CHRISTian

  

Text: 1 Peter 2:2-10

Focus: Being Christian

Function: to help people see the power available to them as priests to God

²Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— ³if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

⁴Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and ⁵like 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. ⁶For it stands in scripture:

“See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
    a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

⁷This honor, then, is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the very head of the corner,”

⁸and

“A stone that makes them stumble
    and a rock that makes them fall.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

⁹But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

¹⁰Once you were not a people,
    but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
    but now you have received mercy.

Good morning to the beloved children of our living and loving God.

This passage contrasts the difference between trusting in the way of Christ for healing and restoration in this world or trusting in our own way of doing things.

God gave humanity a template for loving others when God became human and walked the earth as Jesus the Nazarene.

God showed love to the world. God embodied love for us so that we can learn to love and care for the other as much as we care for ourselves.

I like the way the passage calls us a people who were chosen by God and we have become a priesthood with royal power.

I place the emphasis on God’s calling us to their own self in love.

When we do the Kairos weekend, the first thing we tell the men who come is that God has called them there for a special time of receiving God’s love and mercy for them.

The call is in love and these men certainly need the mercy that love brings.

Many of them are in prison in the first place because they did not get the right kind of love and nurture in the first place.

During the weekend, we see the walls of defense that these men have built up come down as we share from our hearts the fact that we too are not perfect and somehow we have found God’s grace and forgiveness in our own failures.

We have a series of ten talks with titles like: Choices, opening the door (to God), Studying to know God, forgiveness, Christian action and others. During these talks, we get very personal and describe, as I said, a time when we failed and God brought us through. The hope is that the men in the room can see themselves as people that God can redeem as well.

For most of the men, it seems to me that keeping hope up is their biggest challenge.

So, we remind them that God has called them there and that they are not out of God’s sight for love even though they are in such a rough place.

And the point comes from the passage that God has chosen us to be God’s special people.

I like to think of that fact that God choose me to know me and to heal and restore me.

God is in the business of healing and restoration. That is why God came to planet earth as Jesus, to heal the world of its lack of love and to change the dynamic of power in human culture.

Peter, in his contrasting those who trust Christ’s way and those who do not, speaks of how the difference is seen in the way they accept “The Word.”

John 1 tells us that Jesus is the Word.

The difference is in whether or not they obey the word of God, whether or not they obey the teachings of Jesus.

I notice that he doesn’t condemn those who do not follow Jesus, but he blesses those who do. It isn’t an us verses them mentality, it is a “God is in Christ healing the world” mentality.

One of the disciplines we have as a team on Kairos is to make sure that when we see the residents, we see Christ and the potential that Christ has inside of them, instead of looking at their past failures.

Whenever I get to pray for the team right before we enter the prison, I pray that we would treat Christ well when we care for the prisoners.

Christ’s Spirit is in everyone according to Romans 1.

Somewhere, hidden in the midst of a person’s own ego, pride, failures, and successes is Christ. And anyone can draw upon Christ’s Spirit to find the healing and restoration that Jesus envisioned for the world entire. That is why he calls us a royal Priesthood. The actual Christ dwells inside of us.

Christ shines through us in the way we love others.

And picking up that theme, the text calls us a chosen generation, as I mentioned, but also a royal priesthood.

A priest is one who has direct access to God. We do through Jesus. And we are royal priests because not only do we have this direct access to God, but we are also God’s family as we are now one with God and Christ.

That means in this world, we too, are Christ, that is why we are called Christian. We are Christ to the world and we have the same power to bring people back into the love of God by loving them into God’s family.

It hit me the middle of the night last week when I was praying for the Kairos weekend during my time slot that a Christian is a person who first and foremost models Christ.

And it helps me to remember that in this world, I too am the Christ who is called to bring God’s healing.

Let us fulfill our mission.