Focusing the Epistle Lesson

“Fearless love” is the sermon title that is going into the printed worship bulletin, as well as an adjustment in the selection of verses for the Epistle lesson. Sometimes, it is a wonder why the Consultation on Common Texts selects certain verses and omits others. After looking at the lesson in context, I will be reading 1 Peter 3: 8-18a. It’s about love, about remaining in the spirit of love, about persevering in love especially when we are tempted to stray from that spirit of love.

And it’s about blessing. Conventional wisdom is that prosperity is a sign of blessing, and suffering a sign of cursedness. Remember Job’s comforters? Job was a righteous man, and yet all his friends could think to say to Job in his suffering is, “Job, you must have really messed up. You better get right with God.”

For the first three and a half centuries, Christianity was an underground religion, despised by the “good people” of the Roman Empire. Christians were the despised minority, and they suffered for it. Some Christians surely must have wondered if their suffering was a sign of God’s displeasure.

The apostle’s response: Even if you suffer, you are blessed.

That response is contrary to conventional wisdom. Suffering is not evidence of God’s anger. The absence of suffering is not evidence of God's pleasure.

Do not fear their fear, the apostle wrote. I just previewed the film For the Bible Tells Me So, which (like The Laramie Project) reminded me of what terrible things frightened people can do.

“When people are afraid, they have to find scapegoats, and then they want to get rid of those people who are the bad guys,” said Mel White, in the film.

Rabbi Brian Zachary Mayer added, “The cheapest way of getting a feeling that we’re a group, a family, a... a... something is to make an other.” It has happened throughout history, with whites in the south during the Civil rights movement, in Germany during the rise of Nazi anti-Semitism. Homosexuals are the new “other.”

It’s easy to respond to hate with hate, to respond to fear with fear. It takes faith and love and discipline to respond to hate with love. The film ends with a triumphant example of non-violent resistance. You have got to see this.

And here’s a hymn to reinforce the message, and fortunately, this one is in the New Century Hymnal (#407):

Fear not, I am with you, oh, be not dismayed,

For I am your God, and will still give you aid,

I’ll strengthen you, help you, and cause you to stand

Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.