A strange sandwich?
Notes
Transcript
Passage
Passage
8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.
10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.
11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
PICTURE OF A SANDWICH
What’s the weirdest sandwich you’ve ever eaten?
People get quite emotional about sandwiches - one of my good friends works for a media company, and if you want to give him a tenner he can sell you a magazine which is entirely about sandwiches. My own weird sandwich of choice is extra mature cheddar, lettuce, and lime pickle, in a Lidl Ancient Grain roll. People have hated me for it, but they don’t know.
This chapter opens with suffering, and we are quickly in the realms of the darkness of the world, death and life, the end is near. And soon, next week for us, we’re back there - fiery ordeals and sharing in the suffering of Christ. That’s the bread of our sandwich.
Does it feel a little bit jarring to be taking time out to think about… hospitality?
As you probably expect, I’m not here to say ‘yes, this is weird, Peter is incoherent and the Bible makes no sense’. I’m here to explain why the filling fits perfectly with the bread. How the sandwich is better than the elements taken separately.
So let’s look at the filling, and then we’ll see how we need this with the bread.
If the bread - the text surrounding this section, is about what’s going on out there, then these verses are focused in here. Not necessarily in this room - we’re here for two hours a week. But between us. Given chaos out there, how shall we be in here. It’s all ‘each other’ and ‘one another’.
Firstly:
8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
First, love. The primacy of love runs through the New Testament. Paul writes:
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
John writes:
11 For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.
and he’s saying that this is not new. Jesus taught that the first thing is to love God, and the second is to love neighbour. Jesus didn’t invent that - He took it right from the Torah, in Numbers 6 and Leviticus 19. In fact, Jesus says:
40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
So, love deeply. Peter is not pretending that we won’t get it wrong. We’ll offend each other. We’ll let each other down. We’ll disagree, sometimes about small stuff but sometimes about the things that really matter. But where there is love, there is grace. Paul has it that ‘love keeps no record of wrongs’, and I think he and Peter have the same proverb in mind:
12 Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.
Let’s remember that Peter is writing after the cross. You’l find that whenever the New Testament writers turn to ethics - to ‘do this, don’t do this’, they hold up God Himself as the example and the reason.
PICTURE OF A BALL AND TARGET
I can’t throw, or bowl. When people say that someone throws like a girl, people say that’s sexist. But actually they’re saying it wrong, because they actually mean ‘throw like the girl’, and the girl is me. As the original person who can’t throw, I can tell you that you’ll get a lot closer to the target if you have your eye on the target than if you have your eye on the ball. In the same way, as we are aiming to live in God’s ways, our attention is on Him.
And that’s nowhere more true than here. The radical, painful Christian call to forgiveness comes from the One who forgave. The love of God has covered a multitude of our sins. That was true in the beginning, when in the garden God made clothes for Adam and Eve - a literal covering for their shame. Jesus understood His mission as originating in love.
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
I would never want us to divorce the ethical teaching of the Bible from the character and work of God. If we do that, it becomes an unbearable burden. So much to do. So many ways we’re falling short. If you want to be told ‘do better, be better’ - there are many, many voices who can tell you that. And they will tell you in detail how to do that: Get up earlier, try harder, eat your greens, keep your nasty views to yourself, be kind, go to bed earlier, floss, stack your life, make every day count, lean in, care more, care less. Some of it works. But the Christian life isn’t just a Jesus-flavoured version of ‘Atomic Habits’ or ‘The Seven Habits…’ The love of God has covered a multitude of sins. And that is why we love. That’s why we do all of it, any of it. Eyes on the target, not on the ball.
Obviously you’re still going to throw the ball, unless you’re me, bowling, when I got my thumb stuck in the ball. But eyes on the target. Do you lack love? Eyes on the target. Eyes on Him. Eyes on His love. Is generosity hard for you? Eyes on Him. Eyes on his overwhelming generosity and undeserved gifts. Do you struggle to forgive? Eyes on Him - hanging on the cross, forgiving you and me who weren’t even born, but also forgiving those right in front of him.
So we’re to love like crazy. That can feel risky. Maybe we’ve brought in some baggage with love. That can be because of relationships that should have been loving but weren’t. Or we can have love and sex tangled up, and it can feel risky, maybe even impossible to love deeply without risk. There, too, it’s eyes on the target. As we encounter, meditate on, and are filled with the love of God, you’ll see things line up more and more.
Let’s carry on with this filling.
9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.
I feel so seen by this verse. If it were just ‘be hospitable’ we could move on. But there’s a recognition here that sometimes there’s a gap between action and mindset. Fake it ‘til you make it doesn’t always work. We can be doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons.
One of our Sunday rotas is called ‘hospitality’. In some ways it’s a bit sad that we have to have a rota for it, but this side of eternity we have rotas. All the rotas…
But you probably know that when Peter writes that we should show hospitality, he’s not only talking about the excellent teapot tea that you have here at Lighthouse.
