The Good Friday Portion of Peter’s Letter

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours made careful search and inquiry, inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated, when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory.

I stepped away from this for Easter, but, reading this next sentence in the light of Holy Week, it gives me shivers.  What is “it” that testified?  Peter was speaking of the prophets.  He still is, of their collected writings.  “It” is the volume of those writings, preserved since the earliest times of the Israelite nation. 

“It testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ.”  I am flashing back to our Tenebrae service on Good Friday, where we read the story of Jesus descending to his death upon the cross.  The conclusion of that service is a reading from Isaiah 53: 4 and following.  I see Peter looking up from those scrolls, these readings in Isaiah, as he pens these words.  Direct connection of the suffering servant to the person of Jesus Christ. 

This returns to the theme that we are not looking at some new, we are looking at something renewed.  Did Isaiah have Jesus in mind when he wrote his prophecy?  Did any of the prophets know, looking forward in some crystal ball, how their writings would become the foundation of the work and person of Jesus in the minds and hearts of their fellow Jews?  How could they?  God's revelation comes in unexpected ways, faithful to the old, but different in its present place.

These are sufferings ‘destined’ for Christ.  Why did Christ have this destiny?  Why was he destined to suffer?  That goes to a very mystery of the faith.  But it repeats a pattern that we’ve experienced through our history, suffering than glory.  A bad thing leads to a marvelous thing.  In Peter’s case, the suffering leads to the Glory of Christ, to be accomplished at the end of time.

At Eastertime, the suffering of Good Friday leads to the Glory of Easter morning.

In our lives, the suffering of disaster, for me, most recently, reflections on Hurricane Sandy, they lead to the glory of a response and a recovery that overcomes the suffering of the storm.