If you were watching TV in April 2009, you may have seen pictures like this one of Captain Richard Phillips shortly after his rescue. According to CNN.com:
U.S. Navy snipers fatally shot three pirates holding an American cargo-ship captain hostage after seeing that one of the pirates “had an AK-47 leveled at the captain’s back,” a military official said Sunday. The captain, who’d been held in a lifeboat in the Indian Ocean since Wednesday, was rescued uninjured … Adm. Rick Gurnon stressed that while Phillips was rescued, more than 200 mariners remain captives at sea. “The pirates have a great business model that works for them: See ships, take ransom, make millions,” he told reporters.
In Captain Phillips case he was rescued without a ransom being paid. But, as the report said, many sailors were only released through the payment of a huge ransom.
The idea of being “ransomed” was a very powerful image in the world of the first Christians. In fact, if was a life-changing idea! People from right across the Roman Empire and beyond would have been immediately reminded of slaves whose freedom was purchased by the payment of a ransom. And many members of the churches Peter was writing to would almost certainly have been slaves themselves or former slaves!
How is that image powerful for us? We know, don’t we, that around the world today millions of people still live in slavery — much of it sexual slavery! But this morning I want YOU to imagine for a moment that you were Captain Richard Phillips taken captive by pirates off the African coast … and someone paid the million-dollar ransom to set YOU free … without any expectation that YOU would pay them back?
How would you feel? …
What would you do once you were released? …
How would your life change?
How often do you hear of people who have had an experience like Richard Phillips saying that it was “a life-changing experience”? A close friend of mine survived the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami that killed over 200 000 people. The first thing he said in his email after reporting he was safe was that it made you reconsider your priorities.
That’s exactly the experience Peter is talking about here. As we will hear in a couple of weeks, it is also the reason he urges his first hearers and us to live “sacred” or “holy” lives — lives completely shaped by the death and resurrection of Jesus who died to pay the “ransom” price for their lives and ours.
- HOPE
We have seen recently that one of the ways we can begin to understand a Bible passage is to look at the words the author repeats regularly and to ask ourselves why? The first repeated word that stands out to me here in Peter’s first letter is HOPE. Three times in the first chapter Peter draws Christians’ attention to our “hope.”
In last week’s reading, we heard Peter speak about “a living hope” in verse 3. In today’s reading hear about “hope” again in v. 13 and v. 21:
- 3: 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
v.13: Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.
- 21: Through him [Jesus] 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.
What do these words tell us? They make it quite clear, don’t they, that the Christian hope rests on the sure foundation of what God has already done in Jesus Christ! Peter reminds the Christians in exile that their hope is set on the FUTURE revelation of Christ because of the PAST resurrection of Christ. As he says in v. 21, God “raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.”
Peter isn’t just talking about Christian doctrine here is he? He is appealing to the early Christians’ personal experience:
- 18–21 (NSRV): 18 YOU know that YOU were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. 20 He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for YOUR sake. 21 Through him [Jesus] 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.
The Message translation calls this section “A Future in God.” It might help us to feel the full force of Peter’s words here if we hear them again in that translation:
- 18–21 (MSG): 18 YOUR life is a journey YOU must travel with a deep consciousness of God. It cost God plenty to get YOU out of that dead-end, empty-headed life YOU grew up in. 19 He paid with Christ’s sacred blood, YOU know. He died like an unblemished, sacrificial lamb. 20 And this was no afterthought. Even though it has only lately—at the end of the ages—become public knowledge, God always knew he was going to do this for YOU. 21 It’s because of this sacrificed Messiah, whom God then raised from the dead and glorified, that YOU trust God, that you know YOU have a future in God.
Over time every experience fades a little, as I expect it has even for Captain Richard Phillips over the past 16 years. In the same way our experience of being converted to Christ or having the first taste of our faith really coming alive can fade a little. But Peter reminds us that it is the reality of that experience that counts. We have been ransomed.
Just as Richard Phillips is still alive because he was rescued from pirates by the US Navy, just as my friend didn’t die in the Tsunami like so many tragically did and 20 years later is alive and well, we have a future in God because we were ransomed by the death of Jesus. Just because we don’t wake up every morning on a high doesn’t mean our lives haven’t been changed. Jesus has secured OUR future in God.
- IMPERISHABLE
Which leads us to the second repeated word that stands out in chapter 1 of 1 Peter is IMPERISHABLE — in both last week’s section and again this week:
- 3–4: [God] has given us new birth … 4 into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you
- 18: You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold
- 23: You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.
Once again Peter reminds us that for Christians the result of Jesus death and resurrection is “a new birth” (v. 3) from God. New birth from God results in eternal life and is therefore “imperishable.”
Our physical birth — as miraculous as it is — results only in a mortal life that will perish. Sadly, we know very well that the words Peter quotes from the prophet Isaiah in Old Testament, chapter 40 (v. 6–8), are true:
24–25: For
“All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls
25 but the word of the Lord endures forever.”
That word is the good news [literally, gospel] that was announced to you.
- THE MOUNTAINTOP
I was only 4 months old at the time, but some of us here may remember hearing about a sermon by Martin Luther King, delivered at a rally in Memphis on 3 April 1968. You’ll be glad to know I’m not going to attempt to sound like him, but King let me repeat some of King’s words:
Well I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter to me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life—longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. (The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Claybourne Carson, Little, Brown & Company, 1999, page 365; emphasis by Michael Eric Dyson, I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr., The Free Press, 2000, p. 2)
Remarkably, as many of you would know, this was King’s last sermon. On the very next day, 4 April 1968, King was assassinated by a sniper on the balcony of his hotel room.
When King spoke of having been to the mountaintop, looked over, and seen the promised land, he was thinking of justice for his fellow African Americans. If he was speaking today, I suspect he’d say that that promised land was still far away … and he’d probably say something similar about the experience of Aboriginal Australians.
Of course, the “mountaintop” image was not original to King. King was a Christian minister and his imagery came from the Old Testament passage in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 34 (v. 1–8; see also 32:48–52) where, after 40 years in the desert, God allowed Moses to go up Mount Nebo and see into the promised land, and know that the people would get there, even though Moses himself would die before they entered the land.
Peter did not use that same imagery. But I believe that what was saying in his letter to the Christians suffering in exile was they’d had their own mountaintop-like experience when they believed in Jesus. “You have come to trust in God, who raised Jesus from the dead” (v. 21). You know he will do the same for you. You might not be in the promised land yet, but you have been to the mountaintop and looked in.
This year with Anglican churches and organisations around Australia we focus on sharing our Christian “hope.” As we look forward to further Hope25 events later in the year, we can be assured of that our hope is secure in Jesus Christ and that is definitely a hope we can share with confidence.
Amen