Pastor Detweiler’s sermon from April 20:

Our calling as Christians is to spread the good news

1 Peter 2:2-10

Every child is different, and sometimes aspects of their personality become obvious in infancy. Of our four children, there was one who was lazy about eating. She wanted to suck for a little while and then seemed to expect that she could just hold on and the milk would drain into her mouth without any further effort. For most of childhood this was her approach to life. Her mother said she was lazy from the start.

When it comes to spiritual things I think most of us are like that. We expect that what is good for us eternally will be just as entertaining and seductive as the things in our culture that pull us away from God. The writer of 1 Peter says: “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.”

We have been given the pure, spiritual milk in Jesus. In him and in the community of his people we have tasted that the Lord is good. We just have to pay attention, come to worship, read the Bible, and pray, so that we can be fed by him.

In the reading from 1 Peter we have a vision of the church as a community despised and mistrusted by the Roman culture. Like Christ himself, they are rejected by people, but chosen by God. They are to build their lives on the living stone, the stone that the builders rejected, because it is on that foundation that God is building a spiritual house forever. They have tasted the goodness of the Lord in Jesus’ resurrection. With that taste they can endure persecution and rejection.

Not only can they endure, but they can become what they are in Christ: “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of God who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

The writer of 1 Peter sees all of the baptized as priests. This is one of the places from which Lutherans take the idea of “the priesthood of all believers.” Pastors are not priests. We are not representing the people before God because you can do that yourselves. We are leading the congregation in being priests in the world. All of you, according to the New Testament, are called to be part of this royal priesthood that is God’s own people.

That means that most of the work of pastoral care - taking communion to the sick and shut-ins, visiting in hospitals, comforting the bereaved, encouraging the faint-hearted - is properly that of ordinary Christians, “members of the priesthood we all share in Christ Jesus,” as we say at the end of the baptism service. It is not primarily the work of pastors, but of God’s people, the Church. Together we are to proclaim the mighty acts of God and help to satisfy those who are longing for the spiritual milk of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. As those who have tasted the pure spiritual milk, we are called to offer it to those who need it and are looking for it.

Tommy started bringing his 3 younger siblings to Sunday school one fall. He was a fifth-grader and on Sunday morning he got up, helped his brother and sisters get dressed and then walked them across the street and down the block to the church. Since no parent ever accompanied them, the teachers wondered if the children might be hungry. Asked if they would like some milk and cereal one Sunday, they all said “yes.” There was born a Sunday-morning breakfast program. The teachers noticed an openness to their concern in Tommy and his sisters and brother.

One Sunday in the spring they didn’t show up. Someone walked over to the apartment where they lived, and it was clear the family had moved out. But for the few months those children attended, the Sunday school teachers in that church were priests to them. They were the chosen race, part of the royal priesthood, the holy nation, and God’s own people, proclaiming the mighty acts of God who has called us out of darkness into this marvelous light. Maybe Tommy did the same thing in the next place to which the family moved. Whether he did or not, it was the pure, spiritual milk of the good news of God that had been offered, and through the Sunday school teachers Tommy and his siblings tasted that the Lord is good.

That’s our calling: to offer the pure, spiritual milk of the good news of God in Christ because we have tasted the goodness of the Lord who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.