Pursue Peace over Payback

You have been called that you may obtain a blessing.

The second reading from 1 Peter chapter 3.

1 Peter 3 · chapter mention

Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.

Do not repay evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless.

For to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.

For whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.

Let him turn away from evil and do good.

Let him seek peace and pursue it.

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer.

But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

Now, who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good?

But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed.

Have no fear of them, nor be troubled.

But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy.

The word of the Lord.

Grace and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

There's a pretty good chance that someone somehow got to you this week.

Maybe it was a comment in the group text, maybe it was something said in a meeting, or perhaps it was something that someone muttered under their breath from across the kitchen table.

But whatever it was, it got to you.

And some part of your mind began to rehearse and form and plan the response.

Maybe you're the kind of person who takes their time in working on this.

And so you rehearsed it as you drove home in the car.

You maybe sharpened it the next morning in your mind in the shower.

Or maybe you are so quick-witted that all this planning is something you can skip entirely.

And so when the moment comes for you to deliver that retort, that comeback, that payback, whether it's with a cold word or a biting remark or that one carefully crafted phrase that's going to make sure your displeasure is known, there it was, and you were ready to deliver it.

Because someone got to you during the week.

Now the Apostle Peter surely knows what this is like.

In fact, in today's second reading, he talks about this very thing.

He says, Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling.

Now, repay, a kind of payback, it's a sort of bookkeeping term that means to keep things in perfect balance.

And you know how this is something that we sometimes want in our world.

If you, for instance, send a mortgage payment into your bank or your creditor, you really want them to keep things nice and balanced so that exactly the amount that is applied to principle goes to principle and interest to interest.

There are times we want that.

But Peter is helping us see that if we treat our words like a kind of currency, then new problems start to arise.

Then an annoyance from someone becomes a kind of invoice.

And if someone slights us or insults us, then that begins to feel like a debt.

And so when that moment comes when we even it out with some kind of repayment, it feels not so much like we did something wrong, but that it felt right that now there's balance between us and the people around us.

And yet Peter here warns against this.

In fact, we have to be sober-minded about this because we can easily make an excuse for this kind of conduct by saying, you know, I'm just telling it how it is, as if candor is another word for revenge, or as if speaking the truth is not also meant to be done in love.

And so Peter has something to tell us about this.

In fact, in contrast to this instinct, Peter holds up for us a kind of portrait.

He lists five characteristics that are meant to mark God's people who've been called according to Christ's purposes.

He lists them this way: a unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.

These are five virtues that he's able to say in just one breath, and he holds them up for us because then we can see them and perhaps compare our week to that list.

In fact, Peter probably also knows that he doesn't have to argue this point really hard with his hearers, because there's going to be among them, among God's people, a sense that Peter's not saying something controversial here.

In fact, Peter goes on to quote a psalm, something that God's people surely knew well, or perhaps it even prayed many, many times.

Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.

But of course, the mouth is not the whole story there.

It continues, for the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

You see, what this shows us is that when it comes to our paybacks, those moments that we extract some kind of score settling, there really are not just two parties to that transaction, you know, me and the person who I feel has wronged me.

It's actually that the eyes of the Lord are on this whole thing.

And so if I deliver a sharp word or try to extract from someone this payback, then it's not just between me and that other person, which would be enough already.

Those kinds of conducts land in a place where the eyes of the Lord are on them and the ears of the Lord hear them.

Which means that precisely at the moment that I feel as if I have balanced things, I've settled that score, I have made things even, precisely in that moment I have opened up a new debt, and there's a fearful, fearful arithmetic to that, that now I have opened up a new debt between me and my God.

And that that then becomes an even greater problem for me as a fallen sinful person.

Because it says here, the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

Precisely when I think I have made things right, I have done something evil, and that puts the face of the Lord against me.

You and I surely know of the times that this has happened in our lives, and perhaps you have also wondered why is it that we do such a thing, especially if we know better, and especially if we know what it's like to be on the other end of it?

What is it about a comment someone made last month that gets stuck in our mind?

What is it about that thing that relative did last Christmas that we can't seem to let go?

What is it about that thing we read that we can't seem to put out of our mind?

Why is it that sometimes our temper or our anger is like a match, that the moment you strike it, poof, there is that flame.

What is going on in our hearts that such a thing would happen?

Now, here's at least one reason why we could consider.

You see, no one ever tries to settle a score that they think is already even.

The fact is that we tend to believe that somehow, in some way, something is owed to us.

That in some way something has happened to where we need to balance it out.

And so you might say that a kind of sharp tongue is like a ledger balancing tongue.

One that looks around and sees nothing but debits and says, I need to find a way to bring this back into a settled account.

And underneath that is always the same conviction that I am owed something, whether it's respect or esteem or whether it's a kind of gratitude or perhaps an apology, there's some sense of me that thinks something is lacking.

