“Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts”
The passage from 1st Peter, appointed for the epistle for today, begins with the phrase “be ye all of one mind.” It ends with our text “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.” Everything in between is held together by these two phrases. And what is in between is an exhortation to a godly life against the forms of wickedness which so easily arise, not only in our hearts, but also in our common life together.
“Be ye all of one mind,” he tells us. But what is that one mind? Is it mere unanimity regardless of what one is agreed about? Surely not. Peter is talking about the mind of Christ for he goes on to describe the qualities of the love of Christ towards us which must become the form of his life within us. A group of people may be united in ways that are quite ungodly. They may arrive at a perfectly fine decision but the manner of their deciding may be perfectly disgraceful, regardless of the decision itself. Or the process of decision making may be perfectly fine while the decision itself lacks intellectual, spiritual and moral integrity. We see this time after time in every aspect of our culture. Mere consensus is no surety for truth; nor is pure process. For if “being of one mind” arises out of viciousness, personal abuse, willful ignorance, resentment, envy, paltry excuses, self interest, incompetence and dark prejudice, (and let us be honest, such things are all too evident and all too common), then it is not what Peter is talking about.
Such things do not arise from the love of Christ and do not display anything like compassion, respect, brotherly love, mercy or even simple courtesy. It is unanimity without a blessing for it neither seeks a blessing nor desires a blessing for others. In short, there is nothing holy in it. And it is not actually unanimity for there can be no “being of one mind” where our hearts are endlessly divided and where we seek to inflict hurt out of a sense of resentment and fear, or out of a sense of entitlement and privilege. We do not refrain “[our] tongue[s] from evil” and “[our] lips that they speak no guile”; we do not “forsake evil and do good.” Peace is but the brooding calm hiding a hurricane of hurts and hates deep within.
Where there is no peace of God, there can be no peace among ourselves. We forget that we are called to inherit a blessing and so must act in accord with our calling. We forget, in other words, that our “being of one mind” does not arise simply from ourselves, but only from our life together consecrated to God in obedience to his Word. When that is remembered, however, then there can be reasonable and charitable differences among us about what to do or not to do because there is a true “being of one mind” about the essential form of our Christian faith and life. We have, I fear, always a long ways to go.
When Jesus stood by the lake of Gennesaret, “the people pressed upon him to hear the Word of God.” They pressed upon him. There was a hunger and a thirst for God’s Word, for something more beyond the contrary words and divided affections of human hearts. That pressing upon him, that hungering and thirsting, shows the awareness of a deeply felt need. It acknowledges an emptiness within us that can only be filled by God. They came wanting to hear and willing to be taught. And Jesus responds to their desire, for it is a godly desire and one in which, we may say, they are truly “of one mind.”
Jesus makes a fishing boat his pulpit. We are drawn into the net of his teaching. The Word of God goes forth from God’s Word and Son and we are willingly caught in the net of his teaching. Yet Jesus does something more. He provides for the continuation of his teaching through those whom he calls to be his “fishers of men.” They are to be the teachers of his Word, under his Word and through his Word. He calls them, moreover, out of the recognition of the barren emptiness of human endeavour simply considered in itself. By itself, it doesn’t and cannot satisfy.
Our labours and our lives have to be gathered into the purpose of God’s Word and be measured by it. “Master, we have toiled all the night long and have taken nothing.” This is, in a way, the human condition, especially when we refuse to attend to what God would have us know about our home and end in his love, and when we refuse to act out of what he has given us to do in his name in our dealings with one another. But “nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net.” Appropriately for Petertide, this is Peter’s word, the word of him who tells us “be of one mind.” In a way, it echoes his realization that “thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” a statement which Jesus, in a kind of amazement, says “flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee but my Father which is in heaven.” He has a hold of something divine.
In the commemoration of Peter and Paul, we see the essential unity in faith of two vastly different and powerful personalities who have shaped the life and witness of the Church. They are of one mind in the unity of God’s Word; in spite of themselves, too, one might add.
“At thy word” is the opening to salvation, not on account of a full net of prosperity and material gain, but because it is obedient to God’s Word. God alone makes something out of the nothingness of our lives. He alone brings true unity out of the mean divisions of our hearts. But only if “at thy word” is followed in our hearts. Only if, indeed, we will see that the rule of his Word is the only means by which “the course of this world,” as the Collect puts it, may be “peaceably ordered” and governed, and the only way by which “[his] Church may joyfully serve [him] in all godly quietness.”
“In all godly quietness” is not about doing nothing. It means “being of one mind” in prayerful attentiveness to God’s Word and Son. It is, however, the counter to the net of our growing disconnectness and our increasing discomfort. Our lives, I fear, are those of cyberspace orphans, divorced from God, from one another and from ourselves even when we think we are most connected, an alienation that captures precisely the unbearable shallowness of our contemporary world. The counter is to be found precisely in Peter’s willingness to let down the net again “out into the deep,” the willingness, in other words, to be defined by something more and something other than the vagaries of time, circumstance and our own vanities. Such is the deep truth and meaning that belongs to the theology of revelation. God has something to say to us. Are we willing to listen? Are we willing to enter into the deep reading that our Liturgy demands?
To attend faithfully and charitably to the common form of essential faith is to “sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts.” Then, even in our differences, whatever they may be, we shall be of one mind and our decisions may even have about them the odour of sanctity, if they be accomplished in the compassion and charity of Christ. For he shall be held as holy in our hearts and only then shall we be blessed and a blessing to others.
“Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts”
Fr. David Curry,
Trinity V/Petertide
July 4th, 2010
Christ Church & St. Thomas’, 3-Mile Plains