Jesus
in the Writings of Peter
Stephen
Terry
Commentary
for the May 20, 2017 Sabbath School Lesson
“But he was pierced for our
transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought
us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5, NIV
Many years ago, my paternal grandparents lived in
Seattle. They were transplants from the Midwest who had moved to the Puget
Sound when my father was a child. They ended up in a small two-bedroom,
one-bath, brick cottage in Northeast Seattle just off of Aurora Avenue, only a
few blocks from Green Lake. The home is still there, but like so many homes
that have seen long lives as rentals, it is somewhat rundown from many years of
neglect by transient inhabitants, who perhaps never really thought of the
bungalow as their home because they did not intend to remain renters.
Before all that though, my grandparents purchased the
home and lived there for many years. Happy childhood memories from time at
Grandma and Grandpa’s still bring a smile to my face when I think about the
visits to the wading pond at Green Lake, the pony rides at Woodland Park Zoo,
and days on the beach at Golden Gardens Park. My grandfather was handy with
crafting tools and he liked to build sailboats that could be put out to sea
across the vastness of that Green Lake pond. I don’t know who was more
thrilled, him to see his projects pushed by the wind, or us running around the
rim of the pond to meet the boats when they arrived. Sadly the day came all too
soon when I visited my grandfather in the hospital and then saw him no more. As
with everyone else, his death came much too soon. The ever-present specter of
death is a constant reminder of the need for something better, some deliverance
from that destroyer of hopes and dreams, that threat to the happiness of every
family.
After his death, the modest home was too much of a
financial burden for my grandmother without the income he contributed. Increasing
property values, which meant increasing property taxes, drove her from her home
to a much smaller town far away from Seattle, where her slight income went
farther and family was nearby. Now there are tax exemptions for home owners who
are elderly or disabled with limited income that allow them to stay in their
homes. Perhaps it was decided that driving folks from their homes was not in
society’s best interest. Maybe we all benefit when a neighborhood has a mixture
of young and old, each contributing their skills and experiences to bring
balance. When I was a child, older neighbors would often watch the children for
young families, while teenagers would earn pocket change mowing lawns and doing
other chores for the elderly. Most contributed what they had in time,
resources, skills, or education to make the neighborhood work, and the children
were the focal point for everyone. From leading Scouting groups for boys and
girls to cheering the children’s sports teams, everyone had opportunity to feel
they were a part of the community. These are values that benefit us all.
My grandmother benefited financially from that move to a
smaller town because property values were much lower there. That not only
helped with the tax burden, but it also meant that what she received from
selling her home in Seattle would go much further in purchasing a home in her
new town. As a result, her new home even had a detached garage, something they
never had in the city. It was much more peaceful as well, as sirens on police
and emergency vehicles constantly wailed up and down Aurora Avenue in Seattle.
She eventually went to her rest also, but I like to think that her later years
were peaceful ones in that more bucolic setting.
So much of our lives are controlled by the rise and fall
of prices. They can drive massive migrations when our income reaches the level
that cannot afford the inflating cost of living where we are. Such considerations
drove the “Okies” of the Dust Bowl out of the Midwest to the west coast of the
United States in the 1930s. This migration was memorialized in John Steinbeck’s
“The Grapes of Wrath,” detailing the experiences of the Joad family as they
participated in that migration. Many such migrations have occurred around the
world, many in the United States. After the emancipation brought by the Civil
War and the subsequent economic oppression of those who were formerly slaves, a
great migration by black Americans took place as they left the former slave
states for the relatively more egalitarian industrial cities of the Northern
states. Also as family farms disappeared in favor of large farming corporations,
those who owned those small farms migrated to the cities where career
opportunities were not so rare. Migrations to the cities for various reasons
are continuing all over the world as we become more and more urban and require
less and less manpower to feed our populations. In third world countries, this
process is accelerated when isolated rural villages are exposed to goods and
opportunities they may not previously have been aware of when churches send
missionaries into the remote wilderness, government reaches out to the
indigenous tribes, or corporate activities such as logging or mining destroy the
habitat that sustained these simpler cultures. All of these bring with them the
tools that give them power over the locals, tools that are then coveted by the powerless.
For instance, it is not uncommon for those more primitive cultures to believe
that the power emanates from the religion of the missionaries, rather than from
their culture and then come to believe that the religion is the key to their
own power. This is especially likely when some of those missionaries succumb to
the temptation to blatantly use religion as a controlling force rather than as
a liberating one. The debates over whether or not progress should necessitate
the disintegration of these societies continues to rage today. The noble savage,
at one with nature, is a strong metaphor competing with the promised
technological wonders of the future. Both metaphors are stripped of the
downsides of either vision: the poor health and short life of the primitive
without modern medicine on the one hand and on the other, the massive killings
enabled by ever more efficient means civilizations have of destroying one
another.
What becomes apparent is that in spite of our best efforts,
we have failed thus far to create a utopia, nor are we likely to. Similar to my
grandmother’s experience, the cost of living here on this little blue and green
marble spinning in space continues to inflate over time. It does so in part because
of how we now treat one another. Unlike the relatively harmonious interaction
of neighbors during my childhood, too many of us have chosen to be bent on
destroying one another, either verbally or physically. Recently I needed air in
one of my tires so I drove to a local branch of a national chain of gas
stations to use their free air pump. Someone had sliced the hose, cutting of
the valve at the end so no one could use it to inflate anything. Disgusted that
someone would do such a thing, I drove a few miles to the next, similar filling
station. The same thing had been done there. I spoke with the young woman who
was working there, and she told me that this was happening several times each
month. She said the owners were considering replacing the free air stations
with pay ones in order to defray the cost of all of the repairs. It is hard for
me to see the advantage to those who are so destructive, and it simply
escalates the cost for everyone, including them, should they want that service in
the future. Perhaps this was a small thing compared to much greater ongoing
conflicts in our world, but it illustrates an unfavorable trend.
Jesus told us that the escalation of evil in the world would
cause the love to die out of many hearts, but He also promised that if we can
keep on loving, in spite of the evil, we would be saved.[i] This is the blessed hope
that Peter wrote about in his epistles. Jesus, fully God,[ii] paid the highest price
that could be paid to make it possible. He temporarily laid down his divinity
for the purpose of dying on a rude cross outside of the ancient, holy city of
Jerusalem. In order to pay by His immortal death a price that would remain paid
throughout infinity. This secured, for those who would have it, heavenly real
estate that He is even now preparing for us.[iii] Unlike my grandmother’s
experience, no escalating cost will ever price us out of that home. By
definition, no cost could ever exceed the infinite price that has been paid.
When we accept Jesus death for us on that cross, we
acknowledge the earnest that has been paid to guarantee the performance of the
promise. Then each day as we live for Christ, seeking fellowship with Him and
the leading of the Holy Spirit, the mortgage continues to be paid on our
heavenly domicile. Every time the payment shows up in our mailbox and becomes
due, the words “Paid in Full” appear upon that statement, signed by the
efficacious blood of the One who paid the greatest price ever paid. Who could
ask for greater security than that? Where could we find a greater love?
