TJieodore W. Jennings, Jr. The Meaning of ... - Quarterly Review

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priesthood, and new people of God. Each image amplifies and strengthens the root metaphor of the community of faith as the true family in which believers find their spiritual home. However, the orientation toward insiders and their needs that may be inherent in family imagery is transcended by pictures of the church as a community of priests and as the people of God that point the church beyond itself to its mission to the world. In the preceding section of the letter, Christ is the paradigm for understanding God. Faith in Christ is not something added on to faith in God. For Christians, God is the one who is definitively revealed in Christ (1:20-21). To believe in Christ is to believe in this God, not some god we have constructed for ourselves. In this section, Christ is the one who is paradigm for understanding ourselves as Christians in the world. The Christians addressed in 1 Peter are harassed and rejected by the dominant culture. They feel themselves to be outsiders and sometimes experience overt persecution. Though rejected by the world, they are elected and affirmed by God—precisely as in the paradigmatic case of Jesus. Several writers in early Christianity had discovered Ps. 118:22-23 as a model for understanding the rejection of Jesus, the "stone" rejected by the "builders," but who was made (by God) the "chief corner stone" (Mark 12:10-11; Matt. 21:42; Luke 20:17; Acts 4:11; 1 Pet. 2:4). Christian experience parallels the experience of Christ. The image is here interpreted not individualistically but in terms of the Christian community: Christ is the cornerstone of the eschatological temple, into which believers are also built, and the whole structure becomes a dwelling place for God, the true spiritual home of believers. The temple does not exist for itself, however, but for others. This aspect of the believer's calling, based on the fundamental picture of the life of Jesus as one of self-giving for others, is then extended in the other metaphors. The preacher might concentrate on the priestly metaphor. The priest exists for others. Protestant Christianity has tended to focus on this text to affirm the "priesthood of all believers" in the sense that "we don't need anybody to be priests for us." This is an individualistic misinterpretation of the text, which intends precisely to affirm a community of priests. The point is not that "I am my own priest" but "I belong to a community of priests." In the first place, this means that I belong to a priestly 102 QUARTERLY REVIEW/SPRING 1993
community that does what priests do: this community prays for me and sacrifices for me. Especially on those days when I can't pray, when I don't know if there is anyone to pray to or anything worth sacrificing for, I can know that I belong to a community that prays for me and sacrifices for me. When I can pray and sacrifice, I do it for other members of the community. This is one of the things it means to say, "I belong to the church." Yet this is still too inward-directed to do justice to the imagery of this text. Like Israel, to whom these texts were originally directed (2:6=Isa. 28:16; 2:7=Ps. 118:22; 2:8=Isa. 8:14-15; 2:9=Exod. 19:6; 2:10=Hos. 2:23), the priestly community lives not for itself but for the world. Though existing as a "sect" amidst a hostile "world," the Christian community of 1 Peter is not hostile toward the world, does not wall itself off from the world in sectarian self-consciousness. It prays and sacrifices for the world, which is God's world. These people who were once "nobody" but are now "somebody" are called not to celebrate their newfound self-esteem, but to live their lives in behalf of the very world that misunderstands and abuses them. This is the Christian path marked out by Jesus, who first followed it. 1 Peter 2:19-25 We must first note the context. The section 2:13-3:7, often called the "household code," is analogous to numerous similar codes in early Christianity. 15 The lectionary text is a selection from this code which commands Christians to "fit in" to the social structures of their time. This means specifically that all Christians are instructed to obey emperors and governors, Christian slaves are instructed to obey their masters even when they are harsh and unjust, wives are instructed to accept the authority of their husbands, and husbands are instructed to treat their wives with consideration, since they are "the weaker sex" (3:7) For many contemporary Christians who wish to take both the Bible and themselves seriously, this is the most difficult text in 1 Peter. What are our hermeneutical options? We may simply reject the Bible as the church's canon, using these anachronistic, unjust, and culturally conditioned texts as sufficient justification. On the other hand, we may be selective, "using" the Bible as a resource book for an ideology based on other foundations, choosing INTERPRETING 1 PETER AS A LETTER 103
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Quarterly Review/Spring 1993 55.00
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Quarterly Review A Journal of Theol
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VOL. 13, NO. 1 SPRING 1993 Contents
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I have always rather liked the gruf
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of discipleship in the New Testamen
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imagine a week without visiting the
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transform all of life, and all that
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Contemporary North American Christi
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We must now see what it is that cha
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saying "call no one your father in
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13:12). There is no following of Je
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Both New Testament discipleship and
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17. "The Duty of Constant Communion
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earliest Christian congregations be
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his baptism to the experience of Ch
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Holy Spirit comes down willingly fr
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The Sacramental Nature of the Bapti
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to save them from "the wrath to com
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aptism—for mature youth and adult
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purpose of a rite of maturity is to
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church, namely, thatbaptism-chrisma
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31. John Wesley, Works, X: 151. 32.
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In Baptismal Covenant I, in the "In
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of God without being born of water
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they urged a stronger claim for a p
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After analyzing how American Method
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eferred to as "a symbol of an inner
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of baptism is "the washing away the
Page 58 and 59: Although there is only scant likeli
Page 60 and 61: ut the inner man, where we have put
Page 62 and 63: Notes 1. Lawrence Hull Stookey, "Th
Page 64 and 65: 44. Borgen, 159f.; Stein, 319, f, 1
Page 66 and 67: I am not a liturgical scholar or pr
Page 68 and 69: ounden duty...to consecrate our chi
Page 70 and 71: formed in the gospel not only by le
Page 72 and 73: life, for one could always lose gra
Page 74 and 75: However, I have focused on human ac
Page 76 and 77: Osborne, Kenan B. The Christian Sac
Page 78 and 79: It was raining pretty hard one Satu
Page 80 and 81: the same time a young man came to s
Page 82 and 83: theologically unpacked. A pastoral
Page 84 and 85: Elizabeth Achtemeier's Preaching fr
Page 86 and 87: prophets by the traditions of ancie
Page 88 and 89: eading; it seems as if one is heari
Page 90 and 91: Brueggemann's discussion of royal v
Page 92 and 93: limitations, even in quite valuable
Page 95 and 96: M. Eugene Boring Interpreting 1 Pet
Page 97 and 98: particular way. The particularity o
Page 99 and 100: in the capital of the empire felt m
Page 101 and 102: location but about the way we relat
Page 103 and 104: answer: Read. Interpret. Examine. B
Page 105 and 106: in liturgical settings. Yet all of
Page 107: word accomplished by Jesus, who cal
Page 111 and 112: kings, slavery as a divinely author
Page 113 and 114: wives and husbands. To each it migh
Page 115 and 116: etained some of the oral style appr
Page 117 and 118: Brox, Norbert. Der erste Petrusbrie
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