Bible Text: 1 Peter 1:13-25 | Preacher: Pastor Dorry Newcomer | Series: 1 Peter, Hope | Hello!  My name is Dorry Newcomer, lead pastor here at Lima United Methodist Church.  Thank you for joining in worship!  My sermon title today is “Holy Hope”, so I thought I’d start out by talking about clean living.

Have you ever been in the shower, happily scrubbing and sudsing, when all of a sudden your warm water turned freezing cold?  Brrr!  This happens at my house if we don’t coordinate things well.  Starting a load of laundry or turning on the dishwasher while the shower is running leads to a rude surprise for whoever is in the bathroom!  I’ve also had my nice warm water turn suddenly scalding hot if someone flushed the toilet while I was in the shower.  This was especially a problem in my freshman dormitory at college.  At orientation we were given strict instructions to yell, “Flush!” before depressing the handle to give warning.  That first week we all felt goofy yelling, “Flush!”  But it only took one time of someone not yelling out a warning to convince us all that surprise water temperature changes can not only be inconvenient and irritating, they can be dangerous.

The book of First Peter was written to Christians throughout the Roman Empire who were dealing with a different kind random disruption.  From time to time, they were victims of intentional mistreatment.  It wasn’t all persecution all the time.  There were periods of time when things were quiet, when they were “normal” we might say.  The Christians minded their own business and lived out their faith, and life was pleasant enough.

But on occasion, tensions would rise in society, and things went from comfortable to uncomfortable quick for the early church.  Since Christians were passionate about worshipping God with a capital G, they were seen as disloyal traitors by everyone else who was trying to appease the variety of Roman gods with a lower-case g.  When bad things happened, it was easy to blame the Christians.  They were accused of making the gods angry.  Lies were spread about their worship practices, seeds of distrust where sown, and their lives were interrupted by words and actions of contempt toward them.  Warm and pleasant could turn to freezing cold in an instant.

While this was less than desirable, there were times when things got a whole lot worse.  The Emperor Nero was said to have especially enjoyed blaming Christians.  About 30 years after Jesus, there was a devastating fire in Rome that burned for many days, a fire that caused a great deal of suffering but also opened up opportunity for many new replacement building projects.  It was no secret Nero loved to build buildings, and public perception was that he either started the fire in Rome on purpose, or he didn’t do enough to stop it.  There’s nothing like a scapegoat to solve a politician’s problems.  He sowed lies, blaming the Christians for the fire, and they became subject to all kinds of random violence.  Warm and pleasant went to scalding hot figuratively, and unfortunately literally as well.  Under Nero’s rule, Christians were sometimes lit on fire and used as torches to light nighttime celebrations.

It is for people living in an often unfair and sometimes horribly cruel society that Peter wrote this letter.  It is against this backdrop of random, unpredictable evil that Peter penned our memory verse, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”  Peter wanted to remind everyone that, in the midst of seemingly arbitrary interruptions, inconveniences, and downright suffering, God’s actions are not arbitrary.  Unlike the Roman gods who cared only about pleasing themselves, God’s actions have a distinct purpose, a purpose that is always for the good of humankind.  The way we know that for sure is because God raised Jesus from the dead.  All of God’s power is directed toward life, and through Christ, that same power is at work raising us.

That’s why Peter talks about us receiving a new birth into a living hope.  Can you imagine what good news that would have been for the Christians who received his letter?  In the Roman world, the biggest hope most people had was that the gods wouldn’t get angry and try to destroy you.  The biggest hope non-Christians had was that fate would be kind to them.  But the Christian knows his or her destiny is not controlled by fate.  Our destiny is controlled by faith!  Random acts of evil may befall us.  But we have a living hope, a hope no cold shower can dampen.  We have a living hope, a hope that no amount of hot water can dissolve.  Our living hope is so alive, it can persist even in the face of death and promises us paradise.  No wonder Peter wrote, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

This living hope, like all living things, needs some care and tending.  The whole rest of Peter’s letter is instructions for living in hope.  These instructions can be boiled down to two words, which we find in chapter 1 verse 15:  be holy.  The word “holy” literally means set apart or different.  No doubt, Peter wants the Christians to act differently than the world around them.   But the main difference that Peter wants to see is deeper than their conduct.  He says our faith calls us to be different in our attitude.  Holy living means HOPEFUL living!

