A Holy Week Hiatus

For the course of Holy Week, I invite you to follow the blog "Jesus' Annoying Henchman" for a consideration of the Gospel of Mark.  Readings are provided for each day during the week, and there will be come introductory notes and questions in anticipation of each day's verses.

As always, if you have questions or comments, you can leave a comment on the blog or reach out to me via Facebook.

You can search "Jesus' Annoying Henchman" on blogspot or go to "jcannoyinghenchman.net".

Peace and a blessed Holy Week,
Peter Hofstra

The Word of Power is the Good News

1 Peter 1:25

That word is the good news that was announced to you.

Thus we end the first chapter of Peter.  “That word”, it the Word of God that endures forever.  It is the Word that turns the flesh, that withers like grass and fades like the flower, into the imperishable stuff of heaven, that which is the life changing stuff of which Peter has been preaching, that is the good news that was announced to his readers.

What is that Good News?  This phrase repeats itself from Verse 12, good news brought by the Holy Spirit, the Good News of Jesus Christ that was announced to the readers.  But it was not announced first on the written page.  It was first announced when Peter was with them in person, on a missionary journey through their lands to bring them the message of Jesus Christ. 

God has given us a new birth and a living hope through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Thus has Peter opened his letter, speaking to his readers of what comes from Jesus, the reason of our faith.

By The Word of the Lord Shall We Endure Forever

1 Peter 1: 24-25

For “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

What a fascinating quandary.  The Word of the Lord endures forever.  If is the Word of the Lord that created all, could an argument be made that creation endures forever?  Maybe, if Genesis did not include the story of the fall of humanity.  Maybe the intention was for humanity to endure forever as created by the Word of the Lord.  But then, well, flesh is like grass and grass withers.

But Peter is not dwelling on what has faded, what has withered.  In the next sentence, he will reveal that the Word of the Lord is what has been revealed to his readers, and to us.  So, it is through Jesus that the perishable has been made imperishable, the Fall of Humanity has been turned to the lifting of Humanity to God’s gracious mercy once more. 

The joy of our life in Christ is that we bring together this life with the next.  Yesterday, I asked if we were ready to die well?  The beauty is, we are not going to die, not if we walk in the pathway of our Lord Jesus Christ.  It can make the brain ache to consider the possibilities of the power and majesty of our Lord.

But what transcends those brain aches is the promise of the Lord’s eternal Word.  And the power of that Word is that we shall be made imperishable, that we shall endure forever as the products and recipients of the Word of God.

Will You Die Well?

1 Peter 1: 24-25

For “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

We die.  It is the human condition.  One can joke about death and taxes, but death is inevitable to us all, excepting the Return of our Lord Jesus.  But as the maxim goes, “Prepare for the worst, but hope for the best”, preparing for death is proper. 

We do not like death in this country.  It defies the American Dream.  Lifting ourselves up by our bootstraps-no, that is the Protestant Work Ethic…  Work hard, play hard…  That is a beer commercial, right?  There is no factoring in of the end of life in the fullness of life that we pursue.  We sideline old people, warehouse them all too often if they can’t keep up.  I think I have observed this before, that more and more people are not opting for a funeral, but just want to tuck the ‘gone’ person away and not think about it. 

A huge part of Christianity concerns itself with the promise that we shall overcome death.  The death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is the opening to resurrection for all who believe in Him.  It is amazing. 

“The grass withers and the flower falls…”  It is inevitable, but let us not forget that we are and were flowers, things of great beauty.  In fact, in the eternal life, we will be the perfection of the flowers that we were made in this transitory life.

So the question I ponder is ‘how shall I make the most of life before the flower falls?’  What is the great beauty to be found in every person that I will struggle to find?  Where is the image of God?  Where is the face of Jesus in each person that I meet?

Will I be ready at the end to move on to something else, filled to the brim with the things of life?  Or will I linger, mourning the paths not taken, the opportunities left aside, sliding into the grave with regret as my only comfort?

You Are God’s Flower, Now.

