We can read this as history that describes a particular time and place that was real but is no longer the case. It’s a picture of the pioneer days of the faith. These are our roots and our ancestors.

We can read it as we would a memorial to our founders and as a tribute to them as we might walking through a Civil War battlefield with monuments and markers. These are the heroes of the faith but the war is over.

We can read it for individual inspiration and try to apply everything to our lives either literally or spiritualized to fit our lives. Suffering is mental. Pagans are the people who have different politics or beliefs. The end of all things is about our own mortality.

We can read it as a warning for the “days of Noah” that are to come. The days of the Church Triumphant are coming to a close and the dark days of our being flooded by corruption and violence are on the horizon.

How did Peter see it? I think he saw himself living in the days of Noah just before the rain began and the springs opened up. I think he saw a world full of corruption and violence and the small band of believers were the remnant and those who would shortly board the ark to escape the flood. Changing the world was not the mission of the Church. Remaining faithful to their calling in dark times was the first task of the Church.

1.  We have a couple more complicated passages again this morning. What does it mean to suffer in the flesh and be done with sin? What does it mean to say the gospel was preached to those who are now dead?

Let’s look at the first. “He who suffered in his body is done with sin” has sometimes been read to justify self-imposed suffering or physical pain and deprivation to increase holiness. The Catholic adherents of Opus Dei wear a “celice” or barbed wire around their leg to be a painful reminder of the suffering of Christ. The histories of the saints are filled with stories of self-inflicted punishments and deprivations often based on this verse among others. It is not to be read “physical suffering drives out sin” but those who have suffered physically for the name of Christ have shown they have turned from sin and its power over them. They have put love of Christ over fear of death…and that was threatening to the Roman culture. Why would a person die for a man who was dead himself?

The biblical view of suffering is not the same as the normal consequences of living in a fallen world. Suffering is only suffering when it is not chosen and it is done as a witness to Christ. It is what you could avoid but choose to accept as a follower of Christ.

Oswald Chambers: “To choose to suffer means that there is something wrong; to choose God’s Will even if it means suffering is a very different thing. No healthy saint ever chooses suffering; he chooses God’s will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not.”

Suffering comes because the spirit of this world hates goodness. That same spirit does not hate politics or economics or morals or even religion. It hates love itself. It is not envy or jealousy. Envy and jealousy desire to have something belonging to someone else. The spirit of the world wants no part of love. It hates selflessness and sacrifice. It hates goodness that will not give up.

My college freshman roommate was Steve Kopp. Before I was a Christian I had a terrible temper and I could not stand being with Christians – especially those whose character and behavior were consistent with their professed beliefs. I did everything I could to make him be a hypocrite but nothing worked. He was one of the most genuine and authentic Christians I have ever met. I’ve never forgotten the power of his witness in a time when I was awful to be around. His was a goodness that would not give up.

What is the good that the world hates? Look back to the story of Noah in Genesis to see the answer.

They hated Noah’s doing all that God commanded. Four times it is repeated that he obeyed.
They hated his being blameless and walking with God. The spirit of the world is rebellion.
They hated the reminder and the visible rebuke of the ark that God’s judgement is real. The world hates judgment because it believes “This is all there is and man is the measure of all things.”

Scene from the movie “Gandhi” at the garrison. Do you remember the scene from the movie when hundreds of Indians lined up and one after another the soldiers knocked them out with their rifle butts. One would fall and the next one would replace him. Eventually, the British soldiers were worn out from hitting them with no resistance. They could not keep it up. That is the kind of persevering goodness in the face of persecution Peter is describing.

The second difficult passage. “For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those now dead.”

We have three options:

1. The gospel was preached to all who have died. We dealt with this last week and saw that the gospel was not preached as a second chance. It was announced as a victory.

2. The gospel has been preached as in Romans 1:19-23. All of creation is a sermon for the gospel and God has made himself known to all men but they have chosen to reject it.

“No one is righteous” – Romans 3:10-19
“All will be judged” – Romans 2:12-16

In other words, the gospel has been preached and been rejected by those who are spiritually dead.

3. Peter is describing those who have been abused by their enemies and have died – but are alive in the spirit. I like the way the message phrases it: “It was preached to those believers who are now dead, and yet even though they died (just as all people must), they will still get in on the life that God has given in Jesus.

