Scripture 1 Peter 1:3-9 CEB
3 May the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ be blessed! On account of his vast mercy, he has given us new birth. You have been born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. 4 You have a pure and enduring inheritance that cannot perish—an inheritance that is presently kept safe in heaven for you. 5 Through his faithfulness, you are guarded by God’s power so that you can receive the salvation he is ready to reveal in the last time.
6 You now rejoice in this hope, even if it’s necessary for you to be distressed for a short time by various trials. 7 This is necessary so that your faith may be found genuine. (Your faith is more valuable than gold, which will be destroyed even though it is itself tested by fire.) Your genuine faith will result in praise, glory, and honor for you when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Although you’ve never seen him, you love him. Even though you don’t see him now, you trust him and so rejoice with a glorious joy that is too much for words. 9 You are receiving the goal of your faith: your salvation.
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Before I begin, I need to tell y’all something. It is really hard to preach to my phone. It is hard not to have you all here in front of me, not to see your facial expressions, not to hear your chuckles when something that I hope is funny actually works, not to feel your energy as I move through the message, and see your heads nodding . . . or not. The cats have decided this isn’t terribly interesting, so they’re off sleeping someplace. So it’s just me and my iPhone in my living room. Comedian Henny Youngman used to say, “I know you’re out there, I can hear you breathing.” Well - I can’t even say that. Because in fact, you’re not out there. Not yet anyway. I’m preaching to my phone on Saturday morning and you won’t be watching until Sunday. I would like for this not to continue for very much longer, but I very much fear it will be a while before we can move back to the sanctuary, and even longer before we can consider gathering in the way we are used to gathering.
If you heard Disciples General Minister and President, Teri Hord Owens, preach on Easter, you heard her say, “It is unlikely that things will ever be the same.” She called on us to prepare for a ministry of imagination, to let our imaginations take flight as we consider how we will go forward as church, how we will shape a new world. She reminded us that it was in the midst of disruption that the church was born.
The disciples faced a time of disruption and change in the days and weeks after the resurrection. They were confused and uncertain about what was coming next, about what they were supposed to do and how to do it. They were in hiding and fearful. They would figure it out in time. They would find new ways to move forward that didn’t look at all the way they had expected their lives to look. Thirty years later, Peter could look back upon those early days and write this letter drawing upon his experience to comfort Christians who were undergoing severe persecution. Like the early disciples, Christians in around 65 AD quite frankly, did not know if they would survive from one day to the next. They were hunkered down in their homes, unable to meet in large groups, uncertain of the future. Peter knew first hand how easy it is to let fear rule your heart. He remembered that Jesus had said “I assure you that, before the rooster crows tonight, you will deny me three times.” And so it happened. Peter, fearing for his life, did indeed deny knowing Jesus three times and when the rooster crowed remembered Jesus’ words, realized he had fulfilled that prophecy, and went out and cried uncontrollably. Peter totally knew how that fear felt, and he knew that it was possible to move beyond it if they grabbed on to hope. So he reminded them of whose they were. “[God] has given us new birth. You have been born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” . . . "You now rejoice in this hope, even if it’s necessary for you to be distressed for a short time by various trials. This is necessary so that your faith may be found genuine.”
Peter wrote these words to the Christians of his time that they might be emboldened by hope to go forth in faith. They did the things that Christians do - caring for the sick in their communities, praying with the lonely, helping the poor and hungry - but they did them differently than when they were free to meet openly. They met in even smaller groups than the house churches they were accustomed to. They heard Peter when he said, “rejoice in this hope, even if it’s necessary for you to be distressed for a short time.” And note that Peter said, Even if it is necessary for you to be distressed. Not even though it is necessary. It might happen, or it might not. Whether it does or not, your hope and your faith will bring you through.
I do not believe that this plague we are facing today happened in order that our faith might be tested. But I do believe that how we face this particular threat is a result of our faith. Like pretty much everyone else, I would love to go out to lunch, chat with the servers, hug my friends, work in my office where all my files and books are, worship together. I would love to see everything go back to the way it was this time last year, when the Spiritual Growth team could say about any upcoming event, “What we usually do is. . . “ But that is not our new reality. From here on out we will have to look at completely new ways of being church, of worshipping together. And this change we are facing may be a very good thing for the church - our congregation and the Church universal. I have seen a multitude of persons say, “I have participated in more worship services this week than I have in probably the last 5 years . . .or 10 years.” People who do not attend church or claim any particular tradition as their own are listening to sermons, praying along with our pray-ers, asking questions, seeking answers rooted in faith. I am certain this would not have happened to the extent it is has we not had to move all of our worship services out of buildings and on to the Internet.
We must also recognize, however, that there are many who do not have access to the internet to see our service live-streamed, who don’t have smart phones that will let them watch YouTube. Under shelter in place orders, these are already feeling isolated. We must not let them believe the church has forgotten them. Even though we cannot be with them in person, we can and should call and write notes. We can mail copies of prayers and sermons. We can reach beyond our comfort zones to bring hope, as Peter’s letter brought hope to the Christians of his day.
The Rev. Teresa Hord Owens called upon us to “prepare for a ministry of imagination.” She asked us to imagine a new world, to pray for the courage to change and help shape a new world. She encouraged us to let the things of the past go, to let our prophetic imagination take flight so that we might envision new ways to be Church, new ways to connect, new opportunities to carry the Good News of Jesus Christ far outside our doors.
The trial that lies ahead of us is, as has been said before, unprecedented, even unimaginable in scope. But so are the solutions. So are the opportunities to share our own hope and faith. Each and every one of us has been forced to find ways of being and living that we couldn’t imagine in the before time. Our home life has changed. Our shopping habits have changed. Our work life has changed, or disappeared altogether. How we do school has changed. How we have meetings has changed. Our devotional practices may have changed, now that we have more time to pursue devotional practices - prayer, meditation, reading and writing, sewing, coloring . . . On Facebook I have seen many more recommendations of books and spiritual practices, more prayers, more poems, more encouraging memes, more groups that focus on spiritual life than ever before. Yes, there is still ugliness there. There is still anger and name calling and divisiveness. But these other things, these new and increased spiritual things, are a good thing, another way we are sharing our faith, spreading the Good News, being church. Because Church is a community of like minded people gathering to worship God - and there is no rule that says that the members of a church community have to all be in one place. The closest thing to a rule is found in Matthew 18:20, where Jesus said, “Where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them.” And we - this online community of faith - are definitely gathered in Jesus’ name. For, as Peter said, “Although you’ve never seen him, you love him. Even though you don’t see him now, you trust him and so rejoice with a glorious joy that is too much for words.” We do not see him now. We may not even see each other right now. But we know we are together, and that he is with us. We trust in him, and we rejoice in his love.
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