This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 18:1-20; Exodus 16:10-22; 1 Peter 2:11-25; John 15:12-27

This morning’s Canticles are: Pascha Nostrum (“Christ Our Passover,” BCP, p. 83); following the OT reading, Canticle 8 (“The Song of Moses,” Exodus 15, BCP, p. 85); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)

As servants of God, live as free people, yet do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil. … Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh. … For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. — 1 Peter 2:16,18,21. 

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. — John 15:12-15

This is a challenging pairing of NT readings: 

This isn’t the only time in his letter that Peter considers people in vexing social circumstances. Here, in 1 Peter 2:18, the apostle addresses “household servants” (Greek oiketai). In 1st century Greek and Roman culture oiketai were considered members of their master’s household (oikos), and were often valued and loved. If you belonged to a high-status household, you enjoyed the status of that household. You might even be able to earn sufficient wages to purchase your freedom, if you wished. Not everyone chose this option, because some felt their life chances were better in a good household. 

Then again, all households weren’t equal, nor all household heads magnanimous, kind, and loving. Peter anticipates the prospect of “harsh” masters. The term he uses is skolioi, which means “twisted” or “crooked” (we get the medical term “scoliosis” from it). Peter might have said more. Did he mean violent? or simply curt? Did Peter mean “crooked” in the sense that the master engaged in illicit business, and expected you to be complicit in his dishonest dealings? or simply that a master might have a “twisted” sense of humor you were supposed to put up with? Did Peter mean being “mean”? If so, there’s a wide range of “meanness,” from issuing verbal lashings to administering physical beatings. 

Peter doesn’t provide guidance as to what the limits are, whether there comes a point to refuse to obey, to stand up and say, “Stop it!” His concern lies elsewhere. 

Peter has had years now to contemplate the meaning of having had his feet washed by his Savior (John 13). He has had years to consider the significance of his Savior calling him “friend,” no longer “slave.” He has had years to internalize the significance of his “Friend” laying down his life for “friends” like him. He has had years to remember that Jesus had called him friend even knowing Peter would deny him. He has had years to work through how to lay down his life for others the way his Master/Friend had modeled and taught (John 15:13-15). And Peter has come to understand that the transforming work of Jesus has put him at odds with a world that doesn’t understand the value of selfless sacrifice—“If the world hates you, remember that it hated me before you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you do not belong to the world, because my choice withdrew you from the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18-19 Jerusalem Bible). 

As he writes his epistle, Peter is helping us to find our bearings in the midst of a world in which, at the high cost of the blood of our Savior, we’ve been made “elect strangers.” He knows that we’re called “friends,” and not servants, but that we’re also called to take up basin and towel to lay down our lives in humble service. And so, Peter has turned to Isaiah 53, the song of the Suffering Servant. Unique among NT writers, Peter finds in this passage not just Jesus offering his life as exchange (“he bore our sins that we might be free of sins”), but also Jesus offering his life as example (“because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, to that you should follow his steps”—compare 1 Peter 2:24 & 21). 

It’s a breathtaking discovery. No one else in the NT points up both the exchange and the example aspects of Isaiah 53. Peter doesn’t pause to parse all the qualifications or exceptions. He offers the Suffering-Servant-Footwashing-Friend-of-Sinners answer for what to do with, for lack of a better term for our time, a “bad boss.” Kill from below with kindness. Sometimes, as Abraham Lincoln observed, you can vanquish an enemy by turning them into a friend. Sometimes the softer response to a harsh word from up-the-chain-of-command can calm the waters, occasionally, turning a critic into an advocate. 

Sometimes … well, it doesn’t work the way we’d like. Among the people whom Peter says to honor is “the emperor” (baliseus, lit., “king,” verse 13). The emperor of his day was Nero. Even as Peter was writing, Nero was preparing to unleash carnage against Christians, because he wrongly blamed them for fires in Rome. Before too long, Peter himself would be arrested and condemned to death. According to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, the apostle was crucified upside down. The story goes that he requested that he be crucified in this manner, lest anyone think he presumed he was equal to his Master (image by Caravaggio). On the one hand, that’s not the greatest of outcomes. On the other hand, eventually the love that Peter and all the other martyrs displayed proved stronger than the pride and pretense of all the Roman persecutors. As a result, to adapt a saying, while many will honor a son by naming him “Peter,” nobody would name anything but their dog “Nero.” 

I pray God gives us grace today, as Peter says, to “live as free people”—loving one another; serving the unlovable as well as the lovable; honoring bosses, good and bad; and respecting (and praying for!) leaders, wise and unwise. 

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+