Believers in Jesus should be the last people to board Flight 93’s

Christian Doing is Based on "Done"

1 Peter 3:13-22

There is so much bad news, yet— it’s like driving slow past a car wreck— I can’t not stare. Day after day, night after night, I can’t unplug. I can’t put away my phone. I can’t stop checking the headlines. I can’t turn off the notifications.

Psychologists call it the “Mean World Syndrome.”

Namely, the more media you consume that depicts the world as a violent, dangerous place the more you will view the world as a violent, dangerous place which, in turn, actually makes the world a more violent, dangerous place. If you’re convinced the world is a dangerous place you’re more likely to resort to— or justify— violence. Worse, because what’s wrong with the world is other people, doom-scrolling releases in our brains the same endorphin rush we get by participating in our self-righteous, like-minded tribes. We look for the bad news, and then we judge and we point fingers and we demonize and we cancel because it makes us feel good.

Chemically— bad news makes us feel good.

A research scientist at Harvard’s School of Public Health says that “as humans we have a natural tendency to pay more attention to negative news.”

It’s natural.

Meaning, for evolutionary reasons, we’re hard-wired to pay more attention to bad news than to good news.

We find danger before we find comfort. We notice brokenness before we see beauty. We see the not yet at the expense of the already. We do this as Christians too. We doom-scroll with the eyes of faith. We fix our attention on the fallenness of the world and the far away-ness of the Kingdom. We obsess over our sins and, in doing so, we conjure a god who is angry at us. We focus on our neighbor’s sins, by what they’ve done or left undone, and, in doing so, we conjure a license to be angry at them.

It’s easy to notice what’s wrong with the world.

That’s no achievement.

The slow and steady process of natural selection has made sure your default gaze is trained on the bad news, which is a scientific, doctor-approved reason why, in the Church, we can never assume the Gospel.

Where the Gospel is assumed, the Gospel is endangered. Where the Gospel is assumed, the Gospel is endangered because survival of the fittest has fashioned us to pay attention to bad news rather than good news. Therefore, before I go any further, allow me to give you the goods of the Gospel:

Almighty God, the Everlasting Father, has elected you in Jesus Christ from before the foundation of the world. His covenant in Jesus Christ, to be your God and for you to be his people, precedes creation itself. Before there was anything or anyone, God had determined in Christ Jesus not to be God without you.

Because this one man died to Sin, all have died. Your life is hidden now in Christ with God. Nothing you do or leave undone can evict you from him who is your home. And because you are in Christ, no matter what your eyes tell you— take it on faith— you are a new creation (even you). You have been begotten anew by the Word of God, Jesus Christ.

And if you wander in your life, if you wobble in your faith, if you wonder if your sin is stronger than his grace, then look to your baptism. As the apostle Peter says in Sunday’s lectionary epistle reading, your baptism is tangible, visible, datable- in-time reminder that Christ has saved you. Christ suffered for sins once for everybody, Peter proclaims. Christ the only Righteous One suffered for the remainder of us, the all-inclusive category called the unrighteous. And Christ suffered, Peter says, NOT in order to beckon us to God but in order to bring us all by his lonesome to God.

You’re already home free, gratis.

God’s grace in Jesus Christ isn’t cheap. It’s not even expensive. It’s free.

And not only free— it’s finished and final.

Not only is this the good news, it’s good news.

No matter what the headlines say, no matter what your eyes see, no matter what that voice inside your head whispers, in Jesus Christ everything that is wrong in the world— including everything wrong in you— has already been and is now being and will yet be rectified.

Made right, the Gospel promises.

You can’t hear news like that anywhere else BUT the Church.

Before COVID-19, you had to get up at an inconvenient hour, get dressed up, and get yourself to church to hear news so strange and good. News that is neither sentimental nor cynical.

News that’s a counter-narrative.

A resistance.

An act of resistance to the world that we’ve made in our image.

As the Church, we can never assume the good news, roll up our sleeves, and get about fixing the brokenness of the world. We can never assume the good news, not simply because we’re hardwired to fixate on the bad news.

We can never assume the Gospel because, notice how the apostle Peter frames it in our text, the good news of the finished work of Jesus Christ— it is the basis from which we engage the brokenness of the world.

In Sunday’s lectionary epistle, the apostle Peter is in the middle of exhorting the messianic community to do good in the world. To do good in the world and, if necessary, to “suffer for righteousness’ sake.” That is, for the sake of justice.

But notice, for Peter, what compels us to do good and suffer for the sake of justice in the world:

“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… and through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of God, with every authority and all the Powers now made subject to him.”

Peter does not exhort the Church to do justice in the world because of all the injustice in the world. Peter does not urge believers to do good because of all that is wrong in the world. Peter does not push the messianic community to bear witness to the cruciform way of Jesus Christ because so much reconciling work yet remains to be done.

No.

Peter orders us out into the world to bear witness to the cruciform way of Christ because everything has already been done.

It’s not the brokenness of the world that enlists us to engage the world with the way of Jesus.

It’s the beauty of what Christ has already accomplished for the world that sends us out into the world.