bridge is in fact there.   It’s a move we all have to make in our faith.  It’s a move we see Peter making in the gospel of Mark, thus all his fumbling around.  He hears Jesus echo those famous words, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”, and over time the meaning of them slowly sinks in.  Finally, as we read the words of his epistle, we see that though he is still not perfect, he has shifted the location of his treasure, away from a worldly way of thinking, and toward a kingdom of God way of thinking. 

It’s a shift we are all called to make, indeed it’s a shift Peter is exhorting the troubled recipients of his letter to remain commited to.  It’s not that Peter has given up on the idea of a crown of glory, it’s just he’s come to embrace the paradox that we do not, that we cannot receive the crown of glory, without the crown of thorns.