1 Peter 1:3-9
May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen
3 Praise be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
4 to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, reserved in heaven for you, 5who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation prepared to be revealed in the last time.
6 Then you will rejoice, who now for a little while, if it must be, are sorrowful in many temptations,
7 so that your faith may be proved and found much more precious than gold that perishes, which is refined by fire, to praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.
8 You have not seen him, yet you love him; and now you believe in him, though you do not see him, yet you will rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,
9 when you attain the goal of your faith, that is, the salvation of your souls.
Dear congregation,
It is one week after Easter. The biblical texts today deal with how we experience God in our lives in such a way that we overcome tiredness, find strength and maintain hope.
Strictly speaking, it's not about any kind of tiredness: anyone who is exhausted and plans too little time to sleep will hardly find a solution in the Bible.
It's also not about getting magical powers or superhuman abilities.
No, the Bible is more precise. It is about having the strength to stand up for peace and justice. It is about maintaining the hope that one day people will live together as loving brothers and sisters instead of making enemies of each other.
And the longer I study the Bible, the more I realise that there is an assumption in the background: If we only look at the world through human eyes, then disappointment and resignation could take over. The temptation is great to give up the longing for peace and come to the realisation: People will always wage wars.
If we see the world with human eyes, then hopelessness could spread.
Let's take today's Freedom Day as an example. It is a reminder of a time when the world looked at South Africa with hope and admiration. It was nothing short of a miracle that the first free elections 31 years ago took place so peacefully. Although some of the white population also had fears of the "swart gevaar!", the overcoming of apartheid was celebrated worldwide as a great success and gave people hope. 174 countries celebrate national holidays that commemorate liberation from injustice and war in some way.
So although so many countries have already experienced hopeful new beginnings, there is still no country in which coexistence is completely in order.
Not a single country that has completely overcome the division between rich and poor, healthy and sick, powerful and powerless.
So do we still have reason for justified hope? Or are we naive, even unworldly, if we continue to feed the longing for it?
The writer of the First Epistle of Peter asks something like this. He writes his letter some 90 years after Christ, i.e. around 60 years after the crucifixion and resurrection.
I would like to remind you that all biblical writings focus on the personal spiritual development of individuals on the one hand, while at the same time always asking how Christians position themselves in their respective countries, vis-à-vis their governments and major social issues.
The background to the first letter of Peter is the persecution and harassment of Christians. They were discriminated against. They were basically religiously and politically persecuted people. They were not imprisoned and sentenced for criminal offences, but because of their faith.
The greater the pressure, the greater the temptation to give up.
To grow weary in faith, to harbour doubts about the power of God, to adapt to the respective rule and to give up faith.
What would have happened if Nelson Mandela had given up believing in liberation during his time in prison?
What would have become of Germany if everyone had come to terms with the division and recognised the unjust state of the GDR?
What would have happened if the Israelites in Egypt had thrown their faith overboard?
Yes, the temptation is great - in your personal life as well as in the big wide world. What if you had given in to your doubts and given up hope in difficult phases of your life?
The writer of the first letter of Peter urges us to keep hope and promises that our faith will be purified by many a fire. This means that our faith can become even more beautiful, more valuable and more precious.
For me, that is an encouraging attitude. The attitude changes: no longer: Oh, that can't all be true, what use is my faith if I still have to experience difficult things? But much more: my faith is a precious experience that shows me the way to freedom.
How does that work? The first sentence of this letter is: praise be to God.
The writer of the letter invites us to adopt this basic attitude. Adopt the attitude: Praise be to God. That sounds different from: Let God be doubted, let God be accused, let God be criticised, let God be found guilty.
None of this: Praise be to God! What is so special about this attitude is that anyone who praises God recognises God and assumes that it is a good, kind, merciful and compassionate God.
Praise be to God.
Then the writer of the letter explains the reason for the praise: God has reborn us to a living hope. God has brought this about through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Take a look at the image used here.
We are born into the world as human beings - into a world that can be very beautiful, but also very cruel.
We are born as human beings into a world that is both human and inhumane.
We are born as people in whose lives different forces are at work: Fear and joy. Hope and resignation.
Love and hate.
As humans, we are born into a world in which the natural end is death. A world in which everything is transient and withering and everything can be stained.
We are therefore born into a world in which there is reason for pessimism.
But God has reborn us so that we can find our way in this world and not give death too much power.
We are born again the moment we are given faith. Faith as a basic trust in our Creator as Saviour from death.
This enables us to adopt a different attitude: we recognise something that is imperishable, unfading and undefiled.
Faith turns people who are trapped in their worldly fear into people who are free to retain hope.
As a result, the world around us is no longer predominantly an evil, frightening place, but we see the world as a living space.
For those who experience faith as the most essential experience, the world becomes a place in which faith can grow, becoming ever more valuable and precious, like gold in a fire.
The world is then no longer experienced as hostile, even suffering can then be a place where we are not dealing with the absence of God or with his hiddenness or even with his wrath and his mercilessness.
No, but in the midst of suffering God acts as Creator and we can have an experience that feels like a new birth, a new life.
That is the Easter experience. Jesus is alive again.
I don't think we can force such experiences, although we can do something about it. Ultimately, we have no guarantee.
The first letter of Peter later also deals with what Christians can do to maintain their hope: pray, cultivate fellowship, celebrate communion, remain true to their values, practise charity.
As Christians, we already have many sources of help, we have the many stories and testimonies of those who came before us. We have biblical testimonies and other life stories.
We see that the practice of faith plays a major role and yet we also know that faith remains a gift.
We can do everything in our power, but that includes recognising how powerless we are.
Praise be to God.
New strength grows in God and in our relationship with God.
Trusting that God remains at work gives us hope and strength to continue on the path of peace and to nourish the longing for justice and peace.
Let us understand every challenge as a time of purification - and let us celebrate every experience of redemption from evil.
It is unlikely that we humans will create heaven on earth with our human strength, but we can trust God and ask him to always give us the strength to do everything we can.
May the peace of God, which is higher than our understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
