The Pattern

The scriptures referred to are 1 Peter 1:17-23 and Luke 24:13-35.

A writer once said that Agatha Christie told him that when she wrote her mystery novels, she stopped before the final chapter to consider which of the suspects she should make the murderer. Then she would go back and adjust the clues she had scattered throughout the book to make her last minute solution work. Most other mystery writers say this is, to put it politely, poppycock. Her novels are so intricately plotted that doing it that way would be even more complicated than simply knowing who had done it ahead of time. Certainly some of her most famous works, like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, And Then There Were None, and Curtain, couldn't have been done that way. In her best works, the solution not only works mechanically but psychologically as well. Otherwise her books would resemble the stories we know were started without a proper ending in mind, like the TV series Lost or How I Met Your Mother or Game of Thrones. In a good story the ending, however surprising, should feel in retrospect inevitable, like recent HBO series Watchmen.

As human beings, we are adept at discerning patterns in reality as well. Without that capacity we never would have developed science. In fact, sociologist Rodney Stark argues that the reason science developed mainly in the West rather than the Far East is because of the belief in one God, who created everything and who created human beings in his image. That means that we can use our minds to follow the logic of the mind of God revealed in his works. And indeed what underlies all science is the belief that when all the data has been uncovered the universe will make sense. Science is, like all human endeavors, faith-based. It all depends on what you put your faith in.

In 1 Peter the writer is, like a detective at the end of a mystery, or a scientist when presenting her work, explaining how all the data comes together to give us a coherent picture. There is a discernible pattern and everything operates according to certain principles. Neither the scientist nor the Christian should resort to a deus ex machina.

Deus ex machina, or god out of a machine, refers to a technique used by ancient Greek playwrights like Aeschylus and Euripides to resolve plots in which they had written themselves into a corner. An actor playing a god would be lowered by a crane or rise up from a trap door and magically solve all problems, usually bringing events to an unexpected and unlikely happy ending. In today's entertainment you find it in the James Bond film Live and Let Die when the secret agent's watch suddenly has the hitherto unrevealed ability to spin like a circular saw so he can cut through his ropes and kill the bad guy. You see the deus ex machina way of resolving problems parodied in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when a cartoon monster chasing our heroes disappears because the animator has a sudden heart attack. Or in Monty Python's Life of Brian when the titular character falls off a tower only to land unharmed on a passing alien spaceship—in 1^st century Judea!

The writer of 1 Peter is making the point that God didn't come up with his plan for Jesus to become one of us and to die to save us as a desperate last minute ploy.

He starts out, “And if you address as Father the one who impartially judges according to each one's work, live out the time of your temporary residence here in reverence.” (NET) I understand why the NRSV translates one Greek word as “exile” but the NET's use of “temporary residence” is a bit closer to the root meaning. The writer is saying that this life is like a temporary stay in a foreign country. As the Jim Reeves song goes, “This world is not my home; I'm just a passing through.” Because it turns out that feeling that we get that something is not quite right in this life is true. We were created to live in the paradise God prepared for us. Now we've ruined it and that's why certain features of this world are somewhat familiar and yet somehow wrong. It's like going to your old neighborhood and finding that it's been replaced by a Walmart and they've put the gas station where your childhood home was.

Although unlike the Jim Reeves tune, heaven is not our home. It's just the waiting room for our final destination. True, just a few verses earlier 1 Peter speaks of “an inheritance imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. It is reserved in heaven for you, who by God's power are protected through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” (1 Peter 1:4-5, NET, emphasis mine) But it isn't supposed to stay there. In Revelation 21, it says, “I saw the holy city—the new Jerusalem—descending out of heaven from God, made ready like a bride adorned for her husband.” (Revelation 21:2) Our ultimate destination is heaven on earth, the new paradise, God's new creation, populated by God's resurrected people. It's as if the Walmart went bankrupt, was torn down and your neighborhood was restored but better than before. And you, completely healed of all your ailments, are living in your dream home.

