It is at this setting, one of a social egalitarianism
represented by the church as it functions together and witnesses to the world
through its table fellowship, that Peter can be heard speaking to individuals
and groups seated around the meal table. After insisting that all present
need to be “subject to every human institution for the Lord’s sake” (2:13a),
with the use of Lord heard in the context of the Gospel’s claim and against
Caesar’s claim, Peter goes on to reaffirm, without necessarily sanctioning,
that there is a prevailing social order, writing “Slaves, be subject to your
masters with all reverence, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also
to those who are perverse” (2:18).
How does this fit with the leveling call of the Gospel and
of the messianic banquet that communicates so much of the Gospel’s
message? If such lengths are gone to in order to show that there is
neither slave nor free, why would Peter make statements that will serve to
resurrect the very distinctions that the church, through the open commensality
of its meal table, is tearing down?
Naturally, the answer is to be
found in love. It is that self-sacrificial love to which Peter makes
reference, as he goes on to write of enduring hardships in suffering unjustly
(2:19). Yes, Peter recognizes the injustice of the situation, but it is
the call of the Christian, whether slave or free, to overcome injustice by
acting in love towards the very master that may be the source of injustice (as one
is careful to not retroject ideas concerning the experience of African slaves,
which is quite a bit different from the slavery of the first century Roman
world).
He then draws what would be the very obvious parallel between
the position of the slave and Jesus, as he references the doing good,
suffering, and enduring, which finds favor with God (2:20) and writes “since
Christ also suffered for you, leaving an example for you to follow in His
steps” (2:21b). Jesus provides the example of that which Peter is asking
of those who find themselves as slaves, in that “When He was maligned, He did
not answer back; when He suffered, He threatened no retaliation, but committed
Himself to God who judges justly” (2:23).
This could only be accomplished through a love that is
phenomenal in its self-emptying and in its sacrificial preference; and indeed the
meal table, in many ways, can provide a glimpse of such love, as those who
would be afforded considerable honor willingly take the lowest position so that
others might be exalted. Indeed, is this not what is being said here when
Peter goes on to say “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we
may cease from sinning and live for righteousness”? (2:24a)
The tree, of course, calls
attention to the lowest and most accursed place, while the call to cease from
sin and live for righteousness directs the hearer’s attention to the
responsibilities of the people of the Creator God to become for the world the
covenant faithfulness of that God, as had been the call of Adam, of Abraham, of
Israel, and of the church through its Lord. Lest believers allow themselves
to be drawn back into a puerile individualism and subjective analysis of their
own shortcomings in word and deed that are flippantly referred to as sin and that
are only meager symptoms of a much greater malady, there must be a reminder that,
in the context of the long-running plan of the Creator God’s covenant
faithfulness and of human responsibility in and to that plan, that to cease
from sinning will be to cease from the ongoing failure to rightly bear the
divine image and its concordant responsibility to reflect the glory of the
Creator God into the world.
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