Standing Strong in Faith

December 10, 2008

I Peter 3:13-17

“If with heart and soul you’re doing good, do you think you can be stopped? Even if you suffer for it, you’re still better off. Don’t give the opposition a second thought. Through thick and thin, keep your hearts attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you’re living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy. Keep a clear conscience before God so that when people throw mud at you, none of it will stick. They’ll end up realizing that they’re the ones who need a bath. It’s better to suffer for doing good, if that’s what God wants, than to be punished for doing bad. That’s what Christ did definitively: suffered because of others’ sins, the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones. He went through it all—was put to death and then made alive—to bring us to God.”

It was the summer of 1991 and I was doing student summer missions with the North Carolina Baptist State Convention. We found ourselves at Meredith College for a week long orientation before being sent out to our various sites of ministry for the summer. Each year that these orientations were held, there was a keynote preacher for the week and this particular week welcomed a woman preacher. Carole Jackson was the pastor of Olive Branch Baptist Church in Apex, NC (if I recall correctly.) Emblazoned upon my memory is a moment of standing in the chapel at Meredith while Rev. Jackson stood and listened to a young male college student regale her on the ways in which she had no business being a preacher. Knowing that trajectory to be my future, I watched with great interest as Rev. Jackson listened to him, became slightly defensive and proceeded (in my book at least) to put him in his place. In truth, neither one won the argument as the other was not going to be convinced to change his or her mind.

Had Peter been the one observing Rev. Jackson and the young man, he might have used them as a study for his own community. Peter had called this community of believers who were also foreigners to the territory in which they now resided to offer respect to those native to the area by being sure to practice a sense of humility. Even so, he called them to keep that in balance with sharing their faith and calling others to the point of conversion. He realized that they were facing suffering for their beliefs and encouraged them that even as Jesus suffered, there was purpose in his suffering and there was purpose in the suffering they endured. Had he had the example of Rev. Jackson and the young man, I imagine that he would have given her points for her humility and her compassionate knowledge of her faith but he would have docked her points for selling her point. The young man would have gotten those points but would have been docked for the anger he portrayed.

The point of this scripture comes in the lesson that I gleaned as I watched the interchange between these two: there is great value in knowing and being able to articulate what we believe about God. Whether we succeed in convincing others, the simple act of being able to stand up for what we believe is a testament to our faith.

Maybe you are like me in that wrestling with your faith and working out your salvation is a daily event that invites you toward growth. Even as we work out our faith we are called to stand up for the basic tenets that serve as our foundation and we are called to live them out. In this Advent week of peace, may we each have the courage to live what we believe and thus extend God’s peace! Amen.