Now you might be troubled by the part where 1 Peter talks of God judging people by their deeds and that we should live in, as the NRSV puts it, “reverent fear.” Aren't we saved by grace through faith and not works? Yes, but as Jesus said, you know trees by their fruit and people by what they produce. You should see signs that a person is saved though what you see in that person is not what saved them. For instance, I didn't do my own cataract surgery. I had to trust the surgeon to do that. But I had to go back for follow up visits. The doctors checked for signs that I was healing properly and to look for any symptoms of infection or inflammation. I was quizzed about what I was doing and not doing to my eye. And I took my eye drops religiously because I wanted to be healed. In the same way, Jesus saves us. He did on the cross what we couldn't possibly do. But if we are being saved, there should be signs of spiritual health. And any symptoms of spiritual illness should be dealt with immediately. If we really trust the doctor, if we have faith in him, then we will carry out the doctor's orders with a healthy respect for what he says. The same goes for Jesus, the Great Physician.

Then it says, “You know that from your empty way of life inherited from your ancestors you were ransomed...” The NET translation of “empty” rather than the NRSV's “futile” is more accurate. Without the God who is love revealed in Jesus Christ, our lives are empty. Everything else with which we try to fill that emptiness—wealth, fame, social position, our careers, pursuits and distractions—will end and leave us even emptier. In this life, even those we love will be taken from us, or we from them. But it's from that ephemeral life that we have been ransomed. The Greek word for “ransom” can also be translated “redeemed.” Both mean being bought out of slavery. In those days a slave was either born into it, or sold themselves into it to pay a huge debt, or was captured as a prisoner of war and made a slave. So not only was our former life empty but it limited what we could do and enjoy.

“...you were ransomed—not with perishable things like silver and gold, but by precious blood, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb, namely Christ.” (NET) Silver and gold only have value because we assign it to them. True, they once made good currency, because they were scarce and yet not too rare. You can easily melt them down and shape them into ingots or coins. And while silver tarnishes, gold is rather inert chemically. And it's beautiful. But the reason we don't use it as the basic currency is that its scarcity doesn't let an economy expand beyond the supply of gold. And aside from its uses in computers, electronics, and dentistry, it's mostly decorative. As King Midas found out, gold is no substitute for food or drink or the people you love.

Our value is based on something more precious than some pretty and malleable metals. It is based on the fact that Jesus shed his blood to redeem us from our slavery to sin. “The wages of sin is death” we are told in Romans 6:23. But usually it's a gradual way of killing yourself, like smoking. And when things don't kill us quickly, we humans don't respond as quickly--or at all! If a puff from a cigarette acted like a dose of cyanide, nobody would touch one. If COVID-19 killed people like the Black Death did, where 2/3s of those infected died within 2 to 7 days, very few people would be clamoring to leave their homes. So to reinforce the idea that sin does kill, God instituted sacrifices. You sin; it costs you. In an agrarian society, where your livestock was your wealth, sacrifices hit you in the purse. Especially since only your best animals, those without blemish or defect, were what you had to give up. Oh, and it was messy and gross. You had to kill the animal yourself or hold it while the priest slits its throat. (Leviticus 1:4-5) It was like those proposed warnings on cigarette packs that show pictures of diseased lungs or people on oxygen or with amputated toes due to poor circulation. Because, unfortunately, tame warnings don't do the job as well.

The cost of what we have done to our lives and to each other is the shed blood of Jesus. That's how seriously we have ruined this world God gave us. If you smoked and drank and ate so badly that your heart was failing, the only way to save you would be for someone to die and donate their heart. Jesus had to die to give us new life.

But as I said, this wasn't something God and his Son improvised when all other methods failed. “He was destined before the foundation of the world, but revealed at the end of the ages for your sake.” The word translated “destined” really means “foreknown.” The Triune God foresaw that giving creatures free will would mean they could chose not to love and obey their Creator. In fact, God foresaw that they would abuse this power of choice and he foresaw that he would have to do something to save them and he foresaw that only his becoming one of us and dying would be sufficient to redeem a whole world gone wrong.

