The Special WE
September 6, 2009 1 Pet 2:9-12
Intro:
We are special. That is a true statement, and an important one. We are special – we, the people of God called Laurier Heights Baptist Church are special. As true as the statement is, it is problematic. We hear “special”, and think “superior”: if we are special then that must mean we are better than others somehow, there must be something about us that makes us great in comparison to the other churches around. That thought, that “special” somehow means “superior”, reveals a wrong way we think about what “the church” actually is. We tend to see church as an organization which we voluntarily choose to be a part of, which exists to do certain things, chief among them being to meet our individual needs of a spiritual nature. “Church” becomes kind of like a store where we go to get our “spiritual stuff” taken care of, and so then we choose the “store” that we like best, and we go to get our needs met. But that “store” idea of church is completely wrong – that is not what “church” is. Let’s look again at 1 Peter, which we’ve been working through this summer, for a better description.
1 Peter 2:9-12
9But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
11Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 12Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
The Problem With “You”:
Right off the bat, we have a problem. Peter writes, “but you”, and in English we don’t have a different word for “you” singular and “you” plural. Unless you are from Texas, and like to say, “y’all”. This is a critical problem, because we automatically assume “you” means “me”, not “you” means “us”. We hear Peter and we assume, “I am chosen, I am royal, I am holy, I belong to God…”. Maybe I am special… and there is a subtle programming of our faith into an individual experience. It becomes about me – where I fit, what I get out of it, what I experience, what I need. And this feeds right into our expectation of church as a place for me and my needs, that store-type idea where I become a consumer of religious goods and services. This becomes even more harmful when the “me” focus turns negative, and we start thinking/feeling things like maybe I’m not special, maybe I don’t fit in, my needs aren’t being met. The root of the problem is still the same, however – we think it is about “me”.
I think Peter would be shocked, because his “you” is very clearly the plural “you all”. His description that follows is not about individual Christians, but about who we are together. So we need to put this into our own voice, and read verse 9 like this: “WE are a chosen people, WE are a royal priesthood, WE are a holy nation, WE are a people belonging to God”. And that, my friends, is what makes us special.
Chosen:
The first of Peter’s descriptions of who we are is a “chosen people”. I want to pause here for a bit, because this is a critical theme of the entire book of 1 Peter, it is actually one of Peter’s favorite words in the letter. We saw it in the very first verse of the letter, “To God’s elect” (same Greek word), repeated in vs. 2. “who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (same Greek word), applied to Jesus in 2:4, 6; “4As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him… See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone”. Now the link is made between Jesus and us (plural): we are “a chosen people”. This link from Jesus to us is deliberate and foundational, listen to this: “The supremely important point here is that the basic OT promises and predicates, which originally applied to the people of Israel, are now transferred to the universal Christian community… the transfer is wholly grounded upon, and executed by Christ.” (TDNT 4:190).
My point is that this defines our community. We, the people of God at Laurier, are, because of Jesus, chosen by God to be His people, and thus we inherit all the promises, blessings, and responsibilities that God has from the beginning of time given to His people. Now, again, this is not an individual thing, but rather a community thing. This is who “we” are, and this makes us special.
Ok so far? Now we need to recognize how this “choosing” by God works – it is extended to us as a gift, which we must receive and accept. Here there is an individual component, we each must accept personally this invitation to be part of God’s people, and a collective component, together we accept God’s invitation to be God’s people. God’s choosing us is never an imposed ultimatum, it is an offer made in love. And when we accept it personally, we join the community of God’s people, and agree then together to live out all that it means to be God’s people.
Let me try to make this all a little clearer and simpler with an analogy. As a young man, I became part of a growing relationship of love with a beautiful young woman. We agreed together to unite in marriage, and from that moment on the “I” took a backstage to the “we”. I joined a new family, and become interdependent with my wife and her extended community, our family expanded to include Thomas. We are special, not because we are “superior” or “better” than any other family, but because of the bond of love we share and because of the bond of life we share. I’m not in my family to get as much out of it for me as I can, I don’t see my family as a place to cater to my needs and wants. Instead it is a place to belong, to be significant, to serve, to know love, and to experience security and life together. And that, to me, is how Peter defines the church.
