Friday 11 September 2020

Psalm: Psalm 121

Background

This letter can be viewed as a sermon preached by a formidable elder of the Church. The chapter begins with a greeting and a blessing for the people to whom Peter is writing or speaking. And then the words seek to bring about a deeper understanding of the power of the Holy Spirit, although it is not written in those terms.

Using his own experience and relationship with Jesus, Peter seeks to encourage the people to recognise the promise made by him, that if they come to faith in him, they will escape from the corruption of the world and be able to be more Christ-like. He tells them what he means by living in this way and how he thinks the Church should be. He has clearly moved on from a free unstructured form of gathering into what could be seen as a more formalised body which we might recognise as Church.

Peter spells out to the people how they should be as people inspired and living with the influence of Christ. It would appear, in the tradition of the time in which they are living, that he is harking back to his own experience in preparation for his death. In these early verses he is reiterating what he said in the previous letter about the need for self-control and godliness (1 Peter 1:13-15), reminding them of the centrality of love within the Christian understanding of God which will lead them to be effective fruitful disciples of Christ. In verse 15 he justifies his words by asking that they remember what he has taught them when he has gone to his death, which he anticipates will happen before too long.

To Ponder:

• How far is love for one another and for the world still central to the message we preach today, or are we more inclined to seek for personal salvation rather than that of our neighbours?
• How often do you share your own experience of meeting Jesus, in whatever way that has been, in explaining why Christians are the people we are?
• To what extetnt are Peter's words as important to us today as they were for the Early Church? Why?