1 Peter 1: 24-25

For “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

This is a bittersweet comparison.  Flesh is short lived, yet flesh also flowers in great beauty.  Remember that Isaiah and Peter live in a desert climate.  Grass exists, flowers exist, they come and they go quickly.  The beauty bursts forward, but not for long.  Flesh contains the beauty of the image of God, even though it be limited like the grass and the flowers of the grass.

This is important to consider. Because too often we consider only the imperishable, the way we shall be after, in the permanence of eternal life.  We all too often discount the beauty that is created into us now, in the flesh.  Every one of us is unique.  Every one of us is beloved by God.  Every one of us is created to be special. 

The work of Peter, as a whole, is to speak to his readers of the truth of Christ, the long view of which is on to eternal life.  But the promise of the long view is founded upon what we have been given in this life.  It is what we have been given this life. 

So the next time you are looking in the mirror, the next time you are standing on the scale, the next time you are questioning who you are, or even why you are, remember this.  God created you as a flower.  And God does nothing but the highest quality work.  If you are to stand in His shadow, He will reveal the flower within you.

We are but Grass and Flowers…Not the Most Enduring Substances

1 Peter 1: 24-25

For “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

We transition from the promise of imperishable seed when we are born anew into a time of reflection on what we are presently, without having been renewed.  Peter is quoting the Old Testament with these words, Isaiah 40: 6-9 according to my trust Study Bible.  Those verses go as follows: “A voice says, “Cry out!”  And I say, “What shall I cry?”  All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field.  The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it surely the people are grass.  The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.”

It is not a word-perfect quotation, but it summarizes what Isaiah is getting at.  Interestingly, these verses follow in Isaiah the passage about John the Baptist about making the way straight in the wilderness, to prepare the way of the Lord.  The entire chapter plays out as prophesy about our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Messenger of the Lord.

For “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass.—Thus are we, the people of the earth.  We have glory, like the flower of grass, but the comparison is not very congenial, we are grass.  Humanity is a lawn…

The grass withers, and the flower falls,--There is the kicker!  We are dust and to dust we shall return.  Flesh is transient, it disappears all too quickly in the grand scheme of things.

but the word of the Lord endures forever.”—But all is not lost.  That which made us from perishable to imperishable in the last sentence, here is stated as the thing of permanence. 

Born Again, Summing Up

1 Peter 1:23

You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

One might call it the ultimate makeover, made over from the dust and ashes of creation to the imperishable substance of heaven.  Being born anew, renewed, put together as God intended…   Such comes through the living and enduring Word of God, the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word, the divine speech through which all creation came into being. 

In a broken world, from a sinful life, through hopelessness, it is the promise of something more, something better, something eternal.

What’s In A Word? We Had To Ask…

1 Peter 1:23

You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

The Word of God, living and enduring…  Choice #1: Jesus.  Yes, it is like the questions that the ministers ask during the Children’s Time during worship, if you answer “Jesus”, you have about a 70-30 chance of getting it right. 

In this case, Jesus, the Word of God, lots of direct evidence from John 1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…”  The gospel may or may not have been written down at this time, but I can see Peter and John and the others at a disciple’s reunion, maybe back in the Upper Room, swapping story and bottles of wine…remembering and reflecting on the Son of God they’d all been called to serve.

The Word of God, creative power of the Father who art in Heaven…  Genesis 1, to use the King James, God spake and it wath so… light, sky, land, animals, etc.  This is not so far from John 1, paralleling creation stories, the creative power of God coming in his voice, Jesus coming as the Voice of God. 

It is living and enduring.

The Word of God, wrapped up between the covers of the books found in the pews of our churches, broken into every Sunday for the sharing of Scripture.  The Word of God as our Bible, shared as the Word spoken to the congregation, by the power of the Holy Spirit, becoming a creative, transformative Word in the hearts of the listeners. 

Of course, what this Word has done is allowed us to be born anew.  Sounds like the creative power of God, taking us from the perishable to the imperishable.  But it is also Jesus, the Word of God, by whose death and resurrection we are born anew.  And we continue to know of it today because of the Word of God handed down to us as the Bible.

