“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.”

“For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night. 8 But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath”, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, (1 Peter 1:3-4 ; Thessalonians 5:7-9 New American Standard Bible)

 

“Put on the Helmet of Hope”

A Lesson From Peter’s Experience and Paul’s Pedagogy

Pandemic Easter, April 12, 2020

Preface

The events the entire world is now going through are unique to everyone living at this time.  There may be a slight exception to the totality of this statement.  Very few people are alive who, as very young children, experienced the Spanish Flu pandemic that began in 1918 and raged for very close to two years.   But now a new unwieldy plague has broken out, and thus far, we have no read antidote.  Spreading with little hindrance from one to another in leaps and bounds, it is infecting millions (to date at the posting of this missive 2.2 million) and killing over 146,000 young, middle age, and older people.  Daily we are updated on the havoc and ruin it brings to families and cities, robbing the hopes and dreams of many.  Beyond all the small steps we can take to shelter ourselves from this plague, there is another spiritual lesson that needs to be brought into sharper focus.  We need not only hopes and dreams for fulfilling our lives here and now and tomorrow, as fragile and fleeting as these often are, but greater enduring hopes that go beyond this worldly horizon.  Easter speaks to this latter hope and our response to it.

In this Easter lesson, I link two passages from the New Testament, one from Peter and the other from Paul. In the first passage, we listen to Peter’s words taking care to notice that they infer the disciples’ loss of their hopes and dreams before a new birth of hope. The Easter hope emerged. The second passage by Paul uses a vivid metaphor to convey to us how vulnerable we are to spiritual harm if we had not attended to and taken up the Easter hope that the Apostles experienced before they made it the centerpiece of their gospel. Peter states this pivotal piece of the unique apostolic experience when he writes, “he caused us to be born again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” This meditation looks behind ‘again’ and asks why ‘again’? ‘Again’ implies a second go at hope. Paul tells us hope is a helmet that protects us. To help us grasp how it does this, we look at Peter’s experience and then our own.* (Note as regards hope as it is used in this article think not of hoping a verb, but of hope a noun, in the framework under consideration the noun empowers the verb.)

Coming into Passover weekend, Peter and the others had a hope, but their hope smashed up on Friday evening when Jesus was literally strung up on a cross*. Evidently, obviously their pre -Passover hope was not well aligned with the future that Jesus had been trying to teach them and form in their minds. In actuality, stupidity is not due to a lack of intelligence. When people do not get something they are taught, it is not because it’s too complicated but because it doesn’t fit their pre-existing ideas. The disciples had hope about how the future would work out, but they were a work in progress. Pre-existing ideas of the messianic kingdom alive in their world colored and influenced their thinking. In fact, studies have shown a linkage between many of Jesus’ disciples and the Zealot movement’s brand of hope alive and well in the 1st Century. The Jewish people were in bondage to Roman rule. They were not a happy free people. 1st Century Judaism is a seedbed for hope, and the Prophetic message canonized in the Hebrew Bible around the time of the Babylonian Captivity 5th BC was rich with messianic images and prophesies.

There were several brands of Kingdom hope on the market in the time of Christ. It may be at least partly true, if not entirely true, that Jesus’ rabbinical – disciple undertaking was carried out by calling his core followers from that lot of men who were Zealot sympathizers and then transform their ideas of ‘kingdom’, the organizing concept and word for his teaching bar none, and a word the Zealots publicly embraced and refused to shy away from even though it waved a red flag in the face of the Romans.* There were profound differences between the Zealots vision of the kingdom and Jesus but none more important than how this kingdom would be formed – by violent action led by a messianic figure versus a messianic figure who embodied nonviolent passion and vicarious suffering for all, including the People of God’s enemies. Jesus embodied and taught the latter vision, but the disciples could not really grasp a kingdom constructed in this way and this is why their hope would not survive Passover weekend.

