Do Good

 Evensong, Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill The Rev. Nancy E. Gossling

I find early Christian history to be fascinating. Our women’s Bible study group has been reading St. Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia, which was written around 50 AD and well before the Christian churches were officially organized and recognized. And so I was curious about tonight’s reading from the 1st letter of Peter. 

First of all, despite the attribution to his name, St. Peter did not write this letter. It is believed to have been written sometime between 70 and 90 AD many decades after St. Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians. And thanks to St. Paul’s faithful and passionate missionary work, Christianity was now widespread throughout Asia Minor. 

The author of the 1st letter of St. Peter was apparently writing from Rome and to the five Roman provinces in Asia Minor. Throughout this time in history we hear about various conflicts going on in these regions. There were cultural clashes between Romans, Greeks, Jews, and Gentiles. There was tension between men and women, slave and free, the rich and poor. The conflict between Jesus and his religious leaders was escalating, and his entrance into Jerusalem only heightened it. 

Now the first letter of Peter tells us to imitate Christ by “doing good and not retaliating against those who slander their community.” So how is it then that we can justify the behavior of Jesus in today’s lesson from Matthew when he overturned tables and drove out the money-changers? Certainly his actions seemed neither gentle nor reverent!

Is Jesus doing good or is He retaliating against members of his own community? Does he need a class in anger management? Or is he acting according to God’s will and suffering for doing what is right? Should we imitate Jesus and walk through Redeemer’s upcoming Christmas market, overturning tables of wreaths and greens, demanding that our church be a house of prayer and not a den of robbers? 

Long ago, when I was involved with a transitional living facility for homeless women and their children in Connecticut, I invited the residents to our Christmas holiday party at Church. It was painful. There was them and there was us. They sat at one table and we sat at another. They were black and we were white. We were rich and they were poor. Later in the week, I bewailed my experience of the party to their executive director, who reminded me that while the impact of this event was difficult for everyone, our intentions were good. 

In the case of Jesus, his religious leaders were presumably appalled at his seemingly destructive and irreverent behavior in the temple. In what is described by some as his righteous anger, Jesus is “zealous for doing what is right.”  And as the author of 1st Peter suggests, there is no harm in doing that. The money changers have been taking advantage of the poor, who are required to make sacrifices in the temple, as part of being a faithful Jew. With little money to spare, the poor are being price-gouged by their religious leaders.

Now, let me be very clear, I am not accusing Redeemer’s leaders of doing anything wrong, irreverent, or even price-gouging. In fact, both their intentions and their impact are for the good; for the proceeds from this Christmas market actually benefit the poor. This event is about “doing good” in the name of Christ, and where is the harm in that? So too is your current involvement with Habitat for Humanity and the many and various ways in which you imitate Christ in your homes, at work, and throughout your communities and the world. Thank you for all that you do in the name of Christ with your time, talents, and treasure.

At this same time in history, Roman political leaders were becoming increasingly nervous about the spread of Christianity, and its potential threat to their power. Soon after the letter of 1st Peter was written, if Christians did not make sacrifices to the emperor in Rome, they were condemned to death. Those who refused to renounce their belief in Christ and the hope that was in them were killed and then called martyrs by their fellow Christians. Understandably, Christians would hide their religious identities; and their leaders began arguing about what it meant to be faithful. 

Meanwhile families struggled with divided loyalties and the changes in the patriarchal structures of their culture. According to my HarperCollins Study Bible, “Roman society included the fear that conversion would reverse the established hierarchical relationships and cause women to misbehave. They thought that Christianity caused immorality, especially adultery, insubordination within the household, and sedition against the state.” And so, Jesus began the liberation movement with his entry into Jerusalem where “he died for sins once for all, setting free all the people of God so that he might bring us to God.” As St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians, in Christ, there is no longer slave nor free, male nor female, Jew nor Gentile. 

Tonight we remember St. Cecilia, “that” woman who was martyred in Rome sometime in the early 3rd century. According to A Great Cloud of Witnesses, “she was of noble birth and betrothed to a pagan, who along with his brother, converted to Christianity. Because of their conversion they were martyred and, while broken-hearted St. Cecilia was burying them, she was also arrested. After several failed attempts to put her to death, she died from injuries sustained by her ordeal. Much later, in the 14th century, she was remembered for her passion with which she sang the praises of God; and so she became the patron saint of singers, organ builders, musicians and poets.”

The author of 1st Peter recognizes that when we do good in the face of evil and hate, prejudice and oppression, it may cause us suffering and pain. He claims, however,  that it is better to “suffer for doing right, if that should be God’s will, than for doing wrong.” And yet, that begs the question, how do we know? We may think we’re helping someone; and yet in truth we’re enabling their disease. We may make a decision to follow a certain path and soon discover that it leads us down the road to regret. Or we make a commitment and then are filled with 2nd thoughts. 

Keep your conscience clear, the author reminds us. Know what you are doing and why. In community, we can always ask ourselves, as well as others, if what we are doing seems good. We can pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And we can focus only upon our intentions and then leave the rest to God. 

In all things, we can imitate Jesus, trusting that the cosmic Christ, our King of Kings and Lord of Lords, will be victorious in the end. For as Bishop Desmond Tutu once said, ‘Good is stronger than evil; love is stronger than hate; light is stronger than darkness; life is stronger than death. Victory is ours, through him who loves us.’ And, I would add, Jesus loves us, this we know, for the Bible tells us so. Amen.

1 Peter 3: 13-22

Matthew 21: 1-13