A Gentle Witness

Preached by Michael Cheuk
April 27, 2008, Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A
1 Peter 3:13-22

When I was a college student and active in the Baptist Student Union, now called the Baptist Collegiate Ministries or BCM, one of the things that was impressed upon me was the importance of giving a verbal witness to my faith.  I was encouraged to share Christ with my friends, my roommates, and even my professors.  Now, as I’ve told you before from previous sermons, I grew up a very shy, introverted child.  When given the choice of being alone or being with people, I much preferred being alone reading a book or doing my own thing.  And frankly, talking was not one of my strengths, much less witnessing to strangers about my faith!  And if you had told me then that God was going to call me to be a pastor, being with people all the time and speaking in front of them almost every Sunday, I would have said you were crazy.  But lo and behold, here I am.  Just goes to show you that God has an ironic sense of humor!

So back to my college days.  This witnessing thing was a major source of anxiety for me.  I studiously learned the Four Spiritual Laws and the Romans Road, but I was always afraid that I would get the presentation wrong.  I was scared that someone really smart would be able to poke holes through my logic and arguments.  I was apprehensive that I wouldn’t be able to answer a skeptic’s question like, “If God is so good and so powerful, why would God allow evil in the world?”   And while I shared a couple of times with my classmates, there was no way that I was going to “witness” to my professors.  Are you kidding?  I was just a student and you want me to witness to someone much older, smarter, and someone who has the power to alter my future academic career with a stroke of a pen?  No, thank you.  Furthermore, I had heard enough stories of Christian students being ridiculed by their professors in front of the whole class.

As we continue with our sermon series on the book of 1 Peter, I wonder if those early Christians felt the same way I did in college when it came to sharing their faith. 

Healing Wounds

Preached by Michael Cheuk
April 13, 2008, Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A
1 Peter 2:18-25

“Christianity is for sissies!” I overheard someone say years ago. He saw Christianity as a religion that encourages followers to be doormats by letting others run all over them. “And what’s this about Christianity that teaches: ‘Blessed are the meek’? Isn’t that just a way to teach people to become sacrificial lambs rather than to fight for their rights and go for the gusto?” “Karl Marx was right,” he asserted, “religion, and Christianity in particular, is an opiate of the people, sedating them into submitting themselves to unjust systems and institutions.” When I first heard him ranting and raving about this, I wasn’t sure how to respond to him. And boy, if he had only read our New Testament lesson this morning about slaves submitting themselves to their masters, both good and bad, he would probably have gone ballistic, since this passage seems to affirm everything that he disliked about Christianity.

But let’s face it, for most of us who live in twenty-first century America and who try to take the Bible seriously, verses like 1 Peter 2:18 that exhort, “Slaves, submit to your masters with all respect,” are problematic. After all, the South fought and lost a war that some say was about slavery, and verses like this have been used by Baptist preachers to justify the institution of slavery. Verses like 1 Peter 2:18 is so problematic, in fact, that the compilers of the Revised Common Lectionary omitted this verse and started the assigned passage with verse 19. But without verse 18, we lose the full context and meaning of this passage, even though it makes my job as preacher harder!

According to biblical scholars, Peter was addressing people who were most probably household slaves.[1]

Made to Last

Preached by Michael Cheuk
April 6, 2008, Third Sunday of Easter, Year A
1 Peter 1:17-23

This morning, we have witnessed a beautiful event-we witnessed Jewel Moore’s baptism, which symbolizes the new spiritual birth that has already taken place in her life as she identifies herself with the death and the resurrection of her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I tell you, the real sermon has already been preached by Jewel this morning. My comments now are mere footnotes to her beautiful testimony. As I baptized Jewel, I was reminded of the privilege it is to help bring new life into the world. I was reminded of the births of my children, Thea and Wesley. I was also reminded of the cost to bring new life into the world. It takes a lot to give birth to a child, and every mother here can testify to that. It costs a lot to give birth to a child; the average cost of an American birth is around $9000.[1] I remember four months after Thea was born, we finally received a bill from Martha Jefferson Hospital for the delivery. Beth and I joked as to whether there was a money back guarantee, so that if we were dissatisfied with our baby, we could return her for a full refund. Needless to say, we paid the bill. Bringing a new life into the world can cost a lot!

But being born is not necessarily a cake walk either. God knew what He was doing when He made it so that we wouldn’t remember our own births. Because if we did, we might be so traumatized that we would be messed up the rest of our lives!