2 Peter 1:5-9 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
5 For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, 7 and godliness with mutual[a] affection, and mutual[b] affection with love. 8 For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 For anyone who lacks these things is short-sighted and blind, and is forgetful of the cleansing of past sins.
I found
a great bread recipe that I’ve been using lately. The thing I like about it is that it is
simple. Just whole wheat flour, honey,
oil, water, yeast and just a hint of salt.
No sugar added. And it only takes
two hours! I love that recipe. I think my wife does as well.
There
was a time when I cooked all sorts of complex recipes, but today I want to keep
everything simple. The simpler the
better.
Peter
gives us a recipe for living Christ like life.
There
are only seven ingredients he lists.
Goodness
Knowledge
self-control
endurance
godliness
mutual
affection
love.
One of
the things I have learned about cooking is that there are many recipes in which
you have to add ingredients in a certain order.
With this bread, you start with warm water, then add the yeast, then add
the honey, and then you let that set for a while so that the yeast proofs. Which means it starts to bubble a bit. Don’t add anything until then.
In
Christianity, you look at Peter’s list and your eye may go immediately to the
ingredient of love. You know that is the
most important ingredient, so you may think to work on that first.
But that
is not what Peter’s recipe says. He says
to start with the simpler parts of the recipe.
Look,
you and I both know that you don’t love people as you should. None of us do. Love is hard.
We can
love our children and grandchildren – but as Christians we are called to love
all people.
Do you
really love that neighbor down the street who plays loud music or who walks his
dog in your yard without cleaning up?
Do you
really love that co worker who gossips about you or spreads slander about you?
Do you
really love your boss?
Or the
strangers in the parking lot who frightens you when they come out of nowhere to
ask for money?
Do you love
your enemy?
Sometimes
you have a hard time loving your own family.
Love is
hard.
Peter
says, start with goodness. Emotion is
hard to control, so start with behavior which you can control. And on that you add the ingredient of
knowledge – get to know God, Jesus, the people around you. Then you add the ingredient of
self-control. Then endurance, and on
down the list until you finally have built a foundation of character so that
you are able to love for even your enemy.
Jesus said in
the Sermon on the Mount, “You
have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I
tell you, love your enemies and pray for them.” Matthew 5:”44.
He makes it
sound easy, but we know, and Jesus knows, it is not easy. Start with mutual love. Build up that skill.
Peter
starts his recipe for being a Christian with the ingredient of goodness.
Just be
good to people.
Smile at
people. Call the waiter by name. Treat everyone the way you want to be
treated.
The
people you encounter may deal with a dozen people every hour, and you may be
the only one who treats them with goodness.
Be that person.
A while back I had the opportunity to
speak to someone who was celebrating her 100th birthday. She told me about what it was like growing
up. She and her family lived on a
forty-acre farm with no phones, no lights, no motor car, not a single luxury.
With all the changes she had seen, I
asked her what she thought was the single most significant change she had seen
in her lifetime.
Smart phones? Space travel?
Medical breakthroughs? Having 1000 channels on television and still
having nothing to watch?
Her answer?
People!
“The most
significant change I’ve seen in the world is people. They just don’t care like
they used to.”
She went on to describe how her
family, even though they lived on 40 acres, knew their neighbors. When one
neighbor was in need the other neighbors pitched in to help.
When one of the Fathers were sick and
couldn’t do the chores around their farm, the other neighbors would all get
together and make sure everything was done until that Dad could recover and
return to his duties.
The whole world has changed. And we are the ones who have changed it.
Everything we deal with in this world
is due to goodness – or the lack of it.
When we boil down fights, arguments,
wars, terror, tragedies, (like the Pulse shooting a few years ago) we always
come to the same conclusion — humanity has lost its sense of goodness.
Which means that ultimately, if we
want the world to improve, we have to become the change we desire to see.
We have to practice goodness to
others.
Peter lists seven ingredients in his
recipe for living the Christian live.
Ultimately, what we are cooking up is
a life of love. Loving our neighbor,
stranger and even our enemies. But he starts
off this recipe with goodness.
First ingredient – goodness.
Start there.
Start there and become the change you
want to see take place.
Immanuel Kant is one of the central
figures of modern philosophy. He wrote a
book on ethics and moral behavior that he titled, appropriately enough,
Groundwork. In the very first sentence
of the book he says, “the only thing that is
unconditionally good is a good will.” Kant argues that anything one might think
of as good, might not be good at all.
These THINGS, like health,
wealth, beauty, intelligence, etc. could, in certain situations, be bad.
Wealth is good, if a person uses it wisely. Another person
can be corrupted by their wealth. The robust health of a bully makes it easier
for him to abuse his victims. A person’s beauty may lead them to become vain
and fail to develop their talents. Even happiness is not good if it is the
happiness of a sadist torturing his victims.
