Sometimes the way to follow Jesus is to go to the cross with him. Peter thought this was the only option for the household slaves \u2014 he appealed to them to look to God for grace, to look to God for vindication, and to follow the example of Jesus. Sometimes we pursue justice \u201cwithin the order,\u201d and sometimes we bear with the system and suffer. I don\u2019t think there are any hard and tight rules to show us the way. We live by faith; we discern; and we step out. Sometimes the way to follow Jesus is to go to the cross with him. Peter thought this was the only option for the household slaves \u2014 he appealed to them to look to God for grace, to look to God for vindication, and to follow the example of Jesus. Sometimes we pursue justice \u201cwithin the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1736],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emerging-movement"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nSometimes the steps we take are in the steps of Jesus. The steps of Jesus lead to the cross, and for Peter the cross is the central reality of God\u2019s revelation. And we are to look not through the cross but directly at the cross \u2014 and not even look beyond it. For on the cross God reveals his identification with us and on that same cross, which is empty, his victory over that identification with suffering. On that cross we also see the Savior who saves, who ransoms and redeems and restores (Peter doesn\u2019t really have a \u201ctheory\u201d of atonement \u2014 so I\u2019ll leave that to the other posts).
\nPeter sees the place to begin a theology of how to live in the Roman world with Jesus, and now we learn that the place to begin that theology of praxis is with a Jesus who was crucified. Peter views the entire Christian life through the cross \u2014 and he therefore constructs a cruciform theo-praxis.
\nThere is a deep tradition from Jesus through the early Church to see the redemptive value of suffering, the redemptive pattern found on the cross. It is called pacifism or, in the words of John Howard Yoder, revolutionary insubordination.
\nConsider this:
\nJohn the Baptist taught people to go the extra mile, even if it was shaming;
\nJesus taught this followers to turn the other cheek, even if it hurt;
\nJesus gave the cross to his followers as the symbol of life, even if it meant death;
\nJesus told his followers, more than once, to forgive insead of seeking vindication;
\nJesus exemplified gracious Christianity, over and over, and that grace established the path on which he walked \u2014
\nAnd Peter knew that path, and he encouraged others to walk with him in powerless times in the very steps of Jesus. I don\u2019t think this is a surrender to injustice as the courageous act of a person led by the Spirit to suffer redemptively. And neither is the \u201chousehold slave\u201d of 1 Peter the New World Slave, and that means for me that we should distance this text from New World Slavery (which doesn\u2019t mean that this text has not been abused). In suggesting we distance this text, we need at the same time to retain sensitivity to alternative messages that will inevitably find their way into this text.
\nPeter counsels the powerless slaves to follow Jesus right into the thick of suffering not only because God can be trusted to establish justice, someday and in some way, but because grace creates room for conversion, because forgiveness both undoes injustice and creates an alternative way, because love is nearly irresistible by humans.
\nGrace creates an alternative society: and that is what Peter is most concerned about \u2014 the society called the Church in which the will of God is done.
\nSo, when Peter is urging the household slaves to endure, he is arguing that the grace of God that is learned in Jesus has a way of changing things \u2014 the seeds of suffering are redemptive. I haven\u2019t seen the movie The End of the Spear<\/em> but I did teach with a professor whose wife was one of the wives of those men who were killed \u2014 and forgiveness and grace has turned that world around. That, I think, is what Peter is teaching. But, I would be the first to say that Peter\u2019s theology here is the emerging theology of how to live as powerless people when you desire to live before God and extend yourselves missionally for the kingdom of God.
\nI would not say that Peter\u2019s strategy, and this makes this little post emerging and contextual, is always the only strategy. There is a time to resist \u201cwithin the order\u201d and there is a time to let the system grind away so that God\u2019s grace may become visible.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"