A Real-World Ransom (1 Peter 1:17-23)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on April 30, 2017, Easter III)

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Our Inheritance…

It’s a jungle out there, a dog-eat-dog world, a rat race. Every man for himself. Look out for number one.

If it isn’t making dollars, then it isn’t making sense. If you are not moving units, then you’re not worth the expense. Time is money. If you snooze, you lose. Get rich quick.

What’s the bottom line? Get to the point. Results speak the loudest. The ends justify the means. It’s not a crime unless you get caught.

If you believe in it, then fight for it. Don’t take no for an answer.

All of these are anonymous echoes in my head. Anonymous, because I don’t know where I heard them first. But I have heard them all so often that they have become a part of me. You might say that I’ve inherited them, just as a person inherits genes or traits from a parent. Which is to say, they are as much a part of me as my curly hair or my hazel eyes, whether I like that or not. If I didn’t like my curly hair, it’d still be there. Even if I disagree that it’s a dog-eat-dog world, or that the ends justify the means, there will still always be that voice in my head.

I would be surprised if you had not inherited similar voices. All of these voices are part of our cultural inheritance. These are dominant traits in our world. Independence. Competition. Efficiency. Results. Strength. Whether we look at our schools, our businesses, or our government, we see these same basic values. This is part of our inheritance.

…Is What We Need Salvation from

Our scripture today has a most curious way of talking about salvation. The author of this letter is writing to a persecuted community of Christ-followers in the first century. This is a community that needed a pep talk, a spark. And the author gives them one, but with strange words. He talks about salvation, but not salvation from sin or death or evil. What we really need salvation from, he says, is our own inheritance.

You—he says, speaking to his audience—when you were born, you inherited a way of life. But it was hollow. You did what everyone around you was doing, what the whole world was doing, but it left you feeling empty. What was the point? It was almost like you were a slave to a meaningless cycle, to the same empty things day after day

But then something happened. Something so world-shattering that you were let loose from what you knew, what you had inherited.

We All Need to Be Unlocked

Something happened to Dan Hamann in Seattle, Washington. Something world-shattering. Dan was born into a family with a father, a mother, and a brother. His brother had Down Syndrome.

I’ll let him tell the story from here:

We were the perfect family with the suburban home, two cars, a picket fence [and] money, and then there was Paul. I didn’t really know how to relate to that. All my friends were very affluent, even more affluent than we were. Paul was a complication.

[All the way] through junior high I [struggled] with trying to make Paul a part of my life…. I was trying to fit in. I was trying to be one of the guys…. I just wanted to be accepted. I just wanted to be normal.[1]

As Dan tells the story, things just changed inexplicably one night at a football game. There he forgot about what his friends thought or expected, and he cared only for his brother Paul. “I sat next to him,” he says. “I…held his hand, then I walked him around…and I introduced all my friends to him. From that moment on I was changed.”[2]

I take Paul out a lot. He and I do things now. I take him to church. I take him to get ice cream cones. We go to basketball games. He doesn’t know what the heck is going on at those games, but he likes being with me. I like being with him.[3]

Paul is like the rest of us. He likes to be touched. He is warm. He’ll reach out and he’ll hold and he’ll hug. He always wants to hold your hand. I don’t know if that is typical of Down Syndrome people or if it is just Paul.[4]

Paul has opened up a world, a new world for me….[5]

He is gentle. He’s got nothing but good things in his heart….There is no deceit….There is no struggle, no ambition to step on anybody to get to the top. These are all things that are produced in our society. Paul doesn’t have any of those things….[From our world’s perspective] he is…ugly and…deformed and…inarticulate, and here he is opening up the whole world to me….[6]

I myself cannot help but observe how different Paul is from our world. Whereas most people inherit the values of independence and a competitive spirit, Paul lives dependently on others and treats strangers as friends. Whereas most of us have inherited the values of efficiency and results and strength, Paul lives slowly and patiently and without regard for social success or triumph. Paul teaches Dan and his family a strange, new way of life. They learn patience and compassion. They learn that time is not money but a precious gift to be shared. They learn that love is not an objective, something that they can buy for Paul at an institution, or something that they can achieve through other means. Love is the means. It is the way. And the truth and the life.

