“As he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct.” 1 Peter 1:15
On the night before his assassination, The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke on behalf of the Memphis garbage workers, and he said,
It’s alright to talk about long robes over yonder, in all of its symbolism, but ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. It’s alright to talk about streets flowing with milk and honey, but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can’t eat three square meals a day. It’s alright to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God’s preacher must talk about the new, New York, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis.
The American preacher, William WIllimon wrote in light of this, “Easter is more than simply, “Jesus has been raised from the dead, so now we will get to see our loved ones when we die.” Easter is about a whole new world, not some day, but today.” Indeed, Easter is. It is about a new world down here in the midst of our lives every bit as much as it is about the cosmic and eternal concerns. Jesus rising from the dead is transformative, it changes everything, it changes outlooks, it changes us, it invites new ways of being. Easter, the resurrection, Christianity, they make a difference in people’s lives. Or do they?
Perhaps some of you will remember a time when preachers called Christians to be different. Some of it was perhaps good, some maybe went too far. The United Church has an evangelical past. TEMC was established as a Methodist Church and if we go back a ways, Methodists tended to be, well, pious. Many were so pious and serous about their faith that the adjective, “staunch,” was often placed before the word Methodist and a person would be described as a “staunch Methodist.” Among other things, “staunch” might refer to a view of alcohol aligned with the Temperance Movement. Over one hundred years ago, this movement took note of the social struggles faced largely by women and young families when the man of the house would work all week, get paid on Friday evening, go to the pub, and drink away his pay-packet. With nothing to live on, families suffered, and sometimes there was abuse when a man returned home in a drunken stupor. The Temperance people, therefore, sought to ban alcohol, they demonized alcohol. Most Methodists followed the lead and being a teetotaller became institutionalized such that you couldn’t be a good Methodist unless you were also a teetotaller. It became part of political correctness for the time.
The other side of the great union, the Presbyterians, they also had their rules too. I think back to the film, Chariots of Fire, that depicts young Olympian, Eric Liddell, take on a young lad in Edinburgh for playing with a ball on Sunday. “What day is it, son?” Liddell asked the boy. “Sunday, sir,” said the lad. “We shouldn’t be playing with a ball on the Sabbath, now, should we?” said Liddell, and the young lad went away “with his tail between his legs.” He knew he had erred.
There was a time when Christians were different, if not pietistic and legalistic. Maybe it has been a good thing to cast off the legalisms that grew up, but sometimes I wonder if we have gone too far because now, it seems, we have a situation in which a person can do anything they want and be described as a Christian. In some church circles there’s the belief that just being a decent person, a good Canadian, and showing up a church once in a while is all that’s needed. In others there’s the idea that you have to believe in Jesus and that we are saved by grace. And because it’s all about grace, it really doesn’t matter that much how you live, because human beings can’t help themselves anyway. It’s all grace, we all get to heaven. So much is this the case that Reginald Bibby, the sociologist, did a study a few years ago about how people who call themselves Christian live. Bibby had some seventy-two categories that he investigated and in 68 of the 72 he found that there was no appreciable difference between how Christians lived vis-à-vis people who claimed to be non-religious. And yet, Rev. Martin Luther King preached about a new Memphis, transformation of things in this world. And William WIllimon spoke about how Easter alters things here and now, about how Christianity makes a difference. I wonder if we’ve missed something, or lost something, in our efforts to cast off the pietism and legalism of the past? Have we lost something?
Think of Peter, for instance. Jesus picked him up from an honest, but lowly career, fishing out on the Sea of Galilee. He dropped everything to follow Jesus. He listened to him but was not afraid to confront Jesus when he thought he was talking nonsense. On one occasion, Peter’s mouth led Jesus to say to him, “Get behind me, Satan, you do not have in mind the concerns of God.” Peter was all over the place, going from great heights of faith when he declared, “You are the Lord and Christ,” to denying Jesus in his greatest time of need just before the cross. And yet, after the first Easter, when it became clear to him that Jesus had risen, Peter was transformed into a steady, courageous leader, who spoke out boldly on the first day of Pentecost. He became a trusted leader in the young church, went far and wide spreading the good news, travelled to Rome, ministered there, and if tradition is right, died there in a time when Christians were being persecuted. The resurrection transformed Peter from a questioner and deny-er of Jesus to a person who gave his all for Jesus. Peter was changed.
