Second Sunday after Easter, 2011
Text: I Peter 2:19-25
The Rev. Jerry Kistler
St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church
“Dying and Living with
Christ”
“For this is praiseworthy, if because of the awareness of God one endures sorrows, suffering unjustly… For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”
In
this post Easter season our epistle lessons are calling us to ask the question,
“How then shall we live?” Having walked along side of Christ through His
wilderness obedience, and through His passion, death and resurrection, the
question we’re called to contemplate now is, How should this effect our own
lives? How should we ourselves walk, in light of, or as a consequence to the
Gospel? The apostolic answer is: “In His Steps.” In His steps, or as the
apostle John put it, “He who abides in Him ought himself to walk just as he
walked.” This is how we are to live in light of Good Friday and Easter.
Jesus
left us an example, a pattern to follow, says St. Peter. The Greek word he uses
there refers to a written copy of the alphabet that beginning school children
were given as the guide for learning to write their letters. We’re called
literally to walk by the letter of Jesus’ life, retracing his steps in our own
lives. That’s our high calling as Christians. If we have truly received the
calling of Christ to be his followers, his disciples, his learners, it means
his life in now to be the template of our own. It means we are to do what Jesus
would do in every thought, in every action, in every decision, every moment, every day. And it also means, if we
do walk in His steps, if we do follow after the example of his righteous life,
we will also be like Christ in another way – the way of suffering, the way of
the cross. That is essentially Peter’s message for us today.
In
all seasons, but especially during the season of Holy Week, thousands of
Christians from all over the world flock to the city of
But
what Peter is telling us today is that, in a very real sense, we are called to
walk the Via Dolorosa every day of
our lives. Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” You don’t have to go
to
You
say, “That’s a pretty heavy burden you’re laying on us. I thought Jesus said,
“My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” But what
you’re saying doesn’t sound very light. As a matter of fact, it sounds pretty
heavy. I’m not sure this is what I sign up for. I’m not sure I can bear up
under that kind of burden.” And you can’t – at least, not by your own strength.
I can’t bear up under the burden of Christ’s life. Somebody tell me, “To live
the Christian life, just live like Christ lived. Oh, and by the way, if you do
you’ll suffer for it.”—that doesn’t give me, in my flesh, much comfort, much
joy. As a matter of fact, that terrifies me. I look at the things Jesus had to
endure his whole life because he wouldn’t compromise with the world, because he
never hedged on the truth, because he never shrank away from calling sin sin, because he always backed up his word with his actions—I
look at his life, and frankly it scares me that I should be called to follow in
His steps. And I don’t think I’m alone. Am I right?
And
yet, we can’t deny that the Scriptures call us to follow the example of
Christ’s life and His sufferings. It’s there as plain as
day. We’re even called to rejoice in our sufferings with Christ. St. James
says, “Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the
testing of your faith produces patience.” And then there’s that wonderful
example of the apostles in Acts 5, when after they are beaten for preaching in
the Name of Jesus, they go home “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to
suffer shame for His name.” What a completely foreign and alien concept that is
to most of us. Right? Let’s be honest.
My
point is: If following the example of Jesus life is all there is to living the
Christian life, then things are pretty hopeless, aren’t they? Because as long as the life of Christ stands merely outside of us,
His life is a terror to us. The life of Christ is the life of
perfection. The life of Christ is the perfect embodiment of God’s holy law. And
therefore if our lives are held up against His as something that is merely
external to us, then his life will only ever point out our imperfection, our sin. His life is like the master copy of the
alphabet, and our letters just don’t match up.
But
the glory of our passage this morning is that Peter doesn’t just leave us
trying in our own strength to follow the example of Christ and to walk in His
steps. We’re not given the pattern without also being given the power. Peter
shows us the power we have to live the Christian life when he speaks those most
comfortable words, that “Christ Himself bore our sins
in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for
righteousness.”
The
power we have to live the Christian life lies in the fact that Christ’s life
does not stand outside of us, but
that we have been so united with Him that our old sinful selves have died with
him, and that He now lives His resurrected life in us.
How
can sinners like you and me walk in His steps? Well first, we’ve already been
crucified with Him. We’ve already walked the Via Dolorosa. We’ve already borne the cross, and we died. This is a
concept that we hear over and over in the Scriptures – that
we died with Christ at the cross. We heard on Easter Sunday: “For you died, and
your life is [now] hidden with Christ in God.”
You
know, there’s a great freedom in being dead. That may sound a little strange. Remember
the old bumper sticker? “He who dies with the most debt
wins.” What’s the point? You can’t collect a debt from a dead person. A
dead person is free of his debts. I mean think about it. If you could find away
to get yourself to be declared legally dead, how free would you be? No more
bill collectors. No more taxes. No more fear that you could ever suffer the
supreme penalty the State has to threaten you will. A dead man can’t be
executed. But you see this really is the freedom we have in Christ. The
Scriptures tell us that death is the wages or the debt of sin. But if we have
already died in Christ, then we are truly free to live our lives without the
fear that the debt collector is gonna come knocking
on our door one day. “There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ
Jesus and are called according to His purpose.” That’s freedom. That’s the
freedom of having died in Christ. The debt has already been paid. Now you’re free
to live as you choose. But how do you now choose to live? In light of what
Christ has done to give your freedom, how then shall you live? As
So
the first step in learning to live in the power of Christ’s life is simply to
realize that we have already died. We’ve already died to the debt of sin. Paul
says, “Reckon yourselves
to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Reckon
yourselves dead. Consider it done. Realize the fact of your death in Christ and
the freedom that gives you.
Second, and even more important than realizing we’ve died to sin in the death
of Christ, is to trust and believe that Christ has been raised to live His
resurrected life in us. When we begin to see ourselves as those who are
empowered by the living, resurrected Christ, Who is alive in us, what a change
of focus that will give us we think about trying to live the Christian life.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer says something really profound on this point in The Cost of Discipleship. Listen closely
to what he says. “[Christ’s] life on
earth is not finished yet, for he continues to live in the lives of his
followers. Indeed, it is wrong to speak of the Christian life: we should speak
rather of Christ living in us: “I live, and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth
in me (Gal.2:20). Jesus Christ, incarnate, crucified and glorified, has entered
my life and taken charge. “To me to live is Christ”
(Phil.
The
power to live the Christian life comes in believing that to follow in his steps
means in reality Christ is retracing his own steps in us. Someone has said, ‘Your life is like a glove
that Jesus wears.” But I think it might be better to think of our lives as the
shoes in which Jesus continues to walk upon this earth in His resurrected life.
What
would Jesus do if He were in your shoes? You see, He is in you shoes. He is in you, and He will act like Himself in you
if you continue to reckon yourselves dead indeed unto sin and alive to God
through His resurrected life in you. This is where the lofty themes of Easter
get translated to the very practical issues of every-day Christian living. This
is who we see that Easter is not merely a holiday or a doctrine, but a way of
life. We need to live in our Easter faith. And that’s what we’re being called
to do this Eastertide. +