Monday • 11/29/2021
Monday of the First Week of Advent, Year Two
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 1; Psalm 2; Psalm 3; Amos 2:6–16; 2 Peter 1:1–11; Matthew 21:1–11
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2–6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3–4, BCP, p. 94)
2 Peter 1:3–7 is a masterfully constructed sentence in Greek, and it carries some of the most powerful truth in the entire New Testament. Who knew a Galilean fisherman could be so elegant? Then again, who wants to discount the power of Jesus to make us so much more than we are left to ourselves?!
Verses 3 and 5 are held together by an elegant, “Inasmuch as” (hōs — plus everything in verses 3–4), followed by a powerful “for this very reason” (kai auto touto de — plus everything in verses 5–7).
“Inasmuch as…” With his “inasmuch as,” Peter looks back at the gift of “faith” he had introduced in 2 Peter 1:1. Peter says that we have been granted a faith that is just as precious as his own: “To those who have received a faith as precious as ours…” (2 Peter 1:1). Extraordinary! A faith equal in value to that of the Peter who had been given the keys to the Kingdom, had stood on the Mount of Transfiguration, had had his feet washed in the Upper Room, and had had his failures met with the simple question, “Do you love me?”
Our faith is no less a gift than his was (“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven”—Matthew 16:17). Our faith gains us no less access to the presence of “our God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (2 Peter ), and is no less a resource for an abundance of “grace and peace” as we “grow in the rich knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ,” Peter’s Lord and ours. The gift of faith—a staggering and wonderful truth!
And what a staggering thing it is we are asked and enabled to believe: that we “may become participants of the divine nature (theias koinōnoi phuseōs)” (2 Peter 1:4b). So enamored with this thought were ancient Christians from Irenaeus to Athanasias that they summed it up this way: “God became man, so man could become god.”* What Peter and they mean is perhaps best expressed for modern western ears by C. S. Lewis (in a passage we have mentioned before), when he says, It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.** According to Peter, Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Lewis, believers are destined to be everlasting, godlike splendors.
“for this very reason…” The thing is that process begins now. So great a gift as sharing the divine nature calls forth from us a cooperation with the divine hand that has taken hold of our life. And that hand is in the business of making us over in the now into what we will be when Christ returns for us, when our Advent hope is fully realized.
To faith add virtue. To such faith, maintains the rugged former fisherman, we should strive with all our might to add “virtue.” This word, aretē, expressed for Greek-speaking people the highest aspiration in character-formation. It is a “being” word, not a “doing” word. It recognizes that what comes out of us has its source in our core identity and set of values—often pre-reflective values. Peter says to let our faith do the deep work within us of making us people of character.
To virtue add knowledge. Amazing insights come to hearts that are true and right and inclined toward the good. It simply works that way.
To knowledge add self-control. Knowledge of what’s real gives one the ability to accept both challenges (that is, to summon our resources to accomplish great things) and boundaries (that is, to reel ourselves in when we are tempted to go spinning out of control).
To self-control add endurance. It takes mastery of oneself to enable “a long obedience in the same direction” (it is sufficient to commend pastor-theologian Eugene Peterson’s marvelous book by that title).
To endurance add godliness. Long-haul Christians come to value the disciplines that comprise what Peter’s term “godliness” literally means: “good religion” (eu+sebeia). “Good religion” is (at least) daily prayer, corporate worship, the giving of alms, taking our place in the Body of Christ (see also the baptismal vows in the Book of Common Prayer, pp. 304–205). The world rightly hates hypocritical “religious” people, those who have “the outward form of good religion but deny its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). What the world needs to see, and what the world will find persuasive, is people whose faith and hope and love have been sustained and strengthened by the disciplines of “good religion,” by godliness.
To godliness add brotherly affection. The God who is a community of love (Father, Son, and Spirit) makes us irrepressibly fond of those who have been drawn into his human community of love. If we love the Triune God, we love those who belong to that fellowship—we are attracted to those in whom that life glows. We find that it goes with the grain of who we are as beloved of God to honor the first of our baptismal vows: to “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers.”
To brotherly affection add self-giving love. And that brotherly affection (to the extent that it is indeed Christ’s brotherly affection and not mere carnal mutual self-adoration) creates in us a love for those not yet in Christ’s fold. Our love for the Christian family propels us to love the entire human family. We find ourselves going with the grain of God’s reality by living into the last two baptismal vows: to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself” … and “to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”
Praise be for the splendor that came in Jesus Christ, that will be revealed at his glorious return, and that works its way into our lives in the now.
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+
*Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5, Preface; Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54.3; Against the Arians 1.39; 3.34; see also, for example, Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks 1.
**From C.S. Lewis’s “Weight of Glory” sermon.
Image: Guercino , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons