1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ's sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.
Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the power forever and ever. Amen.
Reflection Please join me mounting a ten thousand feet above the ground perspective from which to scan the course of life and it’s ordeals?
From the beginning of our faith traditions narrative some thirty four hundred years ago, there has never been a time without ordeals and suffering. In the third chapter of Genesis our first named human ancestors succumb to the temptation to aggrandize themselves by “eating from the tree of good and evil,” and the man blames the woman and the woman blames the serpent and our human propensity to shirk responsibility and look for someone to blame for our troubles is born and the consequences of our choices are; shame, hard work and consciousness of pain. The next thing that happens is sibling rivalry. Cain is jealous of Abel, so kills his brother. Before we wander through seven chapters of the first book of the Hebrew Testament humanity is nearly extinguished by a great flood.
Here is the thing. The Genesis stories are not historical records of events. They are our ancestors attempts to understand and make meaning from their mysterious ordeals. Why are some people favored more than others? Why do women have pain in childbirth? Why is there suffering? Why do people die? Humanity’s questions echo from the beginning.
And so the writer of 1 Peter entreats us, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” There has never been a generation that did not face fiery ordeals. But here is the thing. When the writer includes in his exhortation, “to test you,” he is not describing situations designed for us to either pass or fail. Testing means proving or refining. In the text from 1 Peter, testing is being “restored, supported, strengthened, and established.” Established in relationship to something greater than us, a ubiquitous perspective, something that we call God, something that has been emerging through billions of fiery ordeals.
4.5b years ago there was the birth of a planet we call earth. Perhaps we could think of this as the big ordeal that set the stage for the first microorganisms that predicated life 3.5 billion years ago. The earth’s surface broke into rocky platelets that moved and gave birth to the first continent named “Ur.” That was 3 billion years ago. Sex started about 1.7 billion years later with red algae which led to multicellular life but then on two occasions the entire earth froze. A subsequent explosion birthed animals with shells and massive diversification then, you guessed it, the first mass extinction about 450m years ago. Next fish that walked inhabited the single earth continent that then tore itself apart and another mass extinction preceded dinosaurs. We know what happened to them.
Question is not, “Why are there ordeals?” The question is “How do we choose to walk through ordeals?” The writer of 1Peter continues with good counsel. “Humble yourselves… Cast all your anxiety on (God)… Discipline yourselves, keep alert.” Because during ordeals we are vulnerable.
Early Wednesday afternoon, sitting in my office with a laptop recently gave to the church. The thing is, it is a PC and I am a Mac user, so I decided to get it set up ahead of time for our 2 pm Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina meeting. Much to my relief I managed to get the zoom site running then left the laptop open and continued to work on my own computer. At some point I noticed the image of a beautiful lion’s head looking at me from the PC. I actually stopped and thought about the beauty of this noble beast before closing the laptop and carrying it to the library for the meeting.
At 1:58 when I opened the laptop, the screen was bright blue. No matter which key I touched I could not get past the sea of blue nothing. Depressing the power button failed to turn it off. Time is passing, my cell phone is buzzing with texts from meeting participants wondering where I am. Huffing and muttering things that I shall not write, I grab the recalcitrant laptop and retreat to my office, hoping against hope that I can access zoom and open the meeting on my unreliable Mac. Stomach churning, heart pounding, mind racing, you might think I was being chased by a lion rather than late for a Centering Prayer meeting. And there we have it.
“Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.” Humble yourself Debra. Stop being anxious about all the changes and how to lead the church through this Covid-19 ordeal. Put your faith in God and resist the devil’s temptation to assume you have to figure this out, make everything work. Stay alert and know “your sisters and brothers in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.”
Whether we choose to begin our story 13.7 billion years ago with the massive fiery ordeal that blew space into smithereens, thirty four hundred years ago with our Hebrew ancestors’ attempts to make sense of their mystifying ordeals, or the most recent time the roaring lion showed up to steal our peace or shake our faith, there is no escaping life’s ordeals.
So what shall we do when the lion roars? Be disciplined and alert saying, “Welcome, welcome, welcome. I let go of my desire for things to be different than they are.”
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