I
Peter 1:3-9
This past week, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had to
throw out just under 23,000 convictions because a lab worker who had reported
on evidence connected with those cases was found to have falsified her
results. You have to feel sorry for the
defendants who were wrongly convicted, because out of that many people, the
odds alone guarantee that there were some totally innocent people in that number. But I also find myself feeling sorry for the
prosecutors, people who must have put a lot of time and effort into these cases
that now looks like it was wasted, because those same odds guarantee that some
of the defendants who will now get a walk were guilty. Because of this one person’s actions –
leaving aside any guess about her motives – there are a lot of other people
whose lives and reputations have been thrown off in ways that you cannot just
fix with an “Oops. Sorry about that.”
I hope that they hear the message that I Peter shares
with us today.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is
imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.” [I Peter
1:1-4]
That word, “undefiled”, would especially apply for
them, but the promise of
“an inheritance that is imperishable,
undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” [I Peter 1:4]
is one that should
speak to anybody who runs into disappointment and loss, and especially who
thinks that their life’s work has meant nothing.
That clearly was a
danger for the disciples in the dark days between Jesus’ crucifixion and his
resurrection. On the Second Sunday of
Easter every year we hear the story of Thomas and how he was not going to let
himself get burned again with hopes about Jesus. The others were all excited, saying,
“’We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark
of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my
hand in his side, I will not believe.’” [John 20:25]
Can you blame him? Three years of optimism and naïve confidence,
and then came the cross. How could he
put himself through that again?
It’s a problem, too, for someone who puts their heart and
soul into any worthwhile project that goes awry. Back in the 1930s, when the Dust Bowl was
spreading across the Midwest, a farmer’s wife in Oklahoma wrote to a friend:
“A fairly promising piece of
barley has been destroyed for us by the … drift from the same field whose sands
have practically buried the little mulberry hedge which has long sheltered our
buildings from the north west winds. Large spaces in our pastures are entirely
bare in spite of the rains. Most of the green color, where there is any
grazing, is due to the pestilent Russian thistles rather than to grass. Our
little locust grove which we cherished for so many years has become a small
pile of fence posts. With trees and vines and flowers all around you, you can't
imagine how I miss that little green shaded spot in the midst of the desert
glare.
Naturally you will wonder why
we stay where conditions are so extremely disheartening. Why not pick up and
leave as so many others have done? It is a fair question, but a hard one to
answer.
Recently I talked with a
young university graduate of very superior attainments. He took the ground that
in such a case sentiment could and should be disregarded. He may be right. Yet
I cannot act or feel or think as if the experiences of our twenty-seven years
of life together had never been. And they are all bound up with the little
corner to which we have given our continued and united efforts. To leave
voluntarily to break all these closely knit ties for the sake of a possibly
greater comfort elsewhere —seems like defaulting on our task. We may have to
leave. We can't hold out indefinitely without some return from the land, some
source of income, however small. But I think I can never go willingly or
without pain that as yet seems unendurable.”[1]
I have no idea how life
turned out for her in the long run, but it clearly was not what she and her
husband had foreseen or worked for.
Our hope, however, cannot be tied to what we experience here. There are always going to be disappointments
and failures. Situations entirely out of
your own control may leave you blaming yourself for not foreseeing them, even
if you don’t see them as your own fault.
God does not see things as we do, and understands the
whole stretch of history where we see only a brief moment. What to us may seem the end is to God just
the merest blip. What we focus on may be
unnoticeable or trivial in the wider scope.
Think of it this way: if you are the gymnast doing the routine on the
balance beam, you are going to notice that your backflip dismount only had a
single twist. If you are watching, you
are going to notice that she not only stayed on the beam the whole time, but
she did a backflip at the end – and with a twist!
God sees the whole sum of things from beginning to
end. The good is not forgotten, the
effort is not wasted, even if (we think) it comes to nothing, because
“By his great mercy he has given us a new birth
into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is
imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.” [I Peter
1:1-4]
Remember Jesus? The teacher whose words about God’s love made
some people hate him? Remember Jesus? The prophet whose calls for justice and
compassion led to his arrest, torture, and execution? Remember Jesus? The leader whose followers betrayed and
abandoned him when he most needed them?
Remember Jesus? That wandering
miracle-worker who couldn’t prevent his own death, who saved others but did not
save himself? What a total failure! Until God raised him up again, and set him at
his own right hand, and shared with him his own glory.
Yeah, him.
He’s the one who has your back,
“you, who
are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to
be revealed in the last time. In
this you rejoice, even if now for
a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your
faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by
fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is
revealed.” [I Peter 1:5-7]
[1]
Letter by Caroline Henderson, August 11, 1935.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1936/05/letters-from-the-dust-bowl/308897/
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