Confusing?  Of course.  Improbable?  Not at all.  The bible does not lock in vocabulary to the extent that we do in the literary analysis of the Scriptures.  Meanings can bleed into each other, providing a far richer set of possibilities to be imagined as we consider the living and enduring Word of God.

Remade with Imperishable Quantum Particles

1 Peter 1:23

You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

“To dust we are from and to dust we shall return.”  One of the optimistic lines that comes from the funeral service.  From Genesis 1, God essentially created a free standing mud pie and called it us.  What gave the spark of life was his breathing into our nostrils.  So, a divine breath, maybe even a divine spark if we want to slide the metaphor, but in the end, back to the earth we go.

Well, back to the earth we went.

Because this ‘anew’ birthing process involves a fundamentally different pile of matter.  It is imperishable.

One of the more esoteric (out there) discussions I ever had in Seminary was the emphasis placed on the Creator/creation distinction.  He (yes, sexless deity given a gender) was God, we were muck.  God and muck, God-muck, God-muck…  I am not saying it didn’t make sense.  It does, kind of, but I have a tough time wrapping my head around the importance of the notion as it was presented.

Because this passage seems to be showing us that the division has been overcome.  Perishable stuff is creation stuff.  Imperishable is the stuff of heaven, at least to my way of thinking.  And it is not some kind of ‘do over’.  We are not wallpapering our mud-man forms with something imperishable.  It goes to the seed, to the very basis, the beginning of how it is we are made.  If Stephen Hawking were writing it, he might talk about the imperishable quantum particles.

We are going to the very building blocks of creation.  The seed is what Peter understood in his time and place.  The point is, the makeover is complete.  We are remade imperishable.  That is pretty darned cool.

So, Was Adam Never The Original Plan? It was Always Jesus?

1 Peter 1:23

You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

Born anew, born again, born from above, born in the Spirit, I am sure there are others.  A central metaphor of the Christian church is this second time around thing.  Jesus is the second Adam.  Why?  Because the first Adam did not quite work out the way God set things up.  I was going to say that Adam did not work out exactly as God had intended, but this is God we are talking about.  How can something NOT work out the way God planned?

So the plan was then for Jesus to come all along.  What an interesting plan.  God set in motion the creation of humanity with the fall of humanity already factored into a long game that involved God’s own incarnate presence (that means present in human flesh) in Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity.  So the point of Genesis 1 is not the Fall of Humanity. 

The point of Genesis 1 is John 1, where the Creation is repeated, but with Jesus integrated into the process. 

Now, this ‘born anew’ thing connects to a metaphor of death, sorry, reality of death.  Because Jesus died, on the cross, and was born again-born anew-on Easter morning. 

But for Peter, this is not the center of the work that Jesus has done among us.  Because it follows on to the previous sentence, which talks all about that purifying of the soul and obedience to God and such.  All of that was for a genuine mutual love to exist between the believers.  It was an emulation of the love God has for us. 

Being born anew, that is a next consequence of obedience, something more that God gives us.  This now speaks of our individual relationships to God.  It comes after the community relationship to God, a relationship marked by love.

Let’s Talk About Being Born Again (anew)

1 Peter 1:23

You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

Oh how I love this verse! I have spent far too much time and effort in attempting to move the church off of its perseveration on being ‘born again’ and looking off to the distant heavenly eternals while brushing off the present and the immediate.  Thank you Peter!  He does not forget about the born again, in this case, born anew, line.  The defeat of death is a really neat feature of the Christian religion.  But it is led into play by the command that we love one another with a genuine, mutual love!

Context is everything, even in Scripture.

You have been born anew,--Such is the promise of John 3, born again, born anew, born from above.   

not of perishable but of imperishable seed,--Peter returns to the agrarian roots of his teaching.  Jesus was strong about the farming metaphors in his teachings.

through the living and enduring word of God.—This renewal does not crawl out of the ether.  There is power, great power behind it, the power of the Word of God.