Why We Are Who We Are - 1st Peter 2:9-10

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In the movie Forrest Gump, Forrest ends up as a private in the Vietnam War.  During one of the Vietnam scenes, Forrest’s unit is ambushed.  Everyone in the unit, save Forrest, is either injured or killed.  We watch as Forrest searches frantically for his best friend, Bubba, and in the process hauls every injured comrade, including his Lieutenant, Dan Taylor to safety.  He brings them all out of the jungle to a rescue helicopter before being shot himself.  After their evacuation, the next scene shows Forrest and Lieutenant Taylor in the medical hospital, with Taylor questioning what he is supposed to do now that Forrest has rescued him.

We’ve been on this journey for several weeks now, letting Peter remind us of who we are.  He’s reminded us that we are a chosen race—those chosen by God across ethnic lines to be His people and because God has chosen us, we know that God loves us, God sees value in us, and God has a purpose for us.  Peter’s reminded us that we are a royal priesthood…and as such we are called to stand in the gap between God and those who are out of relationship with God in order to be mediators of God’s forgiveness and blessing, often requiring us to be willing, as Christ did with His own life, to sacrifice whether it be a sacrifice of our time, reputation, finances, or even well-being.  We have also been told we are a holy nation—a people, across political lines that have given our lives over to Christ…we have been set apart and are called to be holy as God is holy, striving to be made perfect in love—growing in our complete love of God and love of neighbor.  Finally, last week we were called to remember that we are not our own, we belong to God…we are God’s own people…God has saved us and claims us and nothing, not our jobs, not our careers, not our families, not our bills, not illness nor disease, not addictions, not anything else, nothing owns us—we belong to God.

The question is why?  Why has God chosen us?  Why has God appointed us as His royal priesthood?  Why does God want us to be a holy nation?  Why has God claimed us as His own? What are we supposed to do now?  Sometimes we may feel as clueless as Lieutenant Taylor after he felt robbed of being able to die in battle as he thought his destiny was mapped out.

You see, our destiny was all mapped out.  In fact the destiny we had was not very different that the one Taylor thought he had.  He thought he was to die in battle, ambushed by the Vietnamese.  We were to die in our sin, ambushed by none other than Satan himself and our own choices.  Forrest rescued Taylor out of the darkness of the jungle, saving him from certain death.  Jesus rescued us out of the darkness of our sin, saving us from certain death.  Again we ask, “why?  Why has God saved us?  For what purpose do we now live?”  We have the answer, and we have alluded to it many times over the course of this series, and it is found in the heart of these two verses we have focused in on for the last five weeks: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, IN ORDER THAT YOU MAY PROCLAIM THE MIGHTY ACTS OF HIM WHO CALLED YOU OUT OF DARKNESS INTO HIS MARVELOUS LIGHT.”  God has shown us mercy, because our lives were so far from him we deserved nothing short of His leaving us in our sin, and He has called us together out of our isolated, drifting lives, and given us a purpose.  God has not done it to shatter our lives and leave us clueless, at a loss, and feel like we had our opportunities stripped from us.  Neither has God done all of this so that we can just sit around and feel special, or even feel superior to those around us.  God has not done it so that we can just keep it to ourselves.  God has done all of this so that we might direct others to Him.  God has done all of this so that we might become evangelists, so that we might become proclaimers of the Gospel.

All of what we have talked about each of these weeks has pointed to that. 

As chosen people, we are called, like Abraham’s descendants to be a people that lead all other nations to the throne of God.

As a royal priesthood, we stand, like the priests of old and like the High Priest of High Priests, Jesus, as those between God and those who find themselves (even if they don’t know it) estranged from God, in order to bridge the gap and lead them into a relationship with God.

As a holy nation, we, like Israel, are to be different from the nations around us, we are to be holy as God is holy, in order to show what it means to live in relationship with God.

As God’s own people, we reveal the peace that comes in knowing that nothing else in the world has a claim on our lives and thus the final word in our lives, beyond God Himself.

