There is a Word which Death Cannot Terminate
Peter’s Exhortation and the Church’s Surrender
“Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.”
This surprising exhortation comes in the chapter following the epistle passage assigned by the lectionary for the Third Sunday of Easter.
From the apostle Peter’s first letter:
“If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God. Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.”
— 1.17-23
There is a telling contrast between how the apostle Peter addressed his suffering churches and how many American Christians and their pastors speak today. Peter wrote to believers scattered across the empire during the reign of Nero— a Caesar so systematically cruel toward Christians that the historian Tacitus catalogued his methods with barely concealed horror. Nero’s Rome clothed Christians in animal hides and set dogs upon them. Other believers were fixed to axletrees in wax-stiffened shirts and set alight to serve as city torches. Still others Rome lynched from trees when the day waned. This was the imperial context into which Peter the Preacher dispatched his first epistle.
And what he said— or rather, what he refused to say— is one of the most instructive things in the New Testament. It’s certainly one of the most chastening things in the New Testament if you’re an empathetic or “prophetic” preacher in the mainline church.
Peter does not offer comfort. Not, at least, in any of the forms we have learned to expect. He does not say, “God understands your pain,” or “There is no suffering alien to the heart of the divine.” He does not remind his people that they have each other and should look out for one another. He does not offer pastoral reassurance that better days are coming if they stay faithful.
What Peter offers instead is almost entirely exhortation, a set of imperatives that presuppose a people who have already received something extraordinary and are therefore responsible for living accordingly. “Get your head straight,” Peter commands the church, “Be sober. Be holy. Pray for the president you loathe. Conform your common life to the Lord’s commands.”
The whole of the epistle is driven by a single underlying logic.
God has begotten you anew in Jesus Christ; therefore, live lives that exemplify this astounding news.
Contrary to how we might hear it, Peter does not intend to sound harsh. Quite the opposite, Peter is offering his flock the deepest form of pastoral respect; he is treating suffering people not as fragile victims requiring management, but as those who have been drawn into a new world by the resurrection of the crucified Lord.
