1 Peter 1:17-23
In Break Every Yoke: Religion, Justice, and the Abolition of Prisons, Joshua Dubler and Vincent Lloyd claim that one of the problems with US American’s conception of justice is that it has become too small. Instead of identifying justice with a divine yet to be fully realized law that we struggle to make real in our world, justice has become equated with the unbiased application of current criminal law. They argue that this is why the eventual obsolescence of prisons went from an almost foregone conclusion (the expected end to the pursuit of justice) in the early 70s, to an almost unthinkable utopic vision.
The lectionary passage today speaks to the need for Christians to believe in a utopian vision, conforming their minds and their lives in obedience to a law that is beyond the current legal social order. In doing so, they remain sojourners in their land, forced to struggle (and at times suffer) within the tension of a certain, but not yet realized, just and loving community. As they attempt to embody this vision in Christian community, they provide a witness to the world God is working to bring into reality through Christ.
The abolitionist preacher can highlight the theme of obedience to God as our Father to bring this message out of the text. The preacher can also remind hearers of Jesus’ command “Don’t call anybody on earth your father, because you have one Father, who is heavenly,” (Mt 23:9 CEB). In a legal system that was structured around the power of earthly fathers, the command to give obedience to God as our father undermined their obedience to unjust human fathers and the paterfamilias system. This is why the author of 1 Peter states that they were liberated from the futile ways inherited from their ancestors (1:18). The Greek term, often translated as “ancestors,” is related to the word for father, making the subversion of earthly fathers’ authority clear. Likewise, we are not called to obey and maintain our current justice system, but to seek the fullness of divine justice. This divine justice liberates us from bondage to our current (in)justice system.
The author of 1 Peter acknowledges that this is difficult. It puts us in tension with a world that seeks power, stability, and safety through a broken, abusive system. We must tolerate the tension, conflict, and at times suffering that living with integrity and pursuing God’s vision for the world can provoke. At the same time, our difference offers a witness to the world. We are called to embrace our otherness, our strangeness and state of exile in this world because our communal witness speaks to the kind of justice that is possible. When we live in obedience to God’s truth and have faith in God’s justice our relations with each other will be “marked by genuine affection and deep and earnest love,” (1:23). Our churches then, should be communities where God’s transformative justice is imagined and worked out.
Sarah Lynne Gershon (she/her) is an MDiv/MTS student, DOC pastor, and lives at the Bloomington Catholic Worker.