EPISODE 3: WHAT YOU DON’T SEE, YOU STILL GET
…you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
Peter wrote to the believers in the early church, now scattered throughout the Roman Empire, from the perspective of one who had walked beside the Son of God. He was an eyewitness to the very hope in Jesus that he now proclaims to them.
As they listened to the apostle’s letter being read and explained to them (the last few verses of the book tell us that the messenger and reader was Silvanus, the Latin version of the name Silas), they were assured of the security of their salvation and of the guarantee that, though the world might seem against them, God was with them. They had not placed their hope in a fantasy, a fake, a failure, or a movement that would come to a nasty end, as so many movements in their history had. What they were living was the fulfilment of prophecy.
We come to 1 Peter 1:8-12.
Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and rejoice with an inexpressible and glorious joy, now that you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who foretold the grace to come to you searched and investigated carefully, trying to determine the time and setting to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, when they foretold the things now announced by those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
We often picture Peter as a “me-first” kind of guy—the first to raise his hand, almost jumping out of his seat when the teacher asks a question, the guy who makes sure everyone knows who he knows, what he knows, and why he is the most important person in the room. He might have been like that in his early days as a disciple. But that’s not the Peter we see here. Yes, he walked with Jesus. He was at the cross (sort of). He was at the tomb (perhaps a little later than some others). But Peter doesn’t make a big deal of himself here. In fact, I sense respect in his writing. These people to whom he writes had not had all those wonderful personal experiences he had been part of. And yet, despite the challenges they were facing, they still believed. They still loved this One whom they had never known as Peter had known Him.
Believers have faced, and still face, challenging times that test their faith. I am writing this post on July 4th. Today, the Canadian soccer team plays Morocco in the round of 16 at the FIFA World Cup. This morning, as I was checking FACEBOOK for anything interesting, I saw a post from Open Doors, an organization that supports the persecuted church worldwide. The post displayed the flags of both countries and reminded viewers that Morocco ranks 23rd on the World Watch List of countries where believers are persecuted. The plea was that, as we watched the game, we would pray for that country and for those within it who, like those in Peter’s day, are being persecuted for their faith, particularly Moroccan women. I thought the post was brilliant!
Persecution was always, as author Tim Clancy once put it, “a clear and present danger.” One example from secular sources is a letter written around 112 AD to the Emperor Trajan by Pliny, a governor who had investigated Christians by arresting and torturing two Christian women, whom he identified in his letter as slaves and as ministrae, or leaders/deaconesses, in the early church.
In times of trouble, faith is tested. Last night I finished reading Alison Weir’s The Passionate Tudor, a fictional account of Mary I's life, the daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon. As Queen of England, Mary did her level best to execute as many of those “reformers” of religion as she could get her hands on. They died cruelly, tortured and burned at the stake. She was not the only one. Her half-brother, Edward, who preceded her on the throne, did the same to Catholics. Others have done the same throughout history—those with power abuse those without it. And perhaps the saddest thing of all was that those who claimed to be Christians persecuted those who also claimed to be Christians. I would say that, on some levels, that is still true today, though happily, burning at the stake isn’t usually part of the modern scenario.
We have little reason to be proud of some of those who share our name as Christians. History is full of such examples. My own more personal experience comes from the early years I spent in Venezuela as a missionary. Hugo Chávez was growing in power then as president of the country. Pat Robertson is described in Wikipedia as “…an American media mogul, televangelist, political commentator, presidential candidate, and charismatic minister. Robertson advocated a conservative Christian ideology and was known for his involvement in Republican Party politics. He was associated with the Charismatic movement within Protestant evangelicalism. He served as head of Regent University and of the Christian Broadcasting Network.”
Robertson appeared on national television and told his audience that someone should kill Hugo Chávez. His statement angered President Chávez (and embarrassed the majority of the evangelical community), precipitated the expulsion of the New Tribes Mission from Venezuela, and brought a similar threat down on the heads of all other evangelical organizations working in the country. But aside from the threat it posed to those of us serving in the country, the idea that an evangelical leader would incite others to murder was, and is, appalling—but not unusual.
This was never the way of Jesus. Though the early Christians were blamed for many things not of their doing, they were never called to violence but to suffering, as Jesus had modelled, to prayer for their enemies, and to lives of holiness.
Take note of these three: suffering, prayer, and holiness. We’ll return to them as we journey.
As Peter writes to these early believers, he reminds them that, though they had never seen Jesus, they still had an advantage over the Old Testament prophets. Moved by the Spirit of God, the prophets wrote about things they didn’t understand and would not live to see. Sometimes they were called upon by God to do things that, to those observing, would make them look like kooks and crazies. Take Hosea, for example, who was called by God to marry an adulteress, thereby picturing God’s mercy to a people who had committed spiritual adultery by worshipping the gods of their neighbouring nations. Or Ezekiel, who was commanded by God to lie on his side on the ground for 390 days and then for 40 days to symbolize the punishment that God was about to inflict on Israel and Judah for their sin.
Sometimes a prophet’s message looked much farther into the future, describing something he or she would not live to see. Isaiah speaks in Isaiah 9 of the coming Messiah, who would be born to introduce a new kingdom over which He would reign forever. What did the prophets understand from messages like that? From what Peter writes, they tried to figure out what God was telling them. Their final conclusion was to rest in the assurance that, though they might never know, those who would follow them centuries later would understand, and that was enough!
For the believers who heard Peter’s letter read and explained, did they wonder about the assurances they were being given: the when, the how, the how long, and the who of the promises they were being asked to believe? Would they finally simply rest in those promises, understanding that even if they didn’t see their fruition, someone else would, and that that was okay? They could go on loving and rejoicing in their faith without knowing all the answers to their questions, and even without having “seen” the One in whom they had placed that faith.
I look back at those two nameless slave women mentioned in Pliny’s records, identified as leaders in the church. They are representative of others in the early church, like those Peter is addressing, who suffered for their faith. I wonder what they thought as they were tortured. Did they cling to the promises, to what they knew would be true for others, even though they would not see their fulfilment?
My takeaway from this reflection centres on promises. I believe that we, as women, are set free at the cross. I know that the freedom we were meant to have has been limited by others, by rules that others have imposed. But I also believe that God disposes, and that one day we will enjoy the fulfilment of the promises that our full redemption in Christ entails. Take note of those words: impose and dispose. Man imposes (limits), God disposes (throws away, i.e., the limits). In the meantime, like the believers of Peter’s day, I can have faith and rejoice because I know what I truly have because of Christ, no matter what the present circumstances.
