Grace Creates Impossible Possibilities

Living More Than Lives of Functional Atheism

1 Peter 3:13-22

When our oldest son was in Kindergarten, my wife and I received an email from his teacher requesting a meeting. In her classroom early one morning before school, sitting across from her on tiny plastic chairs, she explained to us her concern that our otherwise cheerful and compliant child stubbornly refused to put his hand over his heart and recite the pledge of allegiance with his classmates.

“Well, what’s he do?” I asked her.

“He stands next to his desk politely and respectfully,” she said, “but— I’ve insisted several times— he refuses to participate in the pledge.”

“Good,” I said.

“Um, excuse me? Good?””

“That’s what we’ve taught him to do,” my wife explained, “to be polite and respectful, but not to participate in the pledge.”

She looked at us like we were strange.

“We, of course, teach our kids to love their country and to understand what makes it exceptional,” my wife added. “But not to pledge his allegiance.”

“I don’t understand,” his teacher said and, it was clear, she really didn’t understand.

“We’re Christians,” I said, “Jesus is Lord. We’ve taught them that their allegiance is to God alone and that baptism is the only pledge they are to swear to.”

“Uh, okay,” she said, “I just thought you’d want to know.

“Oh no, thanks for telling us,” I said, “We’re so proud of him.”

As we pushed back the little plastic chairs and got up to leave, she looked at us like we were the oddest people she’d ever encountered.

Now, I certainly I don’t share that story to make myself appear heroically holy. I divulge it because, to my embarrassment, that’s one of the only few occasions when someone has regarded me as peculiar enough to inquire about the hope that is within me.

Given what God has gone and done, gratis, without asking for your input or opinion. Given what God has done in Jesus Christ, putting an end to sinful humanity in Christ’s death and establishing the new future of humanity in Christ’s resurrection. Given that, because Christ died for all, all have died. Given that your life is hidden now in Christ where you are a new creation upon whom Sin and Death have no claim…

Given the Good News that is the Gospel, you have a decision to make:

To be or not to be?

Will you live in a manner that corresponds to who you are, really are?

Or, will you contradict your true identity by refusing to live in a manner that makes no sense if Jesus Christ is not Lord?

“To be or not to be,” that is the question in light of what God has gone and done. Will you become who you already are? Or, will you settle for a life that’s something less meaningful, something unreal even?

The disorienting implications that follow from the Good News is that the perfect and finished work of Jesus Christ, the present-tense Lordship of Jesus Christ, provides the basis for a free and revolutionary life.

This is why the Apostle Peter, in the lectionary epistle for the Sixth Sunday of Eastertide, assumes that those who know they are in Christ are living in a manner sufficiently peculiar, so as to provoke questions from those who are not Christian:

“Always be ready to give an account of the hope that is within you.”

Go back and read verses eight through twelve.

The Apostle Peter’s not talking about our beliefs.

The Apostle Peter’s talking about the behavior of the messianic community.

In other words, the messianic community proclaims the Gospel when they live the cruciform way of the Messiah.

We preach the Gospel by living in a manner that makes no sense if God has not raised Jesus from the dead.

The Lordship of Jesus Christ may be objective reality, but it is not obvious.

Therefore, such a strange way of life should provoke questions.

How can you turn the other cheek? How can you walk another mile? How can you give your shirt as well as your coat? How can you forsake your property and possessions? How can you not desire to wield power the way the world does? How can you forgive her for leaving your son dead on the side of the road?

And when your counter-intuitive, cruciform way of life provokes questions, be prepared to give an apologia of the hope that is within you.

Notice—

There are two expectations implicit in the Apostle Peter’s exhortation.

1. The first expectation is that you are living in a manner odd enough to elicit questions from unbelievers. 

2. The second expectation is that you are equipped to articulate to unbelievers the conviction that can account for such a way of life.

As far as the first expectation goes, perhaps it’s best if we just repent and confess.

Most of us live our lives as functional atheists.