The only good in us is what he called “goodwill.” But what, exactly, does he mean by a good
will? The answer is fairly simple. A person acts from a good will when they do
what they do because they think it is their duty: when they act from a sense of
moral obligation.
That is what Peter is trying to get at. The first ingredient to the recipe of the
Christian life is to have this goodness, this good will that comes from a sense
of duty to Christ. It is a behavior we
show to others.
Kant also said that the way we act, changes the world around
us. If we act mean – that permeates the
community and others become mean. If we
act good, our good actions infects the others with goodness.
In other words, we become the change we want to see take
place.
WE BECOME THE CHANGE WE DESIRE TO SEE!
We become to others what we wish
others would be to us.
Life isn’t fair, and people aren’t
nice, but in
spite of the odds, seemingly stacked against us, we can still win. How?
Not by changing the world – but by
changing ourselves.
Jesus, taught his followers that they
should respond to people who hurt them after this manner:
“Love your
enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for
those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the
other also.
Do to others as you would have them do
to you.”
That’s hard – and in Peter that kind
of love is the last ingredient. How do
you love your enemy?
Simple steps – start with goodness.
And not just Jesus, but all throughout
history countless of other people have given their lives for causes greater
than their own in hopes that one day the world, your world, our
world, would change.
Lau Tzu (Loud Cha) the Chinese philosopher taught “Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by
itself.”
Goodness – it is among the most
ancient wisdoms.
Do unto others as you would have them
do unto to you. Those are the words of Jesus Christ that we
often refer to as “the Golden Rule.” It
is the best definition of kindness.
Are you fed up with Congress? Are you fed up with the way we have devolved
into tribalism of Republicans and Democrats and how nothing gets done because
the two parties are so divided.
You can change that – and I’m not just
talking about voting. There is something
else that is more fundamental that you can do every day.
I have heard people in this church say
the most hurtful and unkind things about people of the opposite political
party. I have seen posts about people of
the other party that are not true – not true, as in violating the Ten
Commandments and its prohibition against bearing false-witness.
Whenever a person says the Republicans
are evil, or the Democrats are evil, you perpetuate the very thing that you
hate about Congress. You make this division
in our country possible.
We are all Americans – and we need to
return civility to politics and that will start with us and how we talk about
each other.
Don’t like it when someone talks smack
about you? Don’t talk smack about someone else.
Don’t like it when someone cuts you
off on the freeway or jacks your parking spot? Don’t do it to someone else.
Do unto others as you would have them
do unto to you. It is the best definition of kindness.
You may not love the people of the
other political party, you may not love the person who cuts you off in traffic,
but at least you can treat them with goodness – and that is the first step in
the journey of loving them.
Love is hard – and that is why Peter
starts with goodness.
Love is an emotion. Goodness Love is the ONLY cure; the way to
heal our world. Love is the ONLY way to heal our schools. Love is the ONLY way
to heal our families. Love is the ONLY way to begin getting this giant blue
planet spinning in a different direction.
And the power to do that, friend, is
in each and every one of us.
Each day we are either a part of the problem or the solution. I challenge you, and myself, to be a part of the solution.
BE THE CHANGE YOU DESIRE TO SEE
Love is
hard – and demanding and challenging, and perhaps it is also demanding and
challenging for us to be good to others.
Let me share an observation from my niece.
My niece decided a year ago that she was going to get
in top physical shape. She got on the
floor to see how many pushups she could do.
Push ups are, after all, a basic form of exercise, and cheap – no gym
membership no equipment required. She started
off wondering how close she could get to 100.
One.
Just one. That
is all she could do. Within a week she
was doing ten. Within a month, 20.
A year later she is still not able to do 100 pushups,
but she is up in the 70s.
It takes time to build skills.
Love is a skill and it is hard.
Start with goodness.
All of us can be kind to others. Can’t
be good to all of the irritable people in your life? Start with one. Just one. Build up to two, then 20, then
everyone.
I like to
cook, but I occasionally have a fantasy.
You know those
food replicators that are on the television show Star Trek? Someone goes to the wall and says, “computer,
tea, Earl Grey, hot.” And out of the
wall comes a cup of hot tea, brewed to perfection.
Or they say,
“chicken soup.” And immediately, there
it is.
But I don’t
have a food replicator. And add to that
I have problems with my liver and I’m told I need to eat more things from
scratch. And so, these things take time.
So it is with
the Christian life. You can’t just go up
to the Alter and say, “Make me an instant Christian, saintly and true.”
No, these
things take time, and every ingredient has to be added and perfected. It takes time. It takes practice.
Don’t yet love
your enemy? Start with the ingredient of
goodness. One person at a time. One moment at a time.
You can be the
change the world needs.
Copyright 2018.
Dr. W. Maynard Pittendreigh
All rights reserved
Ministers may feel free to use some or all of this sermon in
their own ministries as long as they do not publish in print or on the Internet
without ascribing credit to the author.
