SCRIPTURE: 1 Peter 3:13-22
TEXT: 21And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, THEME: INTRODUCTION When I first became your pastor, the scripture that was popular was from Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no vision, the people will perish.” I was asked what my vision for Wailuku Union Church was. I said, “I don’t know, I haven’t been here long enough.” Even when I went to the Ecumenical Minister Meetings, they repeated the same passage. I didn’t think that coming up with a vision was my job. God was not speaking to me about the church. Were we going to perish? A few years later, we engaged in a process of discernment called the New Creation Initiative. We learned a few steps to discern the will of God. It included the reading of scripture, reading what the great minds of the church were writing, asking members what scriptures seem to be popping up, observing what God doing around us. As we shared and prayed with each other, we actually were able to come up with a few images of the church and what God was saying to us. SCRIPTURE It’s easy to get lost in all of the details of the passage. So one way to unpack it is for us to start at the end, with verse 21 21And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. From this verse we can see that there are two ways in which people try to approach salvation. The first way uses baptism to remove sin, as water removes dirt from the body. The right ritual or atoning sacrifice would win favor from an angry God. The second way is forgiveness from a loving parent God, which reconciles our relationship with God as described ‘as an appeal to God for a good conscience’. This is all that we need. Loving forgiveness is more than enough for our reconciliation with God to take place. The resurrected Jesus is seen in those who discern God’s will and are participating in God’s mission. When Jesus is seen as only sacrificing his life as a payment for our sin, it reduces our relationship with God to financial transaction of debt reconciliation. Salvation is not about being debt free with God. The goal of salvation is to be in relationship with the Creator of all things. When all we are looking for is a way for us to make things right with God, our Christianity can become selfish, self-serving and gives us a false sense of righteousness. We like a salvation that escapes death, saves ourselves, escapes the plagues of the apocalypse, but Jesus doesn’t shy away from suffering in order to bring us to God, this becomes uncomfortable for us. We like having Jesus dying on the cross as a payment of our sins but shouldn’t we be trying to follow his example. So don’t be surprised if we find ourselves suffering because we are doing what we believe God wants us to do. Now the first verse (13) makes sense, “… who will harm us if we are eager to do what is good?” Those who are evil will cause us to suffer. Those who are threatened by what we do for God because it will disturb what they have. As we discern the will of God there will be those who will push back against us, not understanding God’s mission, not wanting to change, not wanting to try something new, not wanting to use their resources in a way different from how we have used them in the past. Peter’s letter arrives to households that held slaves. We all know of the suffering that came from those who worked to abolish slavery, apartheid, racism, separatism, agism, gender-ism, sexism and other kinds of ‘ism’s’ that diminished the humanity of any person for any reason. Last week we discussed carrying the Lord’s name in vain from Exodus. It is about when we don’t behave in a way becoming of God, whom we represent. When we diminish others humanity, we are diminishing God’s image. When we move to correct that sort of behavior in our community, we are doing God’s work, but there are others who react because of a fear of a perceived loss, over the perceived good of sharing to make others whole. Then the last verse in this passage is brought to light, as Jesus is Lord, gone into heaven, at the right hand of God, ages authorities and powers subject to him. It’s not, ‘Jesus do this for me’, but me doing what Jesus wants. APPLICATION When we suffer, how do we know we are doing what God wants us to do or that we should stop what we are doing? This past week I was asked to consider being a member of our Conference’s Innovation and Engagement Missional Team. I told them that I had my own innovation and engagement project that I was working on here at Wailuku Union Church. Then I retold the story of how we got here, discerning God’s call. Coming up with our mission statement. The doors that opened and the doors that closed. The Parable of the Good Samaritan. Those born and raised on Maui given the opportunity to have an affordable place to rent to raise their families, as being the fallen traveler. Wailuku Union Church being the innkeeper in the retelling of this story. I told the story of how we sing new songs, try new things, have an environment where making mistakes is how we learn. We are small and have no business thinking about doing these kind of things, but have been at it for 20 years because we believe this is what God is calling us to do. I didn’t tell her that with each obstacle so far, we have navigated through them and we will continue until the project is complete or God tells us to stop. The fruits have been good; faithfulness, sharing, maturity, community, and love. We trust the process; God has brought new people at each stage to help us when we have needed them. We have been able to change our vision of this project as God continued to sharpen our vision. God continues to provide for our church even through the pandemic, no county fair income for several years now and rising cost. Our church community is on line and in person but it is the same congregation. We are open to learn what it will be like to be the church in the future. We are open to hear other ways to understand what being Christian is all about from an evolving theology and understanding of scripture. We are exploring how our three churches in the Wailuku Parish may be able to share our resources instead of compete against each other. God is still speaking. How about that? They asked if I’d be a resource for other churches to call. CONCLUSION The resurrected Jesus can be seen amongst those who are discerning the will of God. They are alive, changing, transforming, evolving. Discernment is what ‘an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ’ (21b), is all about. We want God to speak clearly, plainly, slowly and right away to us. But God does not (usually). God gives us enough to hang in there, a community to hold. Us in prayer as we wait, scripture for encouragement, but always answers in a timely manner. This is how we learn the rhythm of God and acquire a good conscience with God.
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