To some extent, hospitality is cultural. There are expected norms in every culture. In the UK, maybe tea and a biscuit, maybe the dreaded ‘dinner party’. In some cultures, it’s inviting a passing total stranger into your home to eat and stay. In some cultures, it’s a table laden with more food than the people present could hope to eat in a week. But sometimes even as we perform those obligations, we’re kind of greasing the wheel, knowing that there will be give and take. We might offer an invitation ‘you must come over some time’, but we don’t really mean it.
Christian hospitality goes beyond what is normal and obligatory in our culture. I’ve been a recipient of it at times - staying in the homes of total strangers who expect nothing in return. Closer to home, it’s part of the day-to-day of church life. My life group leaders practice it week-in, week-out. Tsitsi has invited me to spend time with her family like I was one of her family. People who never met my dad contacted me when he died to ask if they could help wiht his funeral. Erik has fed me contraband food. I asked Lina to teach me to make dhal, and she sent me home with food for a week. In many of those situations, along with delicious food, I’ve had to swallow the uncomfortable feeling of ‘I can’t return this’. I can’t return this.
Christian hospitality is not give and take. It’s give and give. That’s risky, and so the New Testament writers warn that it shouldn’t be taken advantage of. The general principle is that those who can work should. But still, we give without expectation of getting, because we have already received. Again, eyes on the target. God has welcomed us. He has invited us to feast at His table. He has given us more than we deserve. Everything we have is from Him. So we offer hospitality. The details of it will look really different depending on your circumstances. Not everyone can cook. I’m ok if I never get invited to share a cheddar cheese cake with Gary. Not everyone has their own place to invite others into. But hospitality is a lifestyle, not a checklist.
The rest of the filling, the chunkiest part, is about stewarding the gifts God has given us.
10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.
11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
What’s a steward? A steward is someone who looks after something for its owner. A trusted steward can make a lot of decisions about how that thing is used. But the steward is accountable to the owner. You can sack a steward but you can’t sack the owner. We often talk about stewardship of things like money, and the main Christian giving platform in the UK is called Stewardship. But here the idea is broadened. We are stewards of everything we have, including our gifts. And this is why it’s so ridiculous to be competitive or hierarchical about gifts. Have you ever come across a charismatic, gifted speaker who falls from grace? Of course. Gifts are not always given to the deserving. When we appoint leaders in the church, we would never only look at gifting - we look at character too. I get the privilege of working with some really gifted people here, but you know I don’t often get excited by those gifts. However I do very often find myself reflecting on the character of people who serve here and getting overwhelmed. No offence anyone, but we probably don’t have any world-class preachers here. But I could name you some absolute paragons of humility and servant-heartedness who I would trust with my life.
Peter gives two examples here, but there are obviously a whole range of gifts.
The point he makes is that the source of the gifts is God. And the object of the gifts is His glory. From Him, for His glory. I don’t think that means we don’t thank people for what they do. I’m really grateful that the worship team chose to give their time this week to practice and prepare, and to get here early. That impresses me. I know that musical gifts aren’t magical, that it takes time to hone and discipline the gifting. So I’m going to say ‘thank you for your time and dedication’, but I’m not going to admire you for your gifts. I’m going to admire God. And I’m definitely not going to glorify the worship team, or the kids team, or the preacher, or the sound desk person. Glory to God. Thanks for your work - glory to God.
How might our attitude to seeing gifts in others change if we remember that the gifts are un-earned, and are from god?
How might our attitude to rotas change if we remember that our serving brings glory to God?
Eyes on the target. Eyes on God.
So how does this filling fit the bread? How does love, hospitality and stewarding our gifts in serving one another help us to face the difficulty ‘out there’? Would we say the same thing to a Christian in North Korea and in North Kensington? This message was written to a church facing greater difficulty than we face. External pressure can cause something to break apart, or it can make a diamond. I’ve seen families and organisations unite around difficulty, and others fall apart. Peter’s advice here, all of it fixed on the source - the giver of gifts and the author of the love that covers our sins - is about how to make sure that we don’t fall apart, but pull together.
Peter has a lot to say about Christian suffering, but he doesn’t pretend that Christians have a monopoly on suffering. So if this life is hard, and we’re going to suffer, let’s suffer as Christians. Let’s make this a place where we are so full of love, so hospitable in heart as well as in deed, so willing to serve with the gifts God has given us that He is glorified.
35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
The love is within and between, but it is seen outside. We’re not called to a Holy huddle, and to cut ourselves off from the outside world and wait until kingdom come. We live in the world, and we’re actually sent out to the world. But we are urged here to live well together as church. Love. Hospitality. Service.
This is the filling of the sandwich - it’s how we handle the outside pressure, whether great or small, overt or subtle.
And as we hear this ethical teaching, we fix our eyes not on the ball, not on how we can try harder, be better, but on the target. On the One who loved perfectly and the Lord who served. On the Love that has covered our sins and asks us to do the same.
And we we enjoy and use the various gifts in the church, we look up. The gifts are from Him, and they’re for His glory. In what other setting can you move a chair, or plug in a lead, or boil a kettle, or drop round a meal and bring glory to the Lord of all creation?
PRAYER and response.