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! Think about it. For nine months, we lived in our mother’s body in a warm waterbed called a womb, hooked up to an I.V. called an umbilical cord. And in that comfortable cocoon, all we did was just float around doing absolutely nothing because everything was done for us. Oxygen, food, nutrients, and immunity from diseases were all provided for by our mothers. I don’t know about your mother, but my mother even provided entertainment for me. While she was pregnant with me, she went to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and she told me that I seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed it! So, we’re in this womb, and just when we get used to it, something terrible happens! We get rudely pushed out of our warm, comfortable cocoon through a tiny canal that misshapes our heads, and we’re dumped into a cold, harsh world, where we have to learn to do things for ourselves, like breathe and eat and walk! As newborns, we’re uprooted from everything that we’ve known and we find ourselves strangers in a strange new world. We’re challenged to live in a different way than what we’ve been used to. And that’s not an easy thing. No wonder most newborns cry when they are born! And if they were self-aware, newborns would probably ask themselves: “How are we to live in such a place? How will we survive?”
As we continue with our sermon series from 1 Peter, we are reminded that Peter was writing to a group of people who probably were recent newborn Christians who found themselves uprooted from their homes and scattered throughout a strange new land. In chapter 1, verse 1 of this letter, Peter addressed these people as “strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.” In chapter 1, verse 3, Peter describes these people as newborn children, whom God has given new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Peter was addressing relatively newborn Christians who were uprooted from their homes and were scattered to the eastern-most colonies of the Roman empire, an area that is now known as Turkey. In this desolate and pagan place, these displaced Christians probably asked themselves: “How are we to live in such a place? How will our faith survive?”
For Christians today, sometimes it can be hard to face the challenges for faithfully living out the Christian life. We live in a culture that many times demands that we act a certain way, value certain things like money, power, and success. We are bombarded by messages that say we have to be sexually attractive, slim and fit in order to be liked, popular and famous. And even if we don’t get those messages from our parents, we get them from TV, movies and our peers. And if we don’t adhere to our culture’s values, then we are often seen as misfits and strange. For Christians, trying to faithfully live out the Christian life in our world can be confusing, and many may ask themselves: “How are we to live in such a place? How will our faith survive?”
In our passage this morning, Peter answers these questions by reminding us of our true identity: in Christ’s resurrection, we are born anew to be the children of God the Father. Back in 2002, Toby Keith sang a song called “Who’s Your Daddy?” And if Peter were around today, he would reply: “God is our Daddy.” And as God’s children, Peter tells us in verse 17, “Call on God the Father and live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.” Now, many modern Christians have problems relating to God as someone to be feared. Whether we are reacting against images of a wrathful God proclaimed by hell and brimstone preachers or from our experiences with angry abusive earthly fathers, we would rather focus on a “loving” heavenly Father, instead of one that we should fear. I understand and I want to be sensitive to that. But, on the other hand, there are some Christians who think of God merely as a divine teddy bear, or a doting grandpa who lets them get away with anything and provides no discipline or boundaries. Peter reminds us that as children of the heavenly Father, we are to have a reverent fear, a healthy respect for the holiness of God, who judges all people with impartiality.
Peter was addressing a people who lived in a time and place where the Roman emperor considered himself to be a god and he ruled by instilling fear upon his subjects. And while we don’t live in fear of our government leaders-well, most of the time anyway-we often live in fear of what others might think of us because we have different values and beliefs. In high school, I was often afraid of what my classmates might think of me because I wasn’t rich like them. In college, I was often afraid that other people might think of me as “holier than thou” because I went to church on Sundays and didn’t do certain things like drinking and partying. But as Oswald Chambers once said: “It is the most natural thing in the world to be scared, and the clearest evidence that God’s grace is at work in our hearts is when we do not get into panics. . . . The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else.”[2]
After reminding us to have a reverent fear of God that frees us to be His children, Peter then reminds us just how much God loves us. Peter says that “for you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” The verb translated “redeemed” comes from a word that was used in Greco-Roman culture to refer to purchasing the freedom of a person from slavery. The God who made us loved us enough to purchase our freedom not with silver or gold, but with the eternal precious blood of his Son Jesus Christ.