Peter wrote to Christians throughout the Roman world during a time of persecution and struggle. In the midst of reminding them of the great inheritance they had in Jesus, he uttered some interesting words for us today, words about the changes that Jesus brings; he says “Set your hope fully on the grace that is coming to you … as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct (1:13f.).”
“Be holy for I am holy,” said the Lord (Lev.11:44; 1 Pet.1:16). Whoa! “Be holy, not too sure about that,” many think. Holiness is one of those words that we’ve almost lost. It’s got baggage. People hear it and with a few exceptions, it carries a negative connotation. Perhaps we can live with it in association with the Mother Theresas, or Pope John Pauls of this world but “holiness” is not something that many aspire to these days. We think of it in terms of things we would have to give up, nights out on the town, our favourite drink, and sexuality. In some circles dancing, films, theatre, jewelry, are associated with unholiness. For some people, that’s all the good stuff and when we add that, as a word, holiness is often associated with legalism and fretting about what a person does or doesn’t do here and there, it’s not something many people aspire to.
I remember a church I served in the early 90s. One of the older ladies at the church was a dear soul. Once a quarter, she had to have tea with her minister and I would dutifully go around to enjoy a cup with her. She would break out the fine china. It had been in her china cabinet for years and she never bothered to give the cups a little rinse before pouring the tea. The dust of the years and who knows what else would float in my cup and I would pray for a strong constitution.
Well, one summer I was away on holidays and received an urgent message to call the senior lay officer of the church. I called him back only to hear that dear Edna, who was from another era, had taken offense at a poster the church secretary had created to advertise the Sunday School picnic in September. The poster apparently stated that everyone was to meet at a park in south Ottawa, near the river, just beside the baseball diamond. Edna interpreted that to mean that we were going to be playing ball on a Sunday afternoon and was so distraught about it that she was calling everyone in the church phone directory asking them to withdraw their membership from this “fallen” church. Imagine, playing ball on the Sabbath! It had caused such a stir that from my holiday hotel room, I had to call Edna directly. I knew that we were not planning to play baseball at the Sunday School picnic, so it was easy to tell her that we wouldn’t be doing so and ask her to refrain from calling church members. Of course, I said nothing about all the other games that the children were going to play that day, but not playing ball was enough to calm Edna’s concern that we were not keeping the Sabbath.
Unfortunately, that is too often where the church got to with its understanding of holiness and how Christians should live. But is that really where this word holiness takes us, toward dos and don’ts, and legalism. I think of the early church and the exciting, engaging message that spread so readily. Was their understanding of holiness and Christian living a negative understanding? I think of how the power of the message transformed and made positive differences in people’s lives; how they changed and had new attitudes toward others, it enlivened people and healed relationships, it turned people toward God in positive ways and the church grew and grew. I think that we need to see this call to holiness and living out our faith, not as something negative, but as something positive. Holiness is something that brings out the best in human beings. It’s not a bunch of dos and don’ts.
Some of you will know that the season of Lent is a time when a lot of people give up things. Some give up meals, some give up alcohol, some give up chocolate during Lent and use the cravings to remind them to give time and devotion to God. Well back on our Ash Wednesday Service, I suggested that rather than give up something this year, we should take on something positive for Lent. I suggested reading the Gospels, all of them, over the course of the season. Some people did and have shared with me what a blessing it has been for them. I am wondering if, not unlike this Lenten season, where we took something on, this call to holiness is not so much one of giving up and putting off as it is taking on. As I read and re-read this letter from Peter, it seemed that holiness was associated with two things, two things we should, in a sense, take on. The first is a reverence for God.
