The term “submit” carries a good deal of baggage and it is oftentimes used to mean “cringe in fear” or be like a broken horse. It is not that at all. It is a military term that means we have a place in our unit where we play a role. Playing that role and accepting the rightful authority of the officer in charge is the way we grow. When we want to be our own authorities we endanger ourselves and others.
Unfortunately, many of us have been brought up on the poem Invictus by William Henley:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
This is appealing – but it is not Christian or Scriptural in the least. We do, in fact, have another Captain of our souls. “For you were like sheep going astray – and the word for astray is where we get our word for planet. They wander. They are not fixed. – but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” If our souls are unconquerable we are still astray – still wandering and away from God.
2. Look for a moment at this word slave. Like the word “submit”, we have strong feelings about the use of the word slave. While there are five different words in Scripture for slaves, the most common is doulos which is used 127 times just in the New Testament and it is often translated as servant – not slave. However, the word here is used only once to describe a unique relationship. It is the word oiketase and it is a special kind of servant. In fact, using the word slave is almost misleading.
The oiketase was responsible for the management of the whole household. They were responsible for finances, projects, and often seeing that the children were educated. There was virtually nothing they did not oversee. In fact, the word was often used to describe the role of city managers and treasurers. It is misleading to think of this person as merely a slave. Without them the economy (derived from the word oikos) would have collapsed. They were the glue that held things together.
What is also important to note is the “master” (or despot) was typically not a man but the woman. In Greek society, men spent their days at the public square or the gymnasia and the wives were responsible for the home – with the oiketase being her manager. So, when Peter talks about a harsh master he is talking about the manager working for a wife. In fact, the language here for harsh is even stronger than that. It means crooked, twisted or even perverse. It’s the word from which we get skoliosis.
It’s a unique situation, isn’t it? What to do when you are working for a twisted mistress. What to do when you do right but she turns it around to make it look like you have done wrong and nothing you can do will please her. In fact, just the opposite.
It reminds you of the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. Joseph did what was right and was put in prison for it. It’s unfair. It’s not right. It’s not even consistent with the accepted standards of the day…but how are we to respond?
It is even more than that. It is not just when we suffer for not doing wrong but when we suffer for actually doing good – for making something good happen. Some people live trying not to do something bad because they are fearful of criticism or making mistakes. What Peter is describing here is far more than criticism and far more than refraining from evil. It is the same word for grief – not just hurt feelings or being upset. Deep sorrow. It is when you have done something good and people punish you for doing it. Not because they misunderstand but because the world is crooked and twisted and perverse.
Again, like we saw last week. We could hire lawyers and lobbyists and go online with change.org but Peter says we change people by doing good – even when we are punished for it. In time – and sometimes a very long time – ignorant, crooked and twisted people cannot withstand the pressure of our perseverance in doing good. They are prepared for a fight, for arguments and our hurling insults back at them but they are helpless against the power of doing good.
3. We are called to endure. It is one of my favorite words (hupomenos) – and probably because I find it so difficult to do. The meaning is so simple. It means to remain. Not conquer or overcome. Not challenge or defeat. Simply outlast whatever it is around you.
I have used this image before but it is the idea of a batholith in geology. Think of Enchanted Rock. It is molten/igneous rock that pushes up from beneath the surface and then cools. Over time it is often covered by sedimentary rock that eventually erodes and the batholith is exposed. The sedimentary rock does not endure. The batholith does.
Another way of thinking about endurance is when you find that part of yourself which is fixed and does not change. J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series was the commencement speaker for Harvard in 2008. Here is something I like to go back and read periodically.
J.K. Rowling at Harvard Commencement 2008:
“Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
4. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
When I was young, every classroom had a banner above the blackboard with the letters of the alphabet in both cursive and print – upper and lower case. We were given smaller copies of that to put in our desks and when the time for writing came we pulled them out and put them at the top of our desk to follow as we tried to copy the form of the letters – even before putting them into words or sentences. I even remember literally tracing the letters on a thin sheet of paper laid over the guides. We had to master the letters through repetition. The word that describes that banner is the word used here – hupogrammon.
It is more than an illustration for us. It is more than a suggestion. It is a pattern we are to literally copy laboriously until we have conformed our own handwriting to the example. Fonts and styles come later in our lives. For now, we are concerned with the basics.
As I read this phrase “in his steps” I remembered the book In His Steps by Charles Shelton. It has sold over 30 million copies and ranks as the 9th best selling book of all time. You know the story probably. A tramp appears on Saturday at the door of the pastor preparing for his sermon and then shows up at the close of the service on Sunday. He is ill. In fact, he collapses right after speaking and dies a few days later. However, this is what he says before he collapses.
“I’ve tramped through this city for three days trying to find a job; and in all that time I’ve not had a word of sympathy or comfort except from your minister here, who said he was sorry for me and hoped I would find a job somewhere. I suppose it is because you get so imposed on by the professional tramp that you have lost your interest in any other sort. I’m not blaming anybody, am I? Just stating facts. Of course, I understand you can’t all go out of your way to hunt up jobs for other people like me. I’m not asking you to; but what I feel puzzled about is, what is meant by following Jesus. What do you mean when you sing ‘I’ll go with Him, with Him, all the way?’ Do you mean that you are suffering and denying yourselves and trying to save lost, suffering humanity just as I understand Jesus did? What do you mean by it? I see the ragged edge of things a good deal. I heard some people singing at a church prayer meeting the other night,
‘All for Jesus, all for Jesus,
All my being’s ransomed powers,
All my thoughts, and all my doings,
All my days, and all my hours.’
and I kept wondering as I sat on the steps outside just what they meant by it. It seems to me there’s an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn’t exist if all the people who sing such songs went and lived them out. I suppose I don’t understand. But what would Jesus do? Is that what you mean by following His steps? It seems to me sometimes as if the people in the big churches had good clothes and nice houses to live in, and money to spend for luxuries, and could go away on summer vacations and all that, while the people outside the churches, thousands of them, I mean, die in tenements, and walk the streets for jobs, and never have a piano or a picture in the house, and grow up in misery and drunkenness and sin.”
5. Finally, I love the verse in John 10:27 “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” In the end, that is what Jesus said to Peter the very first time they met. “Follow me. Entrust yourself to me. You do not know the way. In fact, your idea of the way will often be wrong and misguided so follow me. Listen to me, the Shepherd and Overseer of your soul.” That is what he says to us this morning. Not because we are slaves or masters but because we are his and we can trust him.