Live into Hope

1 Peter 1:3-9

This epistle is a message to a community of faith under duress-- “you have been grieved by various trials” (v.6c). It is meant to give them hope. The writer aims to encourage his beleaguered community by reminding them that they are known by their Lord who suffered in the same way--God understands them. In fact, God has already taken care of the outcome--should the powers and principalities win the day and martyr them, they will find themselves in heaven with God, raised to eternal life, just as Jesus, martyred by the world, was raised to imperishable life and now resides with God. In other words, hang in there, writes this preacher. No matter what happens, it will be all right.

We can relate to the need for such hope.

Imagine that--hope that is actually more than hope because hope, when all is said and done, is ephemeral. It does not take much to dash a hope. Or as Marcie counseled Peppermint Patty in “Peanuts”--”Hope makes a good breakfast, but a poor supper.” What Peter offers is hope that is more than hope because it will not be dashed. It is sure and certain. It does not wish for things to turn out a certain way, it KNOWS they will. 

We live in a time when a lot of us are hoping that what we see and hear are not all that there is. The permanent gridlock in our government, the permanent war and rumors of war that fly around daily, the stalled and staggering economy, and the constant harangue of pundits all wear us down and wear us out. Chinese Nobel Laureate, Mo Yan, wrote a wonderful novel that gets right to the core of our contemporary human existence, “Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out.” Of course, his lead character endures a cycle of reincarnation that sees him flit between incarnations as a wealthy landowner, a donkey, a pig, a cow, a dog, and finally as a genius child, all of which ensure he lives through the tumult and cataclysm of that made modern China. We won’t have to do that, but we confess to weariness that comes through simple existence. We hope for something more, something other.

But here, we run into a problem with Peter. Peter puts off resolution until after we are dead and gone--get through this life, endure, then in heaven, all shall be well. We don’t hear the word that we have to wait as good news. That seems to doom us to life being misery with our only relief coming when we stop living. 

If we move from Peter back to the Jesus he professes, we find a different tact taken. Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God as drawing near. Jesus speaks of experiencing Kingdom release here and now, of tasting salvation as we live in this moment. 

How?

By living in and through love. As we become more connected to the people around us in real and actual interaction, interdependence, and interbeing, we find that we become fuller, more well, and more stable in the face of the problems of the world as it is. Realizing we need other people is not a sign of great weakness, but rather a recognition of true and actual strength. Try standing a ladder straight up and down without leaning it against a wall or using a fold-out step ladder--a free standing step ladder will totter and fall as soon as you let go, but lean it against a support of any kind and it will be stable. Human beings are no different. We are wired to be related to each other--one’s imperfection is fleshed out by another, whose own imperfection is fleshed out by the other. We do not do well in isolation--solitary confinement is perhaps the harshest punishment we can inflict on another. We need each other. 

Jean Paul Sartre, the French Existentialist, commented that hell is other people; but the Gospel reworks that thought--no, HEAVEN is other people. 

Love one another, and there will be hope.