The pagans were making life miserable for those who had left their way of life and who now believed in a day of judgement. They were ridiculing and persecuting them. For some, they had believed in an imminent return of Christ and he had not come in the lifetime of their friends and family. They were beginning to doubt the truth of the gospel altogether.

“Judgement is a hoax.” – 2 Peter 3:1-9

“The “day” has come and gone.” – 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2

“Resurrection is a myth and those who had died were fools.” – 1 Thessalonians 4:12-14

“The gospel is primarily concerned with making this life better.” – 1 Cor 15:16-19

That may be the biggest difference between the early church and what we present as the gospel today. We have focused on the hope for this life almost exclusively. The gospel does not include suffering. That does not mean we are to create our own suffering but it does mean we have sold a cheap gospel that will not survive if suffering comes.

2.  Again, Peter compares the church in the world to the times of Noah. We are surrounded by violence and total corruption. Every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts are toward evil all the time. The world is unredeemable and hopelessly corrupt. So, they wonder why we do not join them in the “flood” of dissipation.

This is what Paul describes in Romans 1 as the “god-hater” that resides in some form in all of us before Christ. It is what the world does to a person over time. It inclines our hearts toward evil and away from obedience. It increases our openness to corruption and delusion. Our defenses against lies are broken down gradually. It increases our appetite for violence even as it deadens our sensitivity to it.

I don’t think most of us are involved in riotous living or a flood of dissipation but that does not exclude us from refined dissipation – a wasting of life in perfectly acceptable ways that is still corrupting and leads to a deadness of the spirit.

Richard Baxter: “Wealth gives you so many choices about what to eat, what to wear, where to live and soon your lives are gone before you know what you lived for.”

De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: “I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.

The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility.

Our lives are not likely to end like Oscar Wilde but being spendthrifts of what has been given us is a constant temptation.

3.  The end of all things is near.

What if you were told you had six months to live? What would you do? What is your bucket list?

I grew up with roadside signs everywhere that said, “Jesus is coming” or “The end is near” or “Turn or burn”. Normally, those signs were intended for unbelievers…and for the most part ignored. What if we posted those signs inside the church instead? That is what Peter is doing. “The end of all things is near” was not written to the unbelieving world but to the church.

Many of us have seen “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch – a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon. He was given the assignment in 2007 as part of a regular series at the university to encourage professors to give a final talk to their students. They were to think about what wisdom they would try to impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance. For Randy, it really was because he discovered he had pancreatic cancer and had very little time to live. In fact, he died a year later. While it is heart wrenching and humorous to watch, it has been an example of what a powerful stimulus “the end of all things is near” could be for all of us.

What is the church supposed to do to prepare for the end of all things? Frantic activity? Fear? No. Far simpler than that. “Be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” How are we to face the end of all things is near? By focusing on here and now.

How are we to live in the tension between our life in this world that is fading away and the life that is to come? How do we live with both patience and expectation? I think the three parables in Matthew 25 help us.

The Parable of the Ten Virgins where they all fall asleep but five of them are ready with extra oil tells us to always be prepared.

The Parable of The Talents tells us that the Master could return at any time and he expects us to make wise investments – not living in fear of mistakes.

The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats tells us how to live with kindness and compassion toward others while we wait.

As you know, I like Wendell Berry as an author and poet. This is how he puts it in “The Peace of Wild Things”

The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry

Resting in the grace of the world, the presence of still water and the peace of wild things is not a bad way to start the week, is it?

This is a bonus poem I did not use in class but I love it.

PREACHERS WARN

This peaceful world of ours is ready for destruction—
And still the sun shines, the sparrows come
Each morning to the bakery for crumbs.
Next door, two men deliver a bed for a pair of newlyweds
And stop to admire a bicycle chained to a parking meter.
Its owner is making lunch for his ailing grandmother.
He heats the soup and serves it to her in a bowl.

The windows are open, there’s a warm breeze.
The young trees on our street are delirious to have leaves.
Italian opera is on the radio, the volume too high.
Brevi e tristi giorni visse, a baritone sings.
Everyone up and down our block can hear him.
Something about the days that remain for us to enjoy
Being few and sad. Not today, Maestro Verdi!

At the hairdresser’s a girl leaps out of a chair,
Her blond hair bouncing off her bare shoulders
As she runs out the door in her high heels.
“I must be off,” says the handsome boy to his grandmother.
His bicycle is where he left it.
He rides it casually through the heavy traffic
His white shirttails fluttering behind him
Long after everyone else has come to a sudden stop.