Be What You Are

Jon Burnham preached this sermon from 1 Peter 1:17-23
on April 6, 2008 at St. John's Presbyterian Church

Our confirmands are blessed to be growing up in a church family whose love for them is deep and genuine. Someone said it takes a village to raise a child. We are that village to the youth of St. John's. We have reared these young people in the faith. They know they are loved by their parents and by this congregation. They are holy in God's eyes. God has set them apart for a particular purpose. They are joining our pilgrim band. Our message to the confirmands today is 1 Peter's message to us all: "Be who you are, holy children of God."


God calls us to a love that is deep and genuine. Our English word "love" is burdened with several meanings so let's consider some of them. When our Epistle today speaks of love as deep and genuine it means "not hypocritical" and "not feigned." Buddhists describe love as unselfish interest in others welfare. Similar, but distinct, from love is the Buddhist concept of compassion. Compassion is wanting others to be free from suffering and untouched by cruelty. The Hebrew Bible uses the word chesed which translates as loving kindness. The Hebrew word Chesed is sort of a conjunction of the Buddhist concepts of love and compassion. Chesed is an active verb that implies we will do something for one another beyond thinking good thoughts. We will take action on behalf of one another. This congregation shows chesed when we take care of one another physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.


Our confirmands are surrounded by the chesed, the loving kindness, of this congregation. They need our support because according to 1 Peter they are holy resident aliens. As the old gospel song puts it, we are poor, wayfaring strangers, traveling through this world of woe. The image of the wandering pilgrim goes all the way back into the deep roots of our faith history, as Abraham says, "My father was a wandering Aramean ..." Father Abraham who journeyed by faith from his home in Ur, modern day Iraq, to Egypt. Along the way he became the father of Isaac, father of the Hebrew people, the people of Israel. He also became the father of Ismael, the father of the Arabic peoples who eventually would follow the Prophet Mohammad. The image of the Christian as an exile, a resident alien, is further developed in the New Testament in 1 Peter and elsewhere. Later, St. Augustine paints a picture of the Christian as pilgrim on a journey in his book, City of God. Augustine describes Christians as pilgrims who live by faith trusting our journey from earth to heaven to the one God.


That image of holy resident aliens may have felt more real to the initial readers of 1 Peter in the generation after Jesus and Paul. They faced trials and tribulations that included physical suffering. If one of their Christian brothers or sisters were to betray them the dire consequences could include death. So their commitment to one another had to be complete and true. In our American history, we see this same sort of commitment to one another in the relationships. As Ben Franklin said to John Hancock when signing the American Declaration of Independence, "We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." The original readers of 1 Peter had to hang together or they would hang separately. We need to hang together too. Today our confirmands join this single pilgrim band in which we all hang together.


Today our confirmands say "YES" to a pilgrim journey that will take them from earth to heaven. As we travel that journey from earth to heaven, St. Augustine challenges us to live as contemplatives who balance learning with action. Some American universities now prefer prospective students who display a balance between learning and service to the community. Balance is the key in our pilgrim journey. Balance is the vehicle that gets us from here to there. We must balance our physical and spiritual nature, our minds and our bodies, our hearts and our heads. The Christian life is all about balance. Sometimes we get out of balance when we live upright lives but are not willing to take the next step which is to return good for evil and blessing for slander. When we take the extra step the light really shines through and we may draw people to Christ by being Christ-like. God calls our confirmands, and all of us, to live faith filled lives as resident aliens in an unbelieving world. Like Christ, we are to live holy lives in an unholy world. So our challenge to our confirmands today and the challenge each of faces as Christians, may be summed in this phrase: "Be what you are."


God is holy and 1 Peter challenges us to be holy as Christ is holy. To be holy means to be set apart by God for a use in accord with God's will. We are set apart by God not to be better than others but to be servants of all. 1 Peter uses the image of Christ as the Lamb of God to convey the meaning of being holy. The image of Christ as the lamb of God comes from our text today and other Biblical texts all the way back to the book of Leviticus. The Jewish holy code calls for a lamb without spot or blemish to be sacrificed for the people for the forgiveness of their sins. The perfectly sinless lamb symbolically takes on all the sins of the people. Then the lamb is ritually slaughtered to symbolize the termination of the sins of the people. The New Testament transfers the image of the sacrificial lamb to Christ and suggests Christ serves as the sacrificial symbol of the possibility of forgiveness of human sin. In New Testament theology, the sin of you and me and all people is put upon Christ, the sacrificial Lamb, who is ritually put to death on the cross to signify the possibility of our forgiveness before God. We are made holy through Christ the Lamb of God. This is something that has already been achieved for us by God and through Christ. All that remains is for us to claim it, for us to be what we are, which is holy and forgiven creatures of God.


Let's live into this Easter truth. Let's be holy as Christ, the lamb of God, is holy. Let's be courageous as Christ, the Lamb of God, was courageous. Let's be willing to sacrifice for others, as Christ, the Lamb of God, was willing to sacrifice himself for us. Let's demonstrate by our actions the love for others we profess with our mouths. Be what you are. Confirmands, that is all we expect of you. Be what you are. People of God, that is all God expects of any of us. Be what you are. When we set our intention on being holy God will meet us more than halfway and take us the rest of the way. We are pilgrims in this unholy land. We are merely passing through. Blessed are those who realize the transient nature of existence even in their youth, for they are on the holy road to wisdom.