1 Peter 5

Friday, March 15, 2013
Happy Ides of March!

1 Peter 5

Again, I get the feeling of a general giving standing order to his troops.  First to the officers or the elders, then to the infantry, the younger men instructed to obey them.  It's so easy to forget how under siege the Church was when these letters are written.  So many of Paul's ask for internal policing - of both the churches that sprang up in the separate places and of the self.  But Peter is thinking of protecting his people or at least asking the sheep he promised to feed to stick together.

It's very dense and business-like, and you can feel his worry for them in every verse.  He's begging them to just hold on a little longer, to bear up under suffering, for it will be over soon.  To just...make it through.

I think we're called to more than that in this life.  I think we're called to build, and not just homes in heaven.  I'm not saying we should metaphorically build our homes on earth and sand rather than heaven and solid ground, as the parable goes, but I think we are meant to live in the world (but not of the world) working to make it a better place.  I don't think our suffering is just for a short while.  I think our suffering is until we go out and put a stop to it everywhere.

So I understand why Peter gives instructions in this way, and many of them are good even so, but it's strange to read and feel a different time - feel the apostle's understandable mistake that we are in the end times.  Perhaps to the faithful it always seems like the end times.  Especially when you have seen so many miracles.

But almost two thousand years later, what are we supposed to do?  Bear up under the load and hold together - or try to alleviate what has been pressing down on the necks of good people too long?

Goodness, I sound like quite the radical, don't I?