It was September 1862 when Abraham Lincoln was responsible for the famous Emancipation Proclamation. This declaration, which came into effect in the beginning of 1863, has always been a very controversial document because it is hard to know if Lincoln signed this declaration out of pure benevolence and kindness or if it was his desire to preserve the Union and set slaves free in order that they may be able to fight in the Union army. Many people have questioned whether he was working with good intentions or not. It was only later that Lincoln really became the man that has been held in high esteem. Regardless of what the historians might think of that moment, the document itself was important because it was designed, however one may look at it, to set people free. This is how the beginning of the Emancipation Proclamation reads:
That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
This had huge ramifications for the United States, but it also is a reminder of the importance, even just such a short period ago, for the need for emancipation.
The very roots of emancipation and freedom come from Scripture itself. After all, what is the celebration of the Passover but the celebration of setting the Israelites free from their bondage in Egypt? Because of the blood being put over the doors of the Israelites, they were saved from the persecutions that were to come – a sacrifice had been made and the sacrifice saved the Israelites. It is a saying that the great prophet Isaiah in that incredible passage of Isaiah 53, which was read before the Easter period, talks about the suffering servant, and how through the suffering the people themselves are liberated. In The New Testament there was this profound belief, especially in the light of the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, that people were set free again. This time they were set free by none other than the Lord himself.
In our passage this morning, and really the whole book of 1 Peter, is a manifesto of freedom. It was written to Christians who were facing many and great tyrannies. It balances beautifully the relationship between freedom and responsibility. It was also universal. It was read in Pontus and Galatia, in Cappadocia, and in Asia. It was spread throughout the realm and provinces that were known at that time. This letter from Peter was being sent out to the earliest Christians to give them a sense of encouragement and to remind them of the freedom that they had in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was all written within the context of persecution. As you read 1 Peter, you can’t help but realize the pain and the agony that those earliest Christians, Gentile Christians, were facing from their Greek and Roman counterparts. He uses terms like “the fiery ordeal” and talks about how they have been shamed publicly, and were suffering for their faith. Throughout the whole of the book, there is this image of people under siege for what they believe.
The persecution was all the more acute because it was coming mainly from the Romans. In all the Roman provinces, Christians were being singled out for persecution, the reason being, according to the Roman historian Tacitus, is that Christians were made the scapegoats for the fires of Rome under Nero. Nero had decided to make the Christians the responsible group. Tacitus, in writing his Annals, his very famous historical work, said the following about the Christians, and remember that Tacitus is not a Christian. He is writing as an historian observing what is happening to these Christians.
Neither human assistance in the shape of Imperial gifts, nor attempts to appease the Gods could remove the sinister report that the fire in Rome was due to Nero’s own disorders, and so in the hope of dissipating the rumour, he falsely diverted the charge to a set of people to whom the vulgar gave the name of Christians, and who were detested for the abominations they perpetrated. The founder of the sect, one Christus by name, had been executed by Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius, and the dangerous superstition, though put down for the moment, broke out again not only in Judea, the original home of the pest, but even in Rome, where everything shameful and horrible collects and is practised.
Isn’t that a doozy of a quote?! In other words, the Christians were being hung out to dry. They were persecuted, and made scapegoats, for the problems of Nero. They were made pests, and the sect that followed this man Christus.
This strange idea that Tacitus is referring is that Jesus of Nazareth, who had been put to death under Pontius Pilate, was now alive, raised from the dead. So, our ancestors in the faith, our brothers in Christ in the first century suffered because they kept talking about the Resurrection of Jesus. This to Nero was a terrible thing that this Christus, who he had been putting down, continued to live, and not only that, but a group of people kept telling declaring that Jesus of Nazareth was alive and had been raised from the dead. So, the Christians suffered greatly at the hands of these Romans. But, in the midst of all this, Peter writes the incredible words of our text, a Christian manifesto that says in essence, “Hold on to the freedom that you have in Jesus Christ. Hold on to your belief in the Resurrection. Do not let your persecutions put you in a place where you deny the very freedom that you have been given.” And so, it is an emancipation declaration! Based on the fact, and notice the language in the text, that they “have been ransomed”. The Gentile Christians, who follow Christ have had a price paid for them. Just like the slaves in the marketplace who had a ransom paid in order that they may be owned or liberated by another. A cost has been paid for their freedom. But Peter wants to make it clear: it is not through gold and silver that they have been set free, that is not the ransom that is being paid; what has been paid, and this goes right back to The Old Testament and the Passover, is the blood of Christ and the Cross of Christ, to set them free. The indication that they have been set free is in his Resurrection from the dead. In other words, it is not only a price that has been paid, but it the price that is being paid to conquer the ultimate thing that might hold them – the power of fear and death – and in the Resurrection they are now free people indeed.
What are they freed from? Well, Peter gives us a clue. He says that they are freed from ignorance. You see, in the ancient world there was a general belief that no one could know God. Therefore, you had in God’s place, little gods. These little gods became the object of worship: the gods of myth and legend or the gods that had become idols, even the idol of the Emperor. The problem was that these gods had a hold on peoples’ lives, and they lived in fear of offending the gods. Not only that, the powerful and the elite would take a god and ascribe to that god alone, honour and majesty and power, and make everyone else fall in to place in their subservience to that god. So people lived in fear. Slaves worshiped the gods of their masters and their mistresses. The poor would follow the example of those who are the educated ones above them so that they could be subservient to these gods. It was a tyranny of fear. God could not be known, only the gods could be known, and they became a frightful and a terrifying force in peoples’ lives.
