Hi all--here is the sermon from this past Sunday, August 6. It is based on 1 Peter 2:1-5 (read it here:
http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=21969387).
One of the things I find so refreshing about children is the way they speak. Ask an adult if they want a cookie, and all sorts of questions start going around in their mind: Should I have a cookie? Will it give me too many grams of fat for the day? Do they already have the cookies out or will they have to open a package? Will it be inconvenient for them to get me a cookie? Is this a trick question–do they not really have cookies at all? Ask a child if they want a cookie and the answer is always–“Yes.” No equivocation, no beating around the bush, no double-mindedness. Just a simple “Yeah, I want a cookie. You bet I want a cookie!” Adults are capable of taking a very simple question and making it very complex.
It is at this point where Peter begins to address his audience of Christians. Peter knows that Christians also are very capable of making very simple things very complicated. And so he says, “Rid yourselves of all guile, insincerity, envy and slander.” Peter wants his audience to be guileless; a guileless person is a person who is slightly naive, the opposite of manipulative. A person with guile is able to get their way without you knowing it; Peter says, “Rid yourselves of guile;” don’t be that way; be guileless, don’t be conniving. Further, he says, “Rid yourselves of insincerity.” Be sincere with each other. Don’t say one thing while you mean another. “Rid yourselves of envy.” Don’t be jealous of what another person has, don’t wish that another person’s life is your life. “Rid yourselves of slander.” Don’t say destructive things about another person, especially when that person is not there to defend themselves or to argue with you.
It is interesting to me that these four traits–guile, insincerity, envy and slander–are four traits we generally admire in our celebrities. A person with guile, who can deceive you behind your back while keeping up a good front, can go on Survivor and win a million dollars. While we might not like insincere people in person, we don’t mind it so much from a distance. We admire envious people, people who are not satisfied with who they are now but are always trying to become someone different. We even admire people who are slanderous, who can put other people down in humorous or devastating ways. People who are like this can win at the social games this world plays; people like this can rise to the top. It’s very common for us–even good Christians–to admire people who demonstrate guile, insincerity, envy and slander.
But Peter tells us that we Christians are to be different, that we are to “rid ourselves” of these things. The Greek word here for “Rid yourselves” is the same word as “Take off” like a piece of clothing. Those things–the guile, the insincerity, the envy, the slander–they’re not part of you; they’re like something you wear; and these things are not particularly flattering on a Christian. Beautiful clothes highlight and accent the natural beauty of the person wearing them. But ugly clothes only demonstrate a person’s bad taste. In the same way, when we adorn ourselves with good deeds and humility, it highlights and accents the beauty God gives each of us. But when we insist on wearing things like guile, insincerity, envy and slander, we demonstrate the weakness of our own character. The world may find it attractive, but the truth is, it’s not.
Peter tells us that we are to have a different role model than the celebrities of this world. We are not to admire celebrities who show guile, insincerity, envy and slander. Instead, Peter has a very different role model in mind. He says, “Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk.” We are not to seek to be like the people who win at this world’s games, nor people who rise to the top. Rather, Peter tells us that we are to be like newborn infants, craving pure spiritual milk.
You can probably tell by looking at Grace that she’s pretty well-fed. There’s not a whole lot of instances I can point to where she’s had to go hungry. Even on those rare occasions where Jill is not available to feed her at meal times, we usually have a bottle on hand to feed her with, and she does pretty well. Eating is one of Gracie’s great passions, really; she loves to eat! When it gets to be mealtime, when she knows she’ll be eating soon, she might start flailing her arms around, or kicking her legs around. And when it finally comes to the moment of truth, she kind of gets this wild-eyed look, what we call the pirate look, where she looks at her dinner, makes the pirate look, and then pounces and enjoys her meal with relish!
It’s this image–the image of a baby so excited that she flails her arms and kicks her feet in anticipation–that comes to mind when I envision Peter telling people to crave pure, spiritual milk. Gracie’s body knows that she needs that milk to survive and to grow, and so eating for her is a passion. She craves that milk, and she gets so excited when she knows that milk is coming that she can barely hold herself together. Peter wants us to long for pure spiritual milk in the same way Gracie longs for physical milk.
What does Peter mean by spiritual milk? Spiritual milk is anything that helps us to grow up into the image of Christ, anything that helps us to grow up and become more like our Father. Spiritual milk is many things–for one, it is Bible study. Studying the Bible helps us to grow into the image of Christ. We can’t claim to be followers of the Bible if we have no idea what it says. I think worship is also spiritual milk. The act of joining together on a Sunday morning, setting this time as a priority and allowing it to be first in our lives helps us to grow; it shapes us and forms us if we allow it too. Prayer is also spiritual milk; in prayer, we open ourselves to God’s creative action in our lives. We ask God for specific things, but when we pray, we also find ourselves saying, “Thy will be done” and in this way we learn to give our lives more fully to God. This helps us to grow and so prayer, too, is spiritual milk. Finally, I think intentional acts of service are spiritual milk because they help us to change and grow, laying ourselves down and learning to consider others before ourselves. There are many other forms of spiritual milk, too–fasting, solitude, celebration, and silence are among them.
