Willapa United Methodist Church

John Newton – you know, that slave ship captain turned priest who wrote “Amazing Grace” – John Newton wrote other things as well. Including this very personal witness to the power of Easter to transform lives:

            I am not what I ought to be.

            I am not what I wish to be.

            I am not even what I hope to be.

            But by the cross of Christ,

Wow! He is Risen! 

It’s the Sunday after Easter. We are in the midst of the Easter Season, the great 50 days of Easter. Most pastors are walking around looking a little worn out. After the journey through Lent, the intensity of Holy Week, and the exhilaration of Easter morning, it’s only natural to experience a little let-down. But the early Christian church that Peter was writing to in our text for this morning was still basking in the light of the Cross, thirty years after Jesus’ Resurrection, no let-down for them! What was it that sustained their enthusiasm and energy for so long, and how can we tap into that source of power today?

Please pray with me. May the words of our mouths, the meditations of our hearts, and the conduct of our lives, be always acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our blessed redeemer. Amen.

If you were here last week for our Easter reading you have heard Peter’s powerful words before (in a slightly different form):

In his great mercy God has given us a new birth into a living hope

Through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, we find our hope

With this hope we have an inheritance that cannot perish, spoil, or fade

Peter’s words were not written in a vacuum. The Christians that Peter was writing to did not live in a vacuum. They lived in a violent and evil world. They were persecuted just because they were Christians. 1 Peter was written in A.D. 64. Does anyone know what was happening in the Roman Empire in A.D. 64? I’ll give you a hint: The Roman emperor was Nero. The great fire of Rome started on July 19^th in A.D. 64. It burned for three days and destroyed much of the city. Legend has it that Nero was somehow responsible for the fire, or at least for failing to put it out. That’s where the expression: “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” comes from. But, Nero had a scapegoat already selected to appease the public outcry for punishment of those responsible for the fire. Nero’s scapegoat was the Christian church.

The Roman historian Tacitus graphically describes Nero’s persecution of Christians following the fire:

A huge multitude of Christians perished in the most sadistic ways. Nero rolled the Christians in pitch, and then set light to them, while they were still alive and used them as living torches of flame to light his gardens. He sewed them up in the skins of wild animals, and then set his hunting dogs upon them.[1]

Much to the amazement of their Roman persecutors, many of these early Christians met death with songs of joy on their lips. It makes me ashamed to complain about be tired out by Holy Week and Easter when I read that!

So what does Peter say to these Christians who are being killed and persecuted? He says, “Rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials.” At this point, most of us are ready to condemn Peter as harsh and unfeeling, and send him off to sensitivity training. But, I think we need to realize that Peter himself was in the midst of all this persecution. He was not sitting comfortably in a chaise lounge in Athens or Ephesus. This letter was probably written from Rome, where Peter was in A.D. 64. Peter was not immune to suffering. In fact, a few years after this letter was written, Peter was captured and crucified on a cross, like his Lord and Master. Peter insisted that he be crucified upside down, because he was not worthy enough to die as Christ died. 

The transforming power of the Christ’s cross was as powerful for Peter as it was for John Newton. The Cross had transformed Peter from the coward who denied Jesus three times into the Rock that Christ built his church on. It was the transforming power of the Cross that gave Peter the courage to say “Rejoice!” It was the transforming power of the Cross, that enabled our Christian brothers and sisters to sing songs of joy, even as they died.

Please take out your worship bulletins and turn them over. Let’s read together the Thought for The Week: “So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it…Practice resurrection.” It is the transforming power of the Cross that will enable us to live as Easter People, as Resurrection People.

“In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials.” Peter is not minimizing their suffering, he is proclaiming the new reality that Christ’s resurrection has introduced into the world. John Jewell describes Peter’s message this way:

Peter is pointing to a whole new way of living. The faith of the people he is writing to has lifted them to a whole new plane. It is not that the pain of life does not touch them, but rather that the pain of life does not defeat them. They endure the horror, but they do not relinquish the hope. Faith does not close the door to pain, but it does open the door to promise.

When you and I embrace the hope we have in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it is not simply an article of faith. It is not just a proposition we find in a creed . It is a present reality in our living. It is, indeed, a whole new way of living. It is an affirmation that, “What you see is not what you get.” It is a declaration that what you see is just the surface. There is more to life and living than what you see. Christian faith offers something more. It offers hope, joy and love when everything in our outward world seems to be falling apart.[2]

My friends, on this first Sunday after Easter, the Good News is: “He is Risen!” The even better news is that we don’t have to do a thing to “embrace the hope we have in his resurrection” but accept it. Listen again to the final stanza of our Easter reading from last week:

Thanks be to God who gives us this victory over sin and death

Now what? Perhaps a better question is, “How then shall we live?”

For the answer to that question I want to turn to our African-American sisters and brothers. Sometimes when Wintley Phipps introduces a song he talks about those “old black ladies down South who have more sense by accident than most of us have on purpose.” One of those wise old ladies once said to him, “Son, if the mountain was smooth you couldn’t climb it.” Think about it. I may have found the answer to the question, “How then shall we live?” in the last verse of an old African-American spiritual named There Is a Balm in Gilead:

Remember, God doesn’t care who you are, or who you are not. God doesn’t care what you have done, or what you have not done. The only thing that really matters to God is whose you are. Christ chose to die for you and me. After all he has done for us, isn’t it time we choose to live for him?