And the clues that this was God's plan were there all along. In the movie The Sixth Sense, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan plays fair and plants clues to the movie's big plot twist throughout. And he used the color red to denote when scenes went from the world of the living to the realm of the dead. In the same way, there is a “scarlet thread” that weaves its way through the Hebrew Bible that presages what Jesus does in the New Covenant. No doubt this is what Jesus was revealing to the 2 disciples on the road to Emmaus. As they say to one another afterwards, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” They felt like readers of the Harry Potter novels when they realized that what Harry had to do to make Voldemort mortal again and allow him to be defeated was foreshadowed long before the last book was written. Except this wasn't a story set in a fictional world. This is the key to understanding our world and the God who loves it enough to die for it.

So what? How does this affect us? Our passage tells us: “Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.” Because of what Jesus did for us and because God raised him to life again, we realize this is a God we can trust. And the resurrection is crucial. Had Jesus stayed dead he would be just another martyr. And not necessarily a martyr to the truth. Merely being killed doesn't mean you were right. Any crackpot can say they are speaking for God and many have. Often they are just silenced because they are considered troublesome or even dangerous, and not because they were telling the truth. But not even death could silence Jesus. And it isn't just that his words live on; the Word of God Incarnate lives on.

The Bible has a very straightforward test for a false prophet: “Whenever a prophet speaks in my name and the prediction is not fulfilled, then I have not spoken it; the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him.” (Deuteronomy 18:22) Jesus kept predicting he would be betrayed and executed and then rise again. And that's exactly what happened. So we can trust him on the other things he said. And we can trust the Father who sent him and pin our hopes on the one who gives life to the dead.

What next then? “Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.” By having the proper response to the truth, by letting God into our hearts, they are purified. And that results in mutual or brotherly love. We should love our brothers and sisters in Christ, deeply, earnestly, fervently, as the Greek says. Everything God does, he does out of love for us. For God is love, the Father loving the Son and the Son loving the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit for all eternity. And that love flows into all God does.

And if we open ourselves to receive God's love, our cup, as it were, overflows with it. And it flows into all our thoughts, words and deeds and into all our relationships. Immersed in the love of God, “You have been born anew, not from perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.” This verse has a mix of images. First, it is one of the very few places where the Bible uses the term “born again” outside of the 3^rd chapter of John's gospel. More commonly the metaphor is that of being made alive in Christ (Romans 6:11, 13) and it is usually tied to resurrection. His tomb becomes a womb. And through baptism we are united to Jesus' death and resurrection. (Romans 6:3) 

The image of seeds recalls the parable in which the sower sows the word of God. (Mark 4:14). The seed is good; the key factor in whether it grows well is the soil in which it is planted. But this verse seems to be talking not merely about the written word of God but about Jesus as the living and lasting Word of God. As it says in John's gospel, “The Word was with God in the beginning. All things were created by him, and apart from him not one thing was created. In him was life, and the life was the light of mankind.” (John 1:2-4) He created us in his image and gave us life. So it is not surprising that when he comes to rescue us from ourselves he gives us life again, and this time eternal life.

All the clues were there in the Old Testament: the Spirit who gives life (Job 33:4), the Lord who provides the sacrifice in place of Isaac (Genesis 22:9-13), God's suffering servant (Isaiah 53), the One who rescues us from the grip of the grave (Psalm 116:3-4), the Lord who swallows up death (Isaiah 25:7-8), the God for whom nothing is too hard (Jeremiah 32:17), the God of resurrection (Daniel 12:2). The disciples didn't see it. Until Jesus pointed out the pattern. And it all made sense. And our lives make sense. Yes, things can get bad. Yes, we will die some day. But that's not the whole story. We see the real pattern of life in Jesus.

We are people of the resurrection. Jesus underwent death and came out of it the victor. Though we too shall walk through the valley of death, we need fear no evil. For God is with us. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even if he dies.” (John 11:25) That is good news. We should spread it. We should make it go viral, to counteract the despair and cynicism infecting our world. As Paul said, “...in all these things we have complete victory through him who loved us!” (Romans 8:37) So let us proclaim this good news, not only with our lips but in our lives.