1 Peter 3: 13-22

Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?
But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed.

Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.

Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good,
if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil.

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water.

And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you — not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

Where Evil Lurks

Have you ever watched one of the television preachers who talk incessantly about happiness and blessings and wealth? The “prosperity gospel” is seductively appealing, and some of us may even wish we’d hear more of it at Broad Street… but don’t hold your breath.

It’s not that we don’t joyfully celebrate God’s amazing generosity, or praise our Creator for the wonders of the universe, or give thanks every day for the gifts of grace and peace we’ve come to know through Jesus Christ. We are without a doubt incredibly blessed.

But we live in the real world — a world challenged by poverty, injustice and war — a world of fierce competition, compromised ethics, and dangerously unhealthy relationships — a world of fallen angels and flawed human beings. We live in a world that longs for what we already have — and it’s a longing we can’t ignore. We are called to witness to the perfect love of Christ in the midst of this imperfect world.

The gift of salvation, as Karl Barth argues, is inextricably linked with the call to witness. This is our Christian vocation: We come together to worship, to learn, to be equipped for the journey… so that we are ready to be sent out into the world — the real world where we live every day — as witnesses (apostles, Darrell Guder would say) for Jesus Christ.

That’s an exciting challenge; but here’s where reality comes home to bite us: When Peter writes, “It is better to suffer for doing good than to suffer for doing evil,” the uncomfortable assumption is that suffering is inevitable.

The previous verse spells it out even more directly: “Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.” Not if you are maligned, but when. Witnessing to the risen Christ was risky business in the first century.

Today, religion and politics are taboo in polite company, but there’s no likelihood of pain or penalty associated with Christian witness. We don’t have to fear any dire consequences for preaching the Gospel. We’re perfectly secure in our little community of faith, and generally pleased with the way things are.

The First Letter of Peter is addressed to a community in pain — people suffering real hardship simply because they’ve chosen to follow Christ. That’s clearly not us… or is it?

If there’s a price to pay for discipleship, how is it measured in our context? Could it be that we’re feeling no pain because we’re taking no risk? Have we become so complacent in our particular brand of institutional Christianity that the Lord could come again and we’d fail to notice?

If you’re wishing for some of that feel-good “prosperity gospel” right about now, I can’t say I blame you. This is challenging stuff, and at 9/11 o’clock in the morning — especially on such a beautiful day, when a bright and glorious world is beckoning us — we don’t necessarily want to be challenged. But the two Scriptures we read this morning can’t be ignored.

In fact, Paul’s sermon that Jessie read in the passage from Acts may have as much to say to us as did to the people in Athens. “The… Lord of heaven and earth,” Paul said, “does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since God himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.”

God doesn’t live in this shrine any more than God lived in the Areopagus — yet how readily do we compartmentalize our lives, designating the time we spend here on Sunday morning for God, while letting a whole host of demands rule the rest of our days? If we are truly “Easter people,” waking every morning to a fresh, new life of resurrection and hope, there’s no such thing as “worship time” and “other time.” Living each and every moment of our lives is an act of worship. And in that worship — in that proclamation that is our lives — there is love and joy, but there must also be defiance… gentle, reverent, radical defiance of evil.

I know this is not a comfortable topic for us. It isn’t the warm, fuzzy side of our mission; but it’s part of our call, and we need to confront it. When Peter says, “It is better to suffer for doing good than to suffer for doing evil,” it isn’t only the suffering that makes us squirm. The truth is: we’d just as soon pretend that evil didn’t exist.

I have to confess that I had never really come to terms with the presence of evil in the world until the second week of September, 2001. Serving a congregation less than 30 miles from lower Manhattan, the tragedy of 9/11 hit all too close to home. As Sunday approached, after a week of daily prayer services, I faced what seemed like the greatest challenge of my ministry.

How do you bring a message of hope to a devastated community? The pews were filled with sisters and brothers and friends of the victims… with Trade Center employees who had been somewhere else that morning… and at least one man who miraculously escaped from the 64th floor of Tower One.

Until that week, I had regarded evil as little more than an abstract concept — the opposite of good. Then suddenly I had no choice but to confront the existence of a destructive force in the world. And that acknowledgment compounded the challenge: There was already a growing consensus that the perpetrators of 9/11 were the very embodiment of evil — a view that quickly expanded to include their countrymen, their religion, and anyone sharing their physical traits. Suspicion was spiraling out of control.

The problem when we start to label others — even the guilty — as evil, is that we’re putting ourselves in God’s role, passing judgment on those whom only God has a right to judge. What’s more, we’re assuming righteousness that we haven’t earned.

Writing about suffering for doing good, Peter expressed not a single word of ill will toward the perpetrators of that suffering. In Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians, he makes it clear that ill will toward one another would negate their witness. And Jesus himself said, “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”

In 2001, some probably heard those words as mere platitudes — too simplistic to quell their need for action, for revenge. But, taken seriously, they point us toward a fundamental truth: The evil we ought to be concerned about is not the work of others, but the evil that lurks within. The violence and ill will we are called to renounce is not that of the world, but that which festers in our own hearts.

Jesus came to give life to a new humanity, beginning with the gathered community of faith represented here on Sunday mornings, but more fully manifest in the “scattered community” sent out to be the presence of Christ in the world. If we go out to judge, we are absorbed into the fabric of society like a stain. But if we leave here equipped to love and to serve, we become the weavers and menders who can give that fabric new form and strength.

If we think of evil as something perpetrated by others — if we believe we can conquer it by going after the perpetrators — we’re doomed to fail. As Christians in the midst of a secular world, our charge is to model the kind of life, and the kind of community, that we’ve learned from Jesus.

Turning the other cheek doesn’t mean avoiding all conflict at any cost. Competition can be healthy and exciting, but when rivalry turns bitter, there’s a need for Christians to act.

We don’t have to look far to find a good example. In this presidential election year, as candidates and parties and parapolitical organizations attack and demean one another, deriving pleasure from each other’s wounds, we have a genuine opportunity to swim against the current of society — not by staying out of politics, but by engaging in a positive, healthy way… by modeling, to the best of our ability, the way of Christ.

That’s how we witness to the perfect love of Christ in an imperfect world.

That’s how we conquer the evil that lurks within.

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