“Born again to a living hope” Implies that the disciples had a pre-existing hope that had obviously not survived. Passover and Jesus’ crucifixion under Pontius* was for them, at that time, the end of hope and the end of Jesus’ imminent ‘kingdom’ proclamation – period! The signal that the Jesus Kingdom Movement was dead in the water – finished, was the sign that Pilate had nailed over the cross while Jesus was dying, “Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews”. Their kingdom hope was dead but also along with this something else died. Intertwined with this kingdom hope the disciples had formed personal hopes else why do we read about so much quarreling and strife among them over who is going to sit on the right hand and the left hand of power when Jesus comes into his kingdom! No matter what Jesus was telling and teaching them they imagined that they had tickets on the glory train and were busy, almost to the last minute, jockeying for the best seat for the ride. Suffice it to state this hope, which I have taken the freedom here to dub ‘hope one’, never made it into the present tense. In fact, it was cruelly and abruptly dashed to smithereens. Not one shred of it remained by the time the sunset on Friday.

But my reason for focusing the text in this way, albeit legitimately so, is to address the spiritual danger the disciples were immediately thrust into when hope one smashed up and before hope two was born and commenced to grow sufficient to gain form. To be caught holding the ashes of one’s hopes with no new hope in reach is a dangerous place to be. And for a while that is where the disciples found themselves. In this place there is no question in my mind that they were visited with the spiritual demons called ‘Disillusionment’,’ Fear’, ‘Despair’, ‘Regret’, ‘Shame’, ‘Anger’, ‘Bitterness’ which is hardness of heart, ‘Nihilism’ and even ‘Suicide’ (cf Judas). Before the events turned dark, at the edge of darkness, gathered at the Last Supper, Jesus turned to Peter and told him what was about to happen to him that the devil “desired to sift him like wheat but that he prayed that his faith would not (ultimately) fail” (Luke 22:32). Before them lay the shattering of their hope.

This is where my second text comes into play. In what scholars conclude is his very first epistle, I Thessalonians, Paul writes about the importance of putting on the helmet of hope. The hope of which he writes is without question hope 2, the Easter hope of which Peter writes in our first passage under consideration. Helmets protect one’s body, namely one’s head from harm. Whether it is a bicycle helmet, a motorcycle helmet, a construction helmet, or as in the context Paul is using it, part of a soldier’s amour to protect him in battle. The protection of one’s head from harm’s way is a helmet’s purpose. Once Peter and the disciples’ hope was destroyed, they were in harm’s way. They had been with Jesus three and a half years, saw his power and charisma, opened wide to his message of the kingdom that he would bring in, sacrificed the comforts of family, the security of their jobs and thrown in with him. Their expectations were high, their confidence in the future unshaken and no more than in the week leading up to Passover when the Gospel record states he spoke with such boldness and power he seemed invincible and unstoppable and Jesus’ Kingdom movement seemed to be gaining irreversible momentum. What goes up must come down and be sure by sunset Friday after the awesome power of Rome was deployed to end the Jesus’ Messianic’ movement (altogether misunderstood by everyone inside and outside the movement) the disciples were thrust into a deep, dark valley of confusion and despair. What they needed was something to protect them from the great spiritual harm that always results when women and men suffer the dissolution of great hopes. They needed what they soon received “hope 2”, the Easter hope that Peter writes would not perish, become defiled or fade away under the pressures, adversity and hostility of the forces in this world that often seem to be and really are arraigned against even the best of human hopes.

The Easter hope recommends itself for what it is and how it was formed. It was forged and extruded under the pressure of unjust suffering and death by what Luke identifies as “the ‘Lord’s Christ (i.e. messiah)’ anointed by God to “make reconciliation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17). In doing this, the Gospel asserts, “he (Christ) destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light” (2 Timothy 1:10). The big obstacle hindering the realization of the Jews kingdom hopes, at the time of Christ, in their reckoning, was the Imperial power of Rome who had subjugated them under their rule. Add to this physical obstacle the ‘gospel’ of the Pharisees who ultimately blamed the Jews bondage to Roman rule to another reason. To receive God’s promised blessing, the prophetic promise of the kingdom, the people of God needed to be truly holy. This holiness came by way conforming to the dictates of the Torah and practicing a clean social- physical separation from the encroachment of Gentiles among them. Mixing with the pagan ways of the Gentiles had, according to their read of the Prophets and the Law, lost them God’s blessing and protection and trammeled the fulfillment of the prophetic promises. Therefore, in order to overturn the curse and release the promised blessing they must set themselves apart, i.e. sanctify themselves literally from the Gentiles and their ways. This they did with a vengeance.

