Advent Devotional Resource - San Francisco Theological Seminary

II Peter 3:1-10Wednesday, December 2II Peter evokes no warm memories of Christmas past. It does not sing itself in Handelian strains. Itoffers the Christmas card industry no glowing well-swept stable scenes. In fact, it seems to evoke noassociations at all. My usual sources for exegetical insight: breakfast time at home and the van ridefrom Berkeley to San Anselmo came up with nothing. Whatever is the lectionary thinking of?Borrowing the illustrious name and biography of the apostle Peter for authenticity and citing thechurch’s foremost letter writer, the apostle Paul, seem to have sufficed to get this late letter into thecanon. Writing in the (?) second century CE to a congregation waiting for promised but evidentlydelayed delivery from this corrupt world, the author urges the cultivation of a cumulative list ofPauline virtues: adding to faith () first of all virtue (), then knowledge (, self–control (, patience or endurance (,love for others , and finallythe highest form of love (. The addressees are assured of their eventual reward, entering intothe lasting reign of our Lord and Savior while the false prophets and teachers among them will bedestroyed, as surely as Noah survived the flood, and Lot the fiery end of Sodom and Gomorrah. Thatis, as long as they cling to the true way of thinking ( that Peter recalls to their minds.Scoffers will jeer, “where is the promised coming? Everything is just as it always has been since thebeginning of creation . . .” “Peter” assures his readers that just as the heaven and earth of old wereconstituted from and by water by the word of God and then destroyed by water in the flood, also byGod’s word the present heavens and earth have been preserved for eventual destruction by fire in thecoming day of judgment. It’s the timetable that’s the problem. Remember that one day for the Lordis as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. The Lord of the promise is not actually slowto act as people think of slowness; the Lord is patient and forbearing (, not wishing todestroy but to give all time to change their way of thinking (. In the meantime, they areto take this patience of the Lord as salvation, waiting with patient endurance for the new heaven andearth in which righteousness dwells.We know what it’s like to be waiting: waiting for the last budget cut, waiting for the stock marketto bounce back, waiting for stimulus money, waiting for health care reform. Yet now the cataclysm,the end of the world as we know it in fire or flood, seems nearer than ever. Can our patience inenduring the wait for deliverance ever match the patience of the Lord, waiting for us to change ourway of thinking? Is the Lord’s patience with us and delay indeed our salvation or must we endure thecataclysm to attain it?Let us pray for the love that is patient and forbearing, . . . holds faith in all things, hopes all things,and endures all things.Dr. Polly CooteSFTS Registrar, Associate Dean for Student LifeAssociate Professor of Biblical Greek