This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalm 119:49–72; Isaiah 9:8–17; 2 Peter 2:1–10a; Mark 1:1–8
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 11 (“The Third Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 60:1–3,11a,14c,18–19, BCP, p. 87); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 16 (“The Song of Zechariah,” Luke 1:68–79, BCP, p. 92)
2 Peter: why we still need Advent. The reason that Peter feels compelled to write this second letter to the churches in Asia Minor is that he has learned that some teachers have emerged among them who challenge the idea of the Lord’s return: “…saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation!’” (2 Peter 3:4).
In the third chapter of this epistle, Peter refutes the content of their teaching (the Daily Office covered that chapter over the course of the first two Sundays of this Advent—so we did not take them up in our Daily Devotions with the Dean). Basically, Peter’s response is to assert that God doesn’t reckon time the way we do, and then to reiterate Jesus’s teaching: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed” (2 Peter 3:10). What’s more, he concludes, we need to live our lives in full, sober, and eager anticipation of that day, “leading lives of holiness and godliness” (2 Peter 3:11)
It is important to understand this dynamic in order to appreciate what Peter is getting at in this second chapter of his letter. As he faces martyrdom, what motivates him to write is not just that he wants to make sure his own voice is extended into the next generation. He knows what will happen—in fact, he fears it is already happening—to a church that no longer leans into the hope of Christ’s return.
… in their greed they will exploit you … those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust and who despise authority — 2 Peter 2:3,10a. Peter, you may recall, has to assert that his teaching is not the fabricating of myths, but the recounting of the facts of Jesus’s life and ministry, including the Transfiguration that revealed the glory that awaits us. The false teachers are mocking that very hope as a fantasy: “Where is the promise of his coming?” In doing so, they are presuming to countermand the authority of Jesus himself (not to mention his apostles).
Peter warns against something that many of us have experienced: a church that decides it can treat biblical teaching as just so much mythology (miracles, a virgin birth, a literal resurrection from the dead, and the hope of Christ’s return). If it is all mythology, it can be demythologized and then remythologized in terms that are more palatable to our predetermined values and worldview. When that happens, the faith just becomes a projection of our own fantasies and desires.
No matter how idealistic the veneer that is laid over the language of faith (such as “faith” = “being true to yourself”; or “resurrection” is something that happens in our hearts; or that the “second coming” is something we make happen as we transform society into the “Kingdom of God”), Peter knows that what will take over are base desires: greed, licentiousness, depraved lust. For, as Ashley Null so nicely sums the heart of Thomas Cromwell’s thinking, and thus the genius of true Anglicanism: “What the heart wants, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.”
Stay true, says Peter, to the biblical story line—especially the parts that step on our toes, and perhaps even more especially the part that says we still need the Return of the King. That story, and no other, keeps our hearts from re-spinning God’s truth into a projection of our own dissolute desires. Apart from the living and ascended and returning Christ’s work in us, our desires are depraved. With the living and ascended and returning Christ living within us, however, our desires participate in that great makeover that Peter has already described: “participation in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). That’s what’s at stake in resisting the false prophets who say that this is all there is. Advent is our “No!” to that lie!
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+