There once was a little boy who made a toy sailboat. He carefully carved the hull from a block of wood and painted it blue. Then he fitted it with a mast and sails. When it was finished, he decided to try it on the lake in the city park. It was a beautiful day. The boy tied a cord to the front of the boat and set it in the water. The wind caught the sail and hurried the boat away. Soon the boat came to the end of the cord. But a puff of wind blew so hard that the cord broke, and the boat sailed away toward the far side of the lake. The boy cried, but the boat was gone. Several months later, as the little boy was walking through the city streets, he passed a pawnshop. There in the window was his sailboat! It was scratched and dirty, and the sails were torn. But it was definitely his own boat! Someone had found the boat and sold it to the pawnshop owner. Now it had a price tag of $2.00 on it. The boy hurried home and gathered up all his money. He hurried back to the shop, and bought the boat. He took it home, cleaned it, and gave it a fresh coat of paint and a new sail. Then as he looked happily at it, he said, “Little boat, you are twice mine. I made you, and now I bought you.”
This is a beautiful illustration of God’s love for us. God not only created us, but God also redeemed and bought us with the precious blood of Christ, God’s only Son, a lamb without blemish or defect. This is the same Christ who was chosen before the creation of the world, who in fact was the Word that spoke creation into being. This is the same Christ whom God raised from the dead and glorified, and is now revealed to us in these last days. This is the same Christ in whom our faith and our hope rest. And because of Christ, we belong twice to God the Father, the first time because He made us, the second time because He redeemed us for a new birth.
For Jewel and for everyone else here who has experienced a new birth in Christ, we are born again into a whole new world as God’s children. And that can be as disorienting as being born for the first time. For when we are born anew into God’s kingdom, in some ways, we are uprooted from everything that we’ve known about the old world, and we are challenged to live in a different way than what we’ve been used to. We are called to stop believing in Satan, the Father of lies. Instead we are called to obey the truth of God, our heavenly Father. We are called to let go of our selfishness, our pride, our sloth, our insecurities and our fears so that we might be freed to love one another deeply with a sincere love that comes from the heart. That’s not always an easy thing to do, and there are many places in the New Testament where Christians are exhorted not to remain spiritual babies always needing others to teach them, carry them, and feed them. Instead those who experience a new birth are called to mature into the fullness of Christ.
And so this morning, for Jewel and for everyone else who has experienced the purifying waters of baptism, we are all called to live in the reality of our new birth. No, not every day is going to be a cake walk. There will be days of challenge and of growth. But the good news is that once we’ve been born again, we are born not of perishable seed, which is the life we have through our earthly parents, a life whose glory at its best is like the fragile flowers of the field. In that life, we sprout, bloom, wither and die. But the life we have through our heavenly Father is of imperishable seed, made eternal though the living and enduring word of God.
In other words, we are made to last. This is wonderful news in our throwaway culture, where we discard fast food wrappers, Styrofoam cups, batteries, cell phones and other commodities when they are no longer useful to us. I remember when I was in college, my roommate wore a cheap $7 plastic digital watch. While we were having dinner at the dining hall one night, his watch died. And instead of buying a new battery, which probably cost more than the watch, he simply placed his dead watch in a glass of half-drunk Coke on his cafeteria tray, and sent the tray down the conveyor belt to the dishwasher. A couple of minutes later, a frantic student worker ran out of the kitchen with my roommate’s watch in his hand, shouting, “Hey, someone lost a watch! Someone lost a watch!” We had a great laugh that night, but it is also a great example of our throwaway culture in which it makes more sense to throwaway an old watch than to buy a replacement battery. And even if we don’t throw things away, we often trade in our old computers, cars and homes to upgrade to newer models. Sometimes, people do that even with spouses! But for those of us who are born again in Christ, God the Father will never throw us away or trade us in for better models. Jesus promises us in John 10:28-29: “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.” Jesus was saying, in Him, we are made to last.
Jewel, as you have made your public profession of faith in Christ and followed that up with your baptism, I want you to know that, in Christ, you have been born again and you are made to last forever. I know that you are the jewel in your parents’ eyes, but you will be forever a precious jewel in your heavenly Father’s eyes. We celebrate your new birth in Christ, even as we remember the time when we were born again. And we give all praise and glory to the great God who made it all possible! Amen.
[1] http://tinacassidy.blogspot.com/2007/06/cost-of-giving-birth.html.
[2] Reprinted in “Wisdom in a Time of War,” Christianity Today (1-07-02), p. 47.