We aren’t left wonder what we are supposed to do with the rest of our lives.  We are not left in limbo as to what our “destiny” is.  Peter makes it very clear as to what we are to be about.  As those that God has chosen, called, and set aside as He claimed and saved us out of the darkness, He has placed before us the responsibility, actually He has blessed us with the opportunity of sharing the good news of what He has done for us with those around us. 

Peter knew this personally.  He is often hailed as a hero of the faith.  We often talk about him as if he is the Super-Disciple—and he very well may have become that…but we often forget that He had his struggle before getting there.  He knew what it was like to be called out of the darkness. His first calling was from that of a fisherman, called when Jesus walked along the Sea of Tiberius in the early dawn when the fishermen would have been finishing up their work as the darkness of night drew to a close. Yet that is not the time I am referring to.  It was the end of another night of fishing where Jesus encounters and calls Peter out of the darkness.  It was after the resurrection.  Peter and some of the others had been fishing, when once again Jesus is walking along the seashore.  It is here that Jesus rescued Peter from the darkness…yet it was not the darkness of night that Peter needed rescuing from.  It was most likely the darkness that was within Peter’s soul.  Peter, we remember was very quick to speak.  Peter is the one who, when Jesus had said that he would betrayed and abandoned, had promised that he would follow Jesus all the way to the point of death.  And yet, when Jesus was arrested and tried, Peter denied even knowing who Jesus was.  He had seen the look in Jesus’ eyes after denying him that third time as the rooster crowed.  Now that the resurrection had taken place and Jesus walked among them, there is no doubt in my mind that Peter walked around with a very dark spot in his soul, the guilt and shame of that denial—knowing that Jesus would condemn him and he would find himself one of those cast into the darkness where there would be a weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Yet Jesus didn’t do that.  He called Peter aside.  Just as Peter had denied Jesus knowing Jesus three times, Jesus countered by asking Peter three times if Peter loved him, and as Peter affirmed his love for Christ, Jesus pulled Peter out of the darkness of his soul by repeating the first words that he had ever said to Peter, “Follow me.”

Freed from that darkness, Peter could do nothing but proclaim the freedom found in Christ—from the Day of Pentecost to the day of his death, both when in the good pleasure of those who accepted the Gospel and under the threat of imprisonment and the death penalty, Peter could do nothing but proclaim the freedom found in Christ—whether it be through the defense of the disciples at Pentecost or himself in front of the Sanhedrin—whether it be through a verbal defense accounting for his faith in Christ, or refusing to be intimated by authorities under threat of being jailed.

Peter calls us to do the same.  Jesus has called us out of the darkness.

Maybe we struggled with the darkness of our sin and felt like there was no hope for us, no forgiveness for us…and then realized the love of the One who loved us enough that He died for us, while we were still sinners…

Maybe we struggled with the darkness of forgiveness, not in receiving forgiveness, but in offering it, until we found strength and light in the One who looked upon those crucifying Him and said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Maybe we struggled with the darkness of addiction, until we encountered the One who would free us from any bonds, just as he freed those bound by the demons and banished to the cemeteries—and the One who freed them from those demons, freed us from ours…

Maybe we grew up in the faith and have had to face the fact that we, like Peter have denied Christ through our own sin, and struggle with the guilt and shame of our betrayal, and given witness to Jesus’ acceptance of Peter, we realize our own acceptance by Jesus.

Whatever the darkness, it is the good news that we are compelled to share: that we have been rescued by our Savior, chosen by God, anointed to stand in the gap as His priests, made holy by His grace, and claimed as His own…and we have been commissioned to share that Good News with the world, with those who feel bound by the darkness, that the Light of the World that found and rescued us, is still amongst us to free us all from the darkness that would try and bind us, enabling us to live in His marvelous Light.

Who are we?  In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: we “are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that [we] may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light.  Once [we] were not a people, but now [we] are God’s people; once [we] had not received mercy, but now [we] have received mercy.”  Amen.