And I need to extract this from the people or the circumstances around me, that someone owes me.

And this is why, of course, harshness and short-tempered and impatience and even arrogance can be not so much a list of several separate things, but really one core problem wearing several different faces.

That at the root of it all, there is this sense that something is missing.

In fact, there's something broken in us.

And so you could say that we hold this up against Peter's list here, and what do we see?

We might see that our harshness is that tender heart that he talks about, but it's missing.

That our impatience is that sympathy he's talking about, but it's missing.

Or that a kind of quick to get payback mentality is that brotherly love, but it's missing.

And underneath it all, and surrounding it, is the lack of humility that he talks about, a sense that we have been humbled even before our God, and therefore, if we do not have a humble mind, then it's hard to have any of these virtues, and there's no amount of settling of scores that's ever going to produce it.

Peter is talking about these things, he's warning us about these things, he's holding these things up as a portrait of what a life is to look like, and he's saying we should avoid the opposites of them.

But more than just telling us what to do and what not to do, he holds up for us something that lets the whole thing hinge on it and can really hang on this truth.

Again, he said, Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, he says.

On the contrary, bless, for to this you were called that you may obtain a blessing.

See, that last phrase is the key.

This idea of obtaining a blessing, it's kind of like receiving an inheritance.

It has the idea of you and I receiving something that we neither worked for nor earned or deserved.

That it is a free gift given to us without any look at whether we had earned or deserved it.

In a sense, then it repudiates all of our scorekeeping entirely.

And then Peter holds out for us and points to the one who gives the gift.

Right at the end, he says, In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy.

In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy.

He's saying, You and I can consider the one person who, if he ever had a claim to be owed something, it was surely Jesus.

Jesus to whom was owed all glory and majesty and honor and praise from the lips of his people and his creation.

The one who by his glory and majesty and love would surely, you would think, garner all sorts of praise and honor and esteem.

The one who knew you and me since before the foundation of the world and loved us and has rescued us, that you would think this person would be able to receive all this.

But we know that when Christ came to this earth to carry out his work, so often his good was repaid with evil, even to the point that that repayment with evil reached that fevered pitch as he was put to death on the cross, this most remarkable of events that someone as good and holy as he would be set aside that way.

But even in those moments, Christ was never looking to settle a score.

Indeed, on the cross, he prayed for forgiveness for those who were nailing him to that very tree.

And so, on the contrary, Jesus blessed and he offered himself up as the one who could close the gap that our sin had caused, the one who could settle up this debt that we had incurred and owed to our God.

And so that's what he has done.

Jesus took the column in whatever book is kept where all of our sin is recorded, where all of our evil desires and our shameful conduct is there.

He took it all and he counted it as his own, that your sin became laid on him.

And so by his own blood he wiped that ledger clean, so that the whole record of your sin, the Bible can talk about it this way: that the Lord remembers your sin and mine no more, wiped out by his blood.

But more than that, everything that Christ ever was and did, all his goodness, all his holiness, all his justice, has been now credited to your account, signed over to you as a blessing, and not just the goodness, but all the good that comes from it, that you and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

For now the Lord's face is on us, and it's a gracious face, a countenance that smiles upon us, because we are in this very Christ.

In fact, that's why this portrait that Peter paints of what God's people are called to be like is not something that will crush us or make us leave here feeling demoralized.

On the contrary, this is something that we can look at and see the unity of mind, the sympathy, the brotherly love, the tender heart, the humble mind.

That is our Christ.

That is our Lord.

That is him in a nutshell in his love for others, that Jesus embodied every one of those virtues perfectly, and from him you have received everything, including likeness unto him.

That is your gift as well.

And so now you have this likeness, and nothing on this earth can take it away.

Peter himself says, even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed.

This blessing to which you have been called is sure and certain.

So now you can bless just as you have been blessed.

And so this coming week and in the weeks ahead, as that payback instinct begins to stir again, because we know it will.

There will be opportunity for it.

Remember what is already true and how much Christ has put into your account and act from that knowledge and that truth.

That the account is settled, that the score is just fine, and that life and salvation is yours already in full, and not just in a little way, but overflowing in a way that leads to abundance after abundance.

And that the balance you are seeking, that sense of things being right, that you have already found in Christ.

And from this, you see what it allows you to be.

It frees you to live the way Peter's talking about.

Free to be tender because you have no image to uphold, free to be sympathetic because the weakness of others is your opportunity to serve the Lord, free to be united in Christ and in his mind, free to show brotherly love because now you have been restored to one another.

You all share these riches together, and so the overflowing of these gifts now change everything about the way you and I live and work and have our being as well.

Peter says today, quoting, let him seek peace and pursue it.

That's what the word of our God says today.

And if you and I pursue the peace of Christ with the same energy that we used to pursue payback, well, we can just wait and see what good comes on the other side of that change of direction, that change of heart.

Amen.