Peter tells us that we should long for these things, that we should long for the God-centered life that these bring, in the same way that Gracie longs for milk. We should be excited when the opportunity comes around to take in some more spiritual milk; and it should bother us a bit when we haven’t had spiritual milk for a while. (Believe me, it bothers Gracie when she hasn’t had her milk in a while.) Worship, study, prayer, service–all of these actions should be the very sustenance of a Christian. They should be our daily bread, the very stuff of life for us. We cannot grow as a Christian–indeed, we cannot even survive very long–without regularly having our spiritual milk.
I think it’s interesting the decision Peter sets before us. He gives us a picture of two different people and says that we can choose which one we want to be. On one hand there is the person characterized by guile, insincerity, envy and slander, always looking out for themselves; and on the other there is this newborn infant who craves spiritual milk. And these two people are about as different as can be. The first person knows what they want and they can manipulate their way to get it; but a newborn baby can’t do any of that; they can just gratefully receive the milk when they get it. The first kind of person is smooth and detached, careful never to let you really get to know them. The baby can’t play those kinds of games and is simple and plain and honest and straightforward. When they’re happy, they smile; when they’re sad, they scream.
God would prefer that we become like newborn babies, desiring simple things, longing for spiritual sustenance instead self-ambition and self-glorification. But we can’t overlook the fact that the world we live in often encourages us to be like that other kind of person, looking out for ourselves, seeing how we can manipulate a situation to our benefit, utilizing guile, insincerity, envy and slander to get our own way. The world often looks at people who crave God’s presence, who crave spiritual growth, and says that people like that are religious fanatics. “Religious fanatics” who just don’t know how to keep their religion under control. The world believes it’s OK to be a little bit religious, as long as you go to a respectable church and don’t let it impact you too much. But a newborn baby–honestly–doesn’t care what other people think of it, what other people call it. It just wants milk!
There’s a song by Lyle Lovett called “Fat Babies.” And the chorus just says, “Fat babies have no pride...and that’s OK. Who needs pride?” And that’s true. Gracie loves her meals and eats like no one is watching. You know that phrase, “Dance like no one is watching?” Gracie eats like no one is watching. She doesn’t care if she looks like a fool, she doesn’t care if other people laugh at her, or if other people are condescending to her. She just wants milk. And in the same way, we Christians often have to be different from the world around us. The world needs to see Christians who are unashamed about wanting spiritual milk, unashamed about the delight we take in God first and foremost. The world needs people who worship like no one’s watching, who study and pray and serve like no one’s watching, just for the delight of partaking of that sweet spiritual milk, no matter what others might say.
Peter tells us the choice is ours–he says we need to take off that first person like a garment, and start to long for different things, start to have different priorities, start to crave God and spiritual growth. Now why does Peter care? Furthermore, why should you care? Why should you take me seriously and change your life, become a different person, a person who craves spiritual milk? What compelling reason is there for all of us here making that change? After all, it’s a big deal to start living in a different way. Why bother?
I think Peter answers that question for us in the next couple verses. “Come to him,” says Peter, “a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight...” Here Peter refers to Jesus. He calls him a living stone–a strong and sturdy foundation, but alive, not merely an inanimate object like a regular stone. “Come to him...and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
Peter’s dream for us is that just like Jesus is a living stone who is the foundation of the house, that we will be the individual stones that make up a spiritual house. Together, with Jesus as the foundation, we will make a new house of God, a place where spiritual sacrifices are offered by a new priesthood. We are to be, as one commentator puts it, a “temple made of people.” God will live not in a house of brick and stone, but in a house of people, with Jesus as the foundation-stone and Jesus’ followers as the stones. And so God goes wherever his people go. God goes with his people when they serve the poor. God goes with his people when they live lives of submissive love as a witness to the world. When you care for a person who is sick or dying, when you care for one the world hates, God goes with you, because God doesn’t live in a temple made of bricks and stone, but a temple made of people.
This, I think, is why Peter wants us to be like newborns, desperate for nourishment, desperate for growth. If we are truly going to be a good temple made of people; if people are really going to look at us and see God’s dwelling-place, it will depend on our willingness to lay aside our pride and become like little babies. To become God’s dwelling-place in any meaningful way, it will mean being different from the rest of the world, becoming like infants instead of like cool celebrities. To become a real dwelling place for God, our spiritual growth and nourishment will have to be a priority in our lives. Just like Gracie has nothing else in her life as important as eating, we will have to make it priority #1 to attend to our spirit and its longing and yearning for the living God.
Then, we will begin to truly be living stones; then, we will be able to take God out into the world and show the world how good He truly is.
