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Morning Devotion for the Season After Pentecost

November 29, 2023

The Invitatory

The mercy of the Lord is everlasting: O come, let us adore him.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.

Reading: 1 Peter 2:1-5, 9-10

Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Once you were not a people,

  but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy,

  but now you have received mercy.

Meditation: Jo Ann B. Jones

Coming upon this particular passage after several days of the Thanksgiving holiday, to say nothing of the hyped cyber shopping days these opening words of Paul’s Letter to Peter serve as a pretty tall order, perhaps more appropriate for Ash Wednesday: rid oneself of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. To purge oneself of any one of these characteristics would be a herculean effort. Paul cannot mean that we are capable of this on our own.

The audience, not too dissimilar from ourselves, is of different behaviors and directions. On one hand, they are still children that have not yet fully matured and yet they have embarked upon a new life. They are gradually just becoming familiar with some of the fundamentals of this new life. There is an expectation that they will continue to grow toward the hope of salvation.

But look at the strong declaration that Paul makes! Those he names as children, not fully matured, have already been established as a holy race, a royal priesthood: “Now you are God’s people.” The force of this assertion makes a difference; Paul charges them to proclaim to the world what God had done for them. In this sense, their status has already effectively been changed, The letter commissions them to spread this news to everyone else. There is change that gives them an enduring quality, “living stones … built into a spiritual house.” Despite the high contrast between something that seems solid and a dynamic of relationship, there is a liveliness, a new life that confers upon them the grace and the capacity to “grow into salvation.”

Here is a dynamic and stirring charge that gives rise to a vision of Christian life. There is an invitation to everyone who receives adoption into God’s people to that new life given by the power of grace alone. God’s grace does not root out Israel from the covenant into which God entered with them generations before Jesus was born. The children of Israel had depended heavily upon the Law for their salvation and naturally could not keep the Law. That is why Paul suggests, with tongue in cheek, that his listeners rid themselves of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander. 

Paul directs his listeners instead to recognize Christ as “a living stone” a “cornerstone,” the one prepared and chosen to serve as the basis for the redemption of all. God and those who enter into this new life and those who reject Christ have radically different perspectives and means of assessment. These different perspectives reveal their sharpest contrast in their appraisal of Christ’s suffering. Those who disbelieve adopt vicious ridicule. Those who believe, bear witness to God’s saving work in the world. Faith, then, allows one to see what could otherwise not be seen.

The Lord’s Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy Name.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory,

for ever and ever. Amen.