7 May 2023
1 Peter 2:2-10
The folks who constructed Israelite identity in the ancient Near East crafted a story emphasizing racial purity, the idea that all members of their tribe were descended from the twelve sons of Jacob. They often located neighboring people as the children of those cast out of the tribe, of Ham, disgraced son of Noah, or of Ishmael, discarded son of Abraham.
They celebrated a narrative of ethnic cleansing and genocide as recorded in the Books of Joshua and Judges, of burning cities and dead babies. Their holy texts were filled with polemic against inter-marriage and multiculturalism, against Jezebel and her priests. When the Israelite elite returned from the Babylonian Captivity, they convinced themselves that the lower classes who had been left behind were no longer pure, justifying the expropriation of their land.
That version, of course, is utterly false, historically and theologically. Scripture provides several examples of people and groups absorbed into Israel, Ruth and Rahab among them. Modern scholarship is pretty clear that there was not a widespread campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide when the small group of escapees from Pharaoh’s Egypt settled in Canaan, the Promised Land, but that instead that small group, possibly only those who came to be known as the Levites, forged this new collective identity while merging with the existing Canaanite population. Their understanding of the holy, which they believed was the result of direct revelation, was formed over centuries, absorbing elements of Midianite and Canaanite belief.
Then, just like today, there were people who insisted that there was an “us” and there was a “them” that was defined by birth, that identity was a fixed thing.
So intense was the sense of tribal competition that when city dwellers in Jerusalem started adopting modern customs from the Greek culture that dominated the eastern Mediterranean, becoming Hellenized, rural residents of Judea rose up in armed rebellion, led by religious fundamentalists in what is known as the Maccabean or Hasmonean rebellion.
Today, this is celebrated as a victory for monotheism, for Jewish identity and the worship of Yahweh, but if we are honest, it was no different than the “us” versus “them” in the United States today, the insane racist paranoia of “replacement theory” propagandists, the narrative of a metropolitan and cosmopolitan elite at odds with “real America,” real America defined as racially-segregated and white dominated patriarchy.
So while today’s epistle, this throwaway text that isn’t even authentically Peter, might seem unimportant, it points to something important that really was happening in early Christianity, something we see also in Luke’s account of the early church, in Paul’s authentic and pseudographic letters to the church.
Early Christianity was the formation of a new identity, individually and collectively. The Christian communities in places like Corinth, Thessaloniki, and Rome were porous and diverse. Many were led by women. They included the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy. No one was unacceptable, unwelcome, not the Ethiopian eunuch baptized by Philip at the roadside, a man who would never be considered Temple-worthy under the Mosaic Code, not the uncircumcised Gentile eating unclean food.
Early Christian community was wildly egalitarian. Anyone could become a Christian, and by all accounts they did. The thing that held them together was not ethnicity, status, or class. It was a core belief that a good God was deeply engaged in the world, and that they were part of that engagement.
The church was always intended to be a lifeboat for sinners, and sinners come in many shapes and sizes. We need grace and a grace-bearing community for about a million different reasons. Though it is an image fit for another season, I have always seen the church as the “Island of Misfit Toys,” mindful that it is those misfits who ultimately save the day.
But humans being humans, we default to similarity. Here in America, waves of immigrants brought their own religious beliefs and customs, formed their own churches. Structural racism, even among the would-be anti-racists in the North, meant that Christians were mostly segregated in worship.
And as the fires of religious fervor cooled, as we switched our allegiance to neoliberal consumer capitalism, even here on the edge of what was once called the “Burned-over district,” we settled into a pattern of worship largely divided by race, class, and education, which all track together. In the white Protestant Mainline, we are cool and rational and utterly boring.
We are at our best when we are at a diverse table, and our table is most diverse when we engage the world with passion, when we march for women’s live and rights, when we embrace the LGBTQI+ community in the midst of a hurricane of hatred. People are attracted to passion and action.
It might have been okay in 1980 to keep our heads down and trust that cultural Christianity would fill our pews and pay to keep the lights on, but that is no longer the case. Our politeness will be the death of us, and our caution has nothing to do with the man we celebrate this Eastertide, a man who said outlandish things, who changed lives, challenged empire, and defeated death itself.
Those gathered in Christian communities in those early days, on Solomon’s Porch before the Temple was destroyed, in the homes of powerful women, in the catacombs when hiding was necessary, they became a people, just as the unknown author of today’s epistle declared, a tribe defined not by birth or region, but by a shared language of love, a shared way of living in the world, and an absolute belief that there was a better way than the ruthlessness and violence they saw all around them.
And there is a better way than the ruthlessness and violence we see all around us. Than the yelling and bullying and scapegoating and demagoguery.
For like our church, our nation is best when it is diverse, not the white supremacy of the Proud Boys or the Christian Nationalism of Ron DeSantis, but a country where Ilhan Omar sits in the Congress, where Ketanji Brown Jackson sits on the Supreme Court, where Bad Bunny can win a Grammy.
You have now become a people. Not an audience. Not a customer. I am not a dispenser of spiritual goods and services but am instead your partner in this great work, for we are called to Easter the world every day, to call life out of the cold dark tomb, to show up in the rooms where people are gathered and afraid, to take hold of Peter when he is sinking beneath the waves and guide him back to the boat.
The United Church of Christ is not an institution, and The Park Church is neither this building nor its history, as glorious as both may be. You are a people, fed in this place at the table of love, remembering that night when he broke bread with his disciples, mindful that there will always be a Golgotha, but there will also always be an empty tomb, and a fire that comes down from heaven with good news in every tongue that can be spoken.
And that stone, that stone that has been rolled away, no longer trapping love in the dark, that stone on which so many stumble, it is the stone on which we build. We don’t need dogma or doctrine or details. We just need unwavering belief in the goodness of God, the power of love, and the sure belief that we are called and given exactly the gifts we need. We are now a people, God’s people. May it always be so. Amen.