Notice the language Peter uses. He says, “God doesn’t judge, except impartially.” This is important! The Resurrection of Jesus for Peter was universal. Because it was universal, there was no partiality. People were only judged on the basis of what they did not if they were part of the slave class, paid homage to a particular god, or their position within society. They weren’t living under the tyranny of the judges of the gods. God was impartial! God was universal! All they were judged on were their deeds. This might not sound particularly liberating to us, for we have believed that for centuries, but if you were in the first century and you were told that God does not judge with partiality but with impartiality, believe-you-me, that was a liberating thing. It was a liberating thing for Peter, because Jesus had been raised from the dead. It was universal! God had done something, and therefore there was no need for them to be ignorant of what God is like. God is seen in Christ.
They also had to be freed from their desires. Desire is a powerful thing. It has an immense hold on us. It can take so many different forms and can crush us: the desire for power, lust, things. All of these were rampant in the first century. Many of the great leaders in Rome would brag about having twenty-three wives and would dismiss women as if they were chattel. There was the desire to live a life of gratification and pleasure with no responsibility attached to it. There was the desire for extreme wealth regardless of the expense to human life. If you could use slaves for your own gain then the slaves’ lives were worth nothing. That is the kind of world that they were in. There are pockets in the world like that today! We know where they are and we hear about them. But in a sense, what Peter wants to do is to free them from those desires, because those desires had become a source of bondage.
There was also a sense in which they were saved from futility. If you are a slave or you are a persecuted minority, and you are in bondage to others, it seems like fate is against you. You live in a box and you never break out of that box, and for many people a sense of servitude is an integral part of their lives. I was talking not long ago with a specialist who deals with teen suicide. The specialist said something very interesting to me. At the heart of a great deal of the problem is fatalism, the belief that young people get in their minds, that they are trapped. If they are bullied and put down, then somehow their fate has already been determined, and they see no light at the end of the tunnel. In other words, they are constrained by a sense of meaninglessness and hopelessness. Carl Jung was a great psychoanalyst and he called it “a neurosis of emptiness”. He said, “When goals go, meaning goes. When meaning goes, purpose goes. When purpose goes, life goes dead on our hands.” When we think there is nothing more than what is absolutely here before us, when we feel that we are determined, somehow by fate to be in that position forever, then life becomes dead.
For those suffering at the hands of the Romans in the first century, it seemed that they were in a box of death. Peter is saying, “No! You are not!” Why? Because Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, and there are no fatalistic boxes. There is a living God!” And it was revolutionary. That word changed people’s lives. They described it as a new life of freedom, knowing that the fate of this world was never enough and could never harm God’s will and God’s purpose, as evidenced in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. If only I could hold some of those young teens in my arms in moments of their despair and say, “This is not the end!”
There was also a proclamation as well as emancipation. The early Christians wouldn’t be silenced. They still believed in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and they were going to tell people about it. Peter gave them some more ammunition, some more courage to believe that. In other words, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead was not an accident; it was something that had been planned from the beginning of time. It was part of God’s great plan and God’s great desire. It is not an accident; it is providence. It is part of God’s overall desire for humanity. Because it is his plan, you do not need to live in fear that it was an accident that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. Furthermore, you should now live as people who live in that freedom, having been set free from the futility, from the desire, from the ignorance of your former life, you can now live a life knowing that the love of God triumphs over all the problems that beset the world, and that having that love now in your hearts, “You will have that same love in your heart for those who are around you.”
Here comes the responsibility: You were set free in order to live the life of love that was shown in the Resurrection. That is the manifesto of freedom for the Church. That is what the call of the Church is to be, to have the love of Christ and to share it. More than that, to live responsibly because of it. Not simply return to former ways, but live in the light of Christ’s love and Christ’s grace and Christ’s way. It is interesting that near the end of the Emancipation Proclamation there were some words for those who had been set free. It is also in the document that having been freed, they are now responsible. This is what it said: “I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence unless necessary in self-defence and I recommend to them that in all cases, when allowed, they labour faithfully for reasonable wages.”
Having been set free, you now have a responsibility not to act with violence, unless in self-defence, and to work faithfully for reasonable wages. They were freed, not with a licence to do nothing or with the freedom to use tyranny on others, but rather freed in such a way that they live a life of responsibility. That is what Peter is getting at here, saying to the Christian community, “Live in a responsible way. Even if you face tyranny and death, for the sake of the greater good, for the sake of being good citizens, live as Christ would have you live, not as you lived before.”
As many of you know, I am the Chaplain for the Indy Car race here in Toronto, and one of the great privileges is that I get to sit in on the drivers’ meetings about an hour before the race. It is like the holy of holies, the inner sanctum of motor sport, because that is when the drivers meet with the race organizers and get all the rules lined up as to how they should drive. They are tense, believe-you-me, they are tense! These drivers are driven to win, and they often don’t care how they win. It is up to the director of the race to set the rules. We were having two problems here in Toronto, and the Race Director got up and simply said two things to them, and I have never forgotten it and I never will. He said, “The first thing, drivers, is to maintain your courtesy. (Yes, he said “courtesy”!) The second thing is make sure you always drive within the lines.” You see, what had happened was drivers were cutting one another off and causing accidents. They were coming out of the pits and cutting across the lines and causing accidents. It was dangerous, aggressive, and it was a problem. “Courtesy” and “stay within the lines” he said, “If you do these two things, then we will have a safe race. If you don’t, I cannot guarantee your safety.” It sent chills down my spine!
There is a sense in which Peter understood that in this race of life, the courtesy, the care of others, and staying within the lines, which is our obedience to God, are the things that ultimately lead us to where we go. There is no point believing those things if you don’t believe that at the end of it, and in the midst of it, and in the beginning of it, is God, and the assurance of that is in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Amen.