The most important task of holy living is to never abandon our living hope!  During the season of Lent, we talked about how the battle is in the mind, how we are to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.  Peter knows how hard this is to do. Living in an unpredictable time, it takes WORK to stay hopeful!  So he says, “prepare your minds for action, discipline yourselves, set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring…”  Some translations use the phrase, “Gird up the loins of your mind”.  In ancient times, men wore long robes, which were simple to make but complicated if you were trying to do anything strenuous.  When it was time for action, men would take the bottom of their robes and tuck them into their belts, thus freeing their legs to move unhindered by all that fabric.

Can you picture girding up the loins of your mind?  We might use the expression, “roll up your shirtsleeves”.  It’s a way of saying, get to work!  Peter wants us to focus, to be intentional, to be actively protecting and pursuing hope in the Lord.  Remember, this is not a hope so, as in will life be better tomorrow?  I hope so! This is a hope that transcends time, that goes above and beyond all our circumstances. This living hope is deeper and stronger than any earthly hope, because it comes from heaven itself.  The hope that we are to focus on is embodied in the life, death and resurrection of Christ.

This hope is so valuable, Peter goes on to give some practical tips as to how to maintain it:

Be holy in your conduct. Stressful times are not an excuse for losing our discipline.  Just because we know the police are not likely to pull us over right now does not make it okay to speed if you’re venturing out!  Just because there’s no one around to notice doesn’t mean it’s okay to watch coarse movies or television shows.  Just because we’re frustrated doesn’t make it okay to use bad language.  And I’m especially talking to myself here:  just because I find baking relaxing does not means it’s okay to eat all the cookies!  No matter what is going on around us, we are still called to keep the standards of behavior our Christian conscience has developed within us.  Just keep in mind, right conduct is not the goal.  It’s a means to an end.  It’s a tool to help us stay in love with God, a tool to help us keep and spread our living hope.
Peter goes on to say, live in reverence, not judgment. Peter reminds his readers that God judges everyone by their deeds.  It is not our job to judge.  Instead of scrutinizing what others are doing, we should remember it was the sacrifice of Christ that gave us a new way of living.  This was a costly sacrifice.  Focusing on how much God loves us and wants us for his own can move our negative thoughts off center stage and strengthen our faith and hope.
Focusing on how much God loves us leads us to Peter’s next step: love one another deeply from the heart.  Much of Peter’s letter will go on to flesh out what this love looks like, but for now, he simply lifts this up as a priority.  Love one another with an Easter love, a love that comes from the place of new life given to us by God in Christ.
And lastly, keep things in perspective. The grass withers. The flowers fade.  But the word of the Lord will stand forever.  And this word is none other than Jesus Christ, who was sent by God, and rresurrected by God.  This is the Word of God who endures forever.  The same loving power that was with Jesus through the worst is with us, too.

Holy conduct.  Living in reverence, not judgment.  Loving one another deeply from the heart.  Keeping things in perspective.  Four important strategies for tending the living hope within us.  But these are not necessarily easy strategies!  Just think about being in the shower and having the water temperature suddenly turn freezing cold because your roommate started their laundry.  How easy is to keep your cool and not say a bad word?  How easy is it to live in reverence and not judgement?  How easy is to love that person in your household deeply?  How easy is it to keep things in perspective?  It’s not easy!  These are hard things to do, even when the issue is something as simple as the water in our shower getting cold.

This is why it’s good for us to remember that Peter wrote this letter to people who were living in a very difficult time, a time of random disruptions that ranged from inconvenient to deadly.  Sounds familiar, right?  We too are living in a time when the temperature is changing constantly, and this can be dangerous to our souls.  Our mostly warm and comfortable lives have been interrupted by the icy water of social distancing.  This is irritating, inconvenient, and so cold it is at times painful.  Our mostly warm and comfortable lives have been interrupted by the world shouting “Flush!”, alarming us and leaving us scrambling to figure out how to stay safe in the midst of the corona virus pandemic.

Thankfully, it is when we are at our weakest that our hope can be at its strongest.  But this hope won’t take care of itself.  It needs our attention.  It’s time to get busy preparing our minds for action, or as some translations say, girding up the loins of our minds!  Let’s roll up our shirtsleeves, and get to work tending the soil of our souls.  Make it a top priority to nurture the hope that lives within you.  Nurture it by conducting yourself according to your best standards, living in reverence not judgment, loving one another deeply from the heart, and keeping things in perspective.  Like a momma bear, do all you can to protect your little cub of holy hope.  Don’t let anything rob you of it!  For hope is our holy inheritance, a gift given to stabilize us during unpredictable times.  Hope is our holy witness, a gift we can give to others to help bring peace during chaotic times.  Hope is our holy lifeline, a channel through which the moonlight can shine while we await the sunrise.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living” [and holy] “hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”  Amen.