Hope for the Church

Last week, I participated in a Bible Study looking at 1 Peter 1:3-9, which included the verses, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” And “Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

Those words were balm for my soul—and I think they might be a balm for a lot of our souls in this moment today.

We are tired. Burned out. Exhausted. We thought we saw a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, but in the last few weeks, that tunnel got longer and the light got dimmer. Many of us are back to masks, pulling back from community gatherings and breaking bread together and seeing our beloved neighbors face to face.

I hesitate in such a moment to talk about hope and joy. It could sound glib. But when I think of the community to which Peter was writing in this epistle where here is talking about a living hope and “indescribable and glorious joy” I remember that he was not writing to a community that was well off, or safe, or free from travail. He was writing to a community of people who were endangered, persecuted, and struggling.

And to those people he preached hope and joy. Not hope and joy in ourselves. But hope and joy in Jesus, and the promise of our salvation.

I need hope and joy to keep going. And my living hope and my indescribable joy is in Jesus. It isn’t in my fellow human beings. It isn’t in my local, state, or national government. I have some earthly hopes for all those earthly things—I want vaccinations and care for our neighbors and dignity for every human being.

But all of those are transitory and temporary. We are vulnerable on this earth to swings of politics, plague, pestilence, and famine.

But we are not vulnerable in our salvation. That work has been accomplished by the work of God in the manger, on the cross, and at the empty tomb. And if you’re struggling today, go back to 1 Peter. Read and pray and rest. Know that no matter what is happening now in your life, you are a beloved child of God, and that as Paul writes to the Romans: “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,  nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, “ and here I would add, “nor COVID”, “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Thank you, Jesus. Amen.