At its root, holiness means to be set apart, to be different, to not be run of the mill. In our world it is different to revere God. So many in life, these days, scarcely give a thought to God. We live in a fairly well off society. As human beings and a society, we are able to control most of the things and people can go far without giving a thought to God. It takes something big it seems, a loss of control, to truly look beyond ourselves. Yet, before us lies this great universe. The best scientists tell us about the height and the depth, and the breadth of the universe, how it is ever evolving. They tell us that it had a beginning with a big bang. The sheer magnitude of that genesis and all that is evolving now says something about the power that must have been behind it all. This Power that caused that explosive genesis. This Power that brought all things into being, gave life to the animals, the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and human beings. This Power that has interacted with individuals, individuals who have passed on to us that it wants relationship with us. This Power that sent Jesus into the world to draw us closer and he was willing to go to a cross that that our relationship might be fully implemented and restored. This Power revealed itself again in raising Jesus. It transformed him, it transforms everything it comes in contact with.
When we think of the Power we associate with God, it is something we should truly revere and take account of in our lives. Since it is the source of everything so that when things go well for us in our work, we should stop for a moment and give thanks. When things bring great joy into our family life, we should stop for a moment and express appreciation. When things are not so good, we have one we can go to for help and comfort – trusting in the one who had the power to raise Jesus from the dead. A part of holiness is simply recognizing the power of God, revering it, drawing the ways of our lives closer to the ways of the Power. Holiness involves recognizing, revering the One who has given us all things.
The second thing holiness involves in Peter’s mind is found in v.22, “Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.”
That church that Edna had been a part of, when it first started around 1890, it had been one of the 19th century off shoots of Methodism, a small denomination in the Ottawa Valley called The Holiness Movement Church. It eventually re-joined the broader Methodist movement, but the fact that it until 1959 this church had been the centre of The Holiness Movement intrigued me when my Bishop asked me to become their minister. I was just finishing four years of doctoral work, not in a theological college, but at McMaster University’s Dept. of Religious Studies. It was a social science approach to the study of religion, there was no dogma, no standards of life to live up to as part of the programme, it was purely academic study of religion. I wondered therefore about going to a former Holiness church. I was a little worried that I would be too liberal for them, too much of a broad thinker, not conservative enough in my demeanour. But after I arrived at the church in the summer of 1992, I relaxed almost immediately. Some of these folks may have been overly concerned about whether or not we played ball on Sundays, but in terms of their relationships, some of them were “a hot mess.” A number of them had grown up together. Had put in decades together and they were like sparring children. We were hiring a youth minister at one point and at the meeting to approve the hiring, they fought over terminology, whether this person was to be a youth worker or a youth minister. I thought they were going to come to blows, the tension was so high. People, their faces were red, they were enraged, and I wondered, “Where is the love?” It is one thing to be concerned about playing ball on Sundays, but if you have not love, said St. Paul, you have nothing (1 Cor.13 – and by the way, that congregation had many redeeming qualities to it).
When Peter talks about holiness, he says, “You have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.” That entails treating each other well, treating each other fairly, treating others as you would like them to treat you. It means being respectful of one another, it means speaking well of one another. It means being willing to forgive a person from time to time, as you would have them forgive you when you err.
When I read Peter on holiness this week, when I saw his words, “revere God,” “love one another,” it struck me how close Peter came to his Master’s greatest commandment, “love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might, and love your neighbour as yourself.” True Christianity makes a difference in people’s lives. Easter changes everything and the fact that Jesus rose means that we must pay attention to what he said. Christianity is not something to be lived when we get to heaven, it is to be lived right now, today, right here on earth. This word holiness, while it may have baggage in modern usage, is really quite simple. It’s about loving God and truly loving others. When it comes to living a holy life, if you can revere God and love others, you won’t go too far wrong as we wait for Christ’s return.