“The Soul Knows…Only That It Is Hungry”
1 Rid
yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all
slander. Just to remind us: Peter is writing to a community of
Christ-followers who have been enduring some form of persecution, most likely
social discrimination and ostracism, and sporadically imprisonment or even
death. That Peter would urge them to abstain from the seemingly minor moral infringements
that characterize much of our world, whether Wall Street or Hollywood or the
White House, mannerisms such as slander or name-calling and guile or what we
might even call approvingly “calculation,” is noteworthy. Peter’s audience is
being name-called, judged, shamed, pushed to the margins, but Peter urges them
not to fall into the same sort of behavior themselves. We might remember from
last week how Peter refers to his audience as “exiles” or strangers in their
own land and how he calls them to live differently as Jesus Christ lived
differently. Here he’s reminding them of one key difference: how they treat the
people who are mistreating them; how they relate to one another amid conflict
and difference.
2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk—a more direct translation would be “the pure milk of the Word”—so that by it you may grow into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
Elsewhere in scripture, writers like Paul refer to milk as an early stage of spiritual development. “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food” (1 Cor 3:2). But here Peter uses the metaphor differently. Here, Peter is not telling his audience to grow up, but to be always like a newborn infant, hungry for milk.
I’m reminded here of Simone Weil, a Christ-follower in the mid 20th-century who helped to hide Jewish children in France during the Nazi occupation. Simone wrote this: “The soul knows for certain only that it is hungry.” She pointed out that while many people get hung up on the concept of belief, on whether or not they really believe in God, that is actually a secondary concern next to the reality of our spiritual need. She points out: “A child does not stop crying if we suggest to it that perhaps there is no bread. It goes on crying just the same. The danger is not [that] the soul should doubt whether there is any bread [i.e., God], but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.”[1]
There is a saying in the 12-Step tradition, “The only step you have to get right is the first one”; and the first step is acknowledging our powerlessness, our need—or we might say our “hunger.” The real danger, as Simone observes, is not that we doubt God’s existence or believe the wrong things about God, but that we persuade ourselves we’re not hungry. And it’s perhaps easier than ever to forget our hunger in this world. In our time and place, we are surrounded by just about everything we could want, so much so that we forget what we need. People can have whatever they want with the click of a button, delivered to their doorstep within hours, and yet our world is lonelier and more depressed than ever before. Buried deep beneath the many things that are acquired…is a forgotten hunger.
For Peter, always being hungry means always seeking out real nourishment. And for Peter, real nourishment is in the Word, which is to say Jesus Christ. The earliest communities of Christ-followers understood this nourishment in an almost literal way. That is, they steeped themselves in the words of Christ. The earliest manual of instruction for new Christ-followers, the Didache, is filled with the sayings of Christ. I’ll read just a portion of it, which is almost entirely verbatim from Jesus’ words. Imagine how a person might be changed, how might they grow, if they consumed these words every day: “Bless those who curse you, and pray for your enemies”; “love those who hate you”; “if someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles; if someone takes your cloak, give him your tunic also; if someone takes from you what belongs to you, do not demand it back”; “give to everyone who asks you, and do not demand it back”; “do not become angry, for anger leads to murder”; “do not be jealous or quarrelsome or hot-tempered, for all these things breed murders.”[2]
Who Does the
Building?
After beginning with the metaphor of hunger and growth, Peter makes a hard pivot to a rather different metaphor: building and construction. As I read these next verses, however, I would invite you to pay close attention to who is doing the building and what our role is in it.
4 Come to him, a living stone—now, “living” is not a normal description of stones; it seems that Peter takes liberty in order to stress that this stone is characterized by vitality and the life it imparts—[come to him, a living stone] though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and 5 like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in scripture:
“See, I am laying in Zion a stone,a cornerstone chosen and precious;
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame”—from Isaiah 28:16.
7 To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe,
“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the very head of the corner”—from Ps 118:22—
8 and
and a rock that makes them fall”—from Isa 8:14.
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people—here Peter employs a host of descriptions that originally describe the people of Israel; the implication is that Christ-followers are now a part of the same story, now employed with the same mission, which is essentially one of ambassadorship for God’s kingdom; or as Peter puts it: —in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. The gospel of John explains the mission of Jesus in remarkably similar terms, first saying, “He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him” (John 1:7), and then later reporting that Jesus himself said, “For this I came into the world, to testify to the truth” (John 18:37). In other words, Jesus came not to control and conquer, but to care and give witness to a better way.
Peter concludes with some words drawn from the prophet Hosea, which celebrate the experience of entering into God’s mercy and becoming part of God’s family.
10 Once you were not a people,but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy.
Church Growth
Today, in our corner of the world, it is not uncommon to hear churches describe their struggles in terms of “church growth.” They might describe the problem as a matter of diminishing attendance or membership. They might describe the solution as a matter of strategy and calculation oriented toward attracting people: different programs, a new building, more advertisement, slicker presentation, and so on.
In his time and place, Peter also perceives a struggle for the church. We could even call that struggle “church growth”—except that for Peter that would have meant something very different. For Peter, “growth” is spiritual, not institutional. For Peter, the problem is not numbers but forgetting our hunger and falling back into old habits—like malice (or identifying enemies), like slander (or name-calling), like guile (or the win-at-all-costs thinking that justifies lies and deceit). For Peter, the problem is not whether the community adds or loses followers, but whether the community stays true to the words of Christ. Likewise, for Peter, the solution is not a blueprint or something we design and build. In his understanding, we are not the builders. We are the blocks. What is more, we are blocks that must align with the cornerstone, Jesus Christ, who is a stumbling block to many in the world.
“Let yourselves be built into a spiritual house,” Peter says (1 Pet 2:5). This paints a very different picture than the idea that we are building God’s kingdom (or much less our own church). Our role as Peter sees it is focused not on changing others, but on being changed ourselves; on always drinking the pure milk of the Word and on being fitted or dressed as stones that will align with our cornerstone.
Peter’s metaphors suggest that, as “a spiritual house,” we—not a building, but we ourselves, wherever we are, wherever we gather—we become for others a transformative space. That is, a space where God might dwell and where others might encounter God for themselves; a space where others might be captivated by the strange beauty of the architecture, by the stark difference of these stones and their cornerstone. We become a sort of safehouse, where others can learn a different way, just as we ourselves (newborn infants) continue to learn a different way.
Prayer
Whose word is pleasing to our taste
And nourishment for our souls—
Attune our inner heart
To its deep hunger for you
…
So that we might feed regularly
On the words of Christ
And grow into salvation,
And into a spiritual house
Where others might encounter you.
In Christ, our cornerstone: Amen.
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