As Peter speaks
through his letter to a group of people from all walks of life, consisting of
slave and free, Jew and Gentile, male and female, and even those who might be attaching
themselves to the Christian community because they have notions of revolution
and are drawn to a community that talks about a new kingdom, a new king, and a
new way of living, he goes on to say “Live as free people, not using your
freedom as a pretext for evil, but as God’s slaves. Honor all people,
love the family of believers, fear God, honor the king” (2:16-17).
Free people who are slaves? Again, this represents a new way of living,
and it is learned at the meal table of the elected family of the God of
Israel.
It is relatively easy
to hear the words “Honor all people” in modern times, especially in the western
world in which most people (in theory) embrace the notion that all men are
created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,
and in doing so to miss out on the incredibly radical and earth-shattering
nature of this concept. The use of “honor”
is crucial. With these words being spoken in a world that was attuned to
the pursuit of honor as the pursuit of status in the world, with this pursuit
of honor providing justification for all manner of selfish and self-centered
activities, the idea of honoring all people equally, even to the point of
living as slaves (the least honorable), was a foreign concept.
Building on that sensibility, and doing so in a world in which lines were drawn between the civilized people of the Roman empire and the “barbarian” hordes of those that refused to accede to the divinely backed pretensions of Roman hegemony and the eternal nature of its presumably beneficient kingdom, the notion of honoring all people equally would have been dismissed out of hand. Honor was too valuable to be apportioned out to those that were not truly deserving.
Additionally, any
community that hailed a different king, let alone a King that was superior to
all kings of the earth, would have been hard pressed to continue honoring the
Roman emperor, especially considering the fact that the Christians were
undergoing much persecution owing directly to their counter-imperial
claims. Therefore, the universal directive to honor the king would
necessitate a preferring love that would be difficult to manage.
Achieving this lofty ideal would be yet another evidence of the transformative power
of the Gospel, so how could the church bring about such an attainment?
The answer brings one back to the table.
The powerful social
institution of the meal table, which maintains some of its power even in this
day (though most tend to miss it), can be the basis for societal transformation
and the establishment of the kingdom of heaven, just as it was and can also be
the basis for maintaining the societal status quo. If the idea of the
messianic banquet is embraced, and if the church attempts to be the place (the
overlap of heaven and earth) where “people will come from east and west, and
from north and south, and take their places at the banquet table in the kingdom
of God” and “some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be
last” (Luke 12:29-30), then Peter’s directive, which is a component of the
overall Scriptural missive, will not be impossible to
achieve.
No comments:
Post a Comment