5.30.21 - Nomadic Freedom (Kenny Camacho)
SCRIPTURE: 1 Peter 2:13-3:13
REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
This week’s verses are among the most famously troubling (and most often abused) in all of Scripture. Why do you think this might be? Are there aspects of verses like these that worry you? Why?
Kenny said about Peter’s message here that “the plan isn’t maintaining the status quo–which is how these verses are so often abused!–the plan is counter-cultural kindness.” What do you think this means? What is potentially “counter-cultural” about these verses?
Why does it matter that the instructions to wives and husbands here are directed at women and men whose spouses are not Christians? How does that affect what Peter is saying?
Peter’s argument is that our eternal freedom “frees” us up to submit in culturally surprising ways…and, by virtue of how surprising they are!, to open doors for the Gospel. Have you seen this work in your own life? How are you challenged by this?
Part of the point this week is to consider how the relationships you are in constitute a “mission field” for your life. Where can you invest in others in life-changing and hope-bringing ways?
The final challenge this week was to share our own stories in the same way the anonymous author shares his story to Diognetus about Christians in the first century. What is so powerful about this letter (text below)? How might your own story be powerful?
From EPISTLE FROM MATHETES TO DIOGNETUS (c. 1st century):
For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonoured, and yet in their very dishonour are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honour; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life; they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred. To sum up all in one word — what the soul is in the body, Christians are in the world.