The main obstacles that hinders the realization, fulfillment and firm establishment of Gentile hopes (i.e. non religious -non Biblical hopes) then and now, from the standpoint of human logic and experience, are the fickle forces of history, nature, and the power that are lodged in these. The forces of history simply get in the way and stymy hop). But the obstacle that thwarts God’s hope for humanity, Jew and Gentile, and his will to restore the full blessing and harmony of life, lies not in history or nature or religio-moral achievement or sanctification but in Godself. The Judeo-Christian vision of God that comes to view in Scripture is one wherein God is fundamentally estranged from humanity on account of humanity’s location, namely, their separation and autonomy from God as Lord. This autonomy is always and continually incarnated in the spirit and action of more or less everyone. This separation is present in the Lord’s Prayer “Our Father…your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. The Kingdom’s coming is predicated on something coming together that is now in tension or schism – the will of God presently perfected in heaven established on earth. And this is suggested in the New Covenant which states the prophetic promise as follows. (‘Then’, when that time comes)” I will be their God and they will be my People” “I will write my laws in their hearts and I will forgive their sins”.

Herein lies the pinch of the point. The Easter hope emerges because via One, alone, by himself, the one standing for the many, in their place, bears their curse and restores the conditions of life and blessing.  In him the curse is reversed, the breach healed and the blessing of life for evermore brought near. The Prophetic promise of life made its debut Easter morning because on the cross that separation was overcome. The Apostolic Gospel is a herald of hope’s arrival in and through the messiah the Christ and a call for faith and repentance before what is now a reality in Christ is fully bestowed. This is in a nutshell the Christian Gospel of hope.

Easter emerged on the other side of passover with an enduring kingdom hope secure within its firm grip. This hope the Apostolic Gospel extends to all of humanity precisely because the Messiah healed this breach between God and humanity, the one for the many. The new birth of hope of which Peter writes in his Epistle cannot now be overturned. The resurrection of Christ from the dead is not a voyeuristic miracle to be gazed upon. Rather it signifies the arrival of God’s hope for us, literally God’s promised future, even as we wait for its full bestowal (Easter is the presence of the future in and through the Christ – messiah).

Meantime, that is to state, in light of the arrival of the future in the Messiah and the imminence of its full bestowal, our task is relatively simple all things considered. First and foremost Scripture calls us to put on the helmet of this hope and wait for the Kingdom’s full and complete bestowal thereby refusing to fall into the spiritual grip of the problems and pleasures that come our way in the journey of life. Add to this one logical deduction – repent of any and all ways in our life and in our world that are contrary to this kingdom, thereby integrating our lives best we can into what the Gospel asserts is a present but hidden reality in Christ soon to be manifested and established.

These prose in the last two paragraphs inquire into the Biblical reasons behind the emergence of the Easter hope and as such slightly stray from the main point of the vesper lesson. The mainstay of the devotion argued that without hope, an enduring hope, one that does not fade away (as Peter states in the very next verse -1 Peter 1:4), sooner or later in one’s journey it will become almost, if not impossible, to keep from falling into the grip of the present whether ‘good’, bad or ugly. Once the present becomes the be all and end all the good in it spoils us whereas the bad in it embitters us. The Easter hope makes relative both the evil that afflicts us and also the good that brings us happiness and pleasure. As such hope ensures that the good things of life do not become the best things and spoil us or the bad things gain too much magnitude and fill is up with toxic negative spirits. 

End Notes

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope”. Martin Luther King.

*  The cross piece with the victim attached to it, was literally hoisted up and fastened to the preexisting stake. Thus the phrase strung up or as Scripture states ‘hung’ is correct. “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree” Galatians 3:13 Paul quoting the Torah

* Galilee, next door to Judea, housed a hotbed of Zealots. Most of Jesus’ disciples were from Galilee

Taken From the Live Easter Zoom Missive Notes Partially Shared April 12, 2020