Chosen, Royal, Holy, Belong
Peter says we are “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.” Those are lofty descriptions, but that is exactly who we are as a Christian community. Chosen. Royal priests – not in the sense that we are priests who are royal, but rather in the sense that we are the priests to the royalty – Jesus the King, and we are his priests. Holy, not in the sense of morally pure, but in the sense of “set apart” for special use. And finally, a people who belong, who are God’s. These are truths that we need to let sink it, to define us. They change how we see the church, they reverse our tendency to see it as something for us, and instead define church as an incredible thing that God has created for Him, which we have been invited and chosen to be a part of. If we accept God’s invitation, we get to be part of His chosen people, His royal priesthood, His holy nation, His very people.
Chosen for a purpose:
The last half of verse 9 tells us for what purpose we have been chosen. This is the “responsibilities” side of the coin. Why did God choose us? What are we supposed to do/be? Why do we exist? What is this whole church thing about, anyway? “that you (plural) may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” There it is, plain and simple. God called us, chose us, to “declare the praises of him”. The “out of and into” part is elaborated on in the next verse, so let’s just stay with this idea of “declaring the praises” for now. What does this mean? Ideas/suggestions? To whom are we supposed to be declaring these?
Vs. 10:
This next verse is a very clear reference to an Old Testament book called Hosea. Hosea’ story is a fascinating one – God commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute, and they had children whose names were all symbolic. The second child was a daughter, and God commanded Hosea to name her “Lo-Ruhamah”, which means “not loved”; the third child was a son, and God commanded Hosea to name him “Lo-Ammi”, which means “not my people”. If you want to know more then read Hosea. For our purposes today, Peter is simply using this language to remind his readers that the incredible privileges they enjoy today, as chosen people, royal priests, holy nation, people belonging to God, was not always the case. We were called out of darkness and into light. Things have changed, we are different now, our very identity as community is radically altered because of all that Jesus has done, which we accept by faith.
Living out our identity (vs. 11-12):
A couple months ago when I introduced us to 1 Peter, I talked about a rhythm in the book – Peter tells us who we are, then how we should live. It is a critically important order, which we sometimes reverse: we think that if we live the right way, do the right things, behave, then God will love and accept us. That is completely wrong, which the rhythm in Peter makes clear. The actions come out of who we are – God loves us and chooses us not because we act a certain way, He chooses us out of love and gives us (plural) a new identity, and then we live out of that new identity. That rhythm continues here – since we now understand in a deeper way who we are as God’s chosen people, Peter gives us some instructions in how to live. They are pretty self-explanatory: “11Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 12Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”
The basic command is to stop sinning and live holy lives. Peter gives us two reasons why this is important, both built on that idea that this new way of life comes out of a new identity (which he repeats again at the beginning of verse 11, “as aliens and strangers”). The first reason is that sin destroys us – “which war against your soul”. Peter understands that our sin destroys us, it is like an enemy bomb which blows up and sends shrapnel into us that rips us up and tears us up and leaves us bloody and wounded. We sometimes see sin as harmless, Peter reminds us that it destroys all the best parts of life like freedom and joy and love. Sin is ugly and painful, it separates us from God who is the source of everything worth living for, so Peter says “abstain!” “Run away!” That stuff will wreck you, so don’t have anything to do with it. The second reason is for the sake of our witness in the world. Peter basically says, live your lives so well that even people who might want to tear you down will eventually see that we lived well.
Conclusion:
In many ways, the start of a new September is a season of beginnings. Next week we are going to kick off a new fall, with a whole bunch of new starts: a new pastor will be with us, we will be worshipping in a re-newed facility (this one might be dependent on lots of volunteer help this week – we need you!!!), a new Sunday school season, a new year of Youth ministry starts this Friday, and we’re even planning a baptism celebrating a new life in Christ. A whole bunch of newness!
Let’s start it together with a renewed commitment to be the people of God together here at Laurier. To put our “me” aside for the “we”, to recognize and accept that “WE ARE a chosen people, WE ARE a royal priesthood, WE ARE a holy people, WE ARE a people belonging to God,” and that is why we live the way we live. Different. Special. And focused, centered, responsive to our Lord Jesus Christ.