In Dan’s words:

[Paul] is an ambassador sent from the heavenly family to change us forever so that we won’t be what we would have otherwise been.[7]

There is a need to be unlocked. We all need to be unlocked. It is a question of who has the key. Paul had the key.[8]

An Inheritance at Odds with Love

Whoever wrote 1 Peter couldn’t have put it better himself. We all need to be unlocked. We all need to be ransomed, unchained, unbolted, unfastened, set free from the empty ways that we’ve inherited. Because the good news of God’s love stands in stark opposition to much of our world today.

“Love is patient,” but our world is not. Our world of fast cars, fast food, fast computers, the “fast track,” instant messaging, instant replays, instant access, is rather impatient. If it’s not now, it’s not worth it. The gospel of love begs us to slow down. To be inefficient. To enter into the difficulties and sufferings of others. To put people before profit or productivity.

“Love is kind.” But in our world of business and politics, competition and achievement, kind people often finish last.

“Love does not insist on its own way.” But our world proclaims the opposite. Have it your way. Make your own way. Compassion is, at best, an extracurricular activity, a distinction of community service that can be stamped onto your certificate.

We all need to be unlocked.

A Real-Life Exodus

How? According to our scripture, it is Christ who unlocks us. Our author compares Jesus to the Passover lamb, whose blood spared the lives of the ancient Israelites before they were set free from their slavery in Egypt. To be clear, he is not saying that Jesus is a one-time sacrifice that supernaturally cleans us of our sins. He’s saying that Jesus spares us from the death of our empty ways and invites us into the journey of freedom, which is also a journey into the wilderness, where we must learn new ways of living.

Such an event is catastrophic. It is, in our author’s words, “the end of the ages,” which is to say, Jesus Christ marks the end of one story and the beginning of another. Or in the words of Dan Hamann, he “opens up a world, a new world.”

As I consider the state of our world and the church in it, what concerns me these days is not so much that we get our theology right, that we know all the right words to say about Jesus. What concerns me is that we encounter the living Christ, who actually sets us free from the empty ways that we’ve inherited. The reason I love Dan’s story is that it shows in flesh and blood what a real-world ransom looks like. It is a real-life exodus from the world of independence and competition, results and efficiency, speed and strength; and it is a journey into the wilderness of love and compassion, patience and kindness, selflessness and wonder.[9] A journey into a new life where what matters most is touch and ice cream cones, sharing time together and church.

The living Christ who ransoms us from the empty ways of the world, will look different for each of us. For Dan, it looked like his brother Paul. (And Dan’s not alone. We have several paintings from the 16th century that depict angels as having Down Syndrome, suggesting that persons with Down Syndrome have been ransoming us from our empty inheritance for hundreds of years. One such picture sits on the narthex table, and I invite you to take a look on your way out.)

What does your ransom look like? Chances are, we haven’t translated all of our own experience into story. But it’s worth stopping and thinking about every once in a while. If our faith is real, then what does our ransom really look like? Where have we encountered the living Christ? How are we being ransomed, even right now, from the dominant and empty traits of our world? Who, or what, are the Pauls in our life?

Prayer

Living Christ,
Who sets us free
From our empty inheritance
And shares with us
God’s inheritance of love;
Bless all the little and unexpected ways
Through which we are ransomed,
And lead us onward
From the last page of our world’s story
Into the new chapter of your kingdom. Amen.

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[1] Christoper de Vinck, The Power of the Powerless (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 127.
[2] De Vinck, 127.
[3] De Vinck, 129.
[4] De Vinck, 127-128.
[5] De Vinck, 122.
[6] De Vinck, 131.
[7] De Vinck, 131. Dan’s reference to Paul as “an ambassador sent from the heavenly family” finds an intriguing parallel in several works of Renaissance art, which depict angels and possibly even the Christ-child as having Down Syndrome. See “Down Syndrome Depicted in Renaissance Art, http://www.confessionsofthechromosomallyenhanced.com/2013/05/down-syndrome-depicted-in-renaissance.html?m=1, visited April 29, 2017.
[8] De Vinck, 123.
[9] It also shows us what our scripture calls “reverent fear” (1:17) which sounds rather ominous but in reality is rather life-giving: for in the case of Dan, it is an eternal earnestness and commitment and curiosity where everything matters, not just what we do on Sunday morning or in our private devotions, but what we do in the real world.