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1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11 CEB Dear friends, don’t be surprised about the fiery trials that have come among you to test you. These are not strange happenings. Instead, rejoice as you share Christ’s suffering. You share his suffering now so that you may also have overwhelming joy when his glory is revealed. If you are mocked because of Christ’s name, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory—indeed, the Spirit of God—rests on you. Therefore, humble yourselves under God’s power so that he may raise you up in the last day. Throw all your anxiety onto him, because he cares about you. Be clearheaded. Keep alert. Your accuser, the devil, is on the prowl like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith. Do so in the knowledge that your fellow believers are enduring the same suffering throughout the world. After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, the one who called you into his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will himself restore, empower, strengthen, and establish you. To him be power forever and always. Amen. “Throw all your anxiety onto him, because he cares about you” (1 Peter 5:7 CEB). How often have you heard these words in some form or another? How often have you said these words or something like them? “Give it over to Jesus” or “Leave it at the foot of the cross.” This morning we even wrote our anxieties and cares on slips of paper and watched them dissolve in water. Does that mean they’re gone now? … Maybe, maybe not … Here’s the real question: how do we let go of our cares? Can we do this? Is it even possible to truly cast away our anxieties as Peter commands? After all, there seem to be any number of problems that beset and surround us almost daily, and it seems virtually impossible to ignore them. Except, look closer at 1 Peter 5:7 this morning, it is not anxieties and cares, but anxiety itself that we cast onto Christ. It’s not our problems but our approach to those problems, to know that we are never alone with our problems because we can trust that God cares for us. Instead of being consumed by worry, we are free to respond.
I want to be the first to admit to you that I am a professional worrier. Maybe some of you are in a similar line of work. I’ll give you one particular example. Sophie ended up catching a cold last weekend. As soon as she got sick, I got sympathy sick. I kept wondering, “Is that itch in the back of my throat allergies or the onset of some disease? Am I coughing because the air’s a bit dry, or respiratory infection?” Logically, I can explain them away, but that doesn’t just make my worries disappear. I am bad enough with a cold let alone the anxiety that must come with the more serious stuff that Peter talks about in his letter. There he describes “fiery trials” and “suffering” as his audience faced actual persecution for their faith. Certainly, this causes a whole other level of anxiety and worry. Now, does this mean my cares are insignificant by comparison, that I should just get over them? Sometimes we tell ourselves that after all, we say something like, “Well, I have this problem, but it is certainly not as bad as so-and-so, so can I really complain?” That’s not the point of Peter’s words today though. We all have problems. We all suffer. Those things are real. It doesn’t fix anything to compare and contrast with someone else and say our suffering isn’t real because it doesn’t look as bad as our neighbor's. We are not in a suffering Olympics here. Problems are real, they are overwhelming, and they can all “prowl like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” What matters today from Peter’s words is that bit that comes just after the lion part, where he says, “Resist him, standing firm in the faith. Do so in the knowledge that your fellow believers are enduring the same suffering throughout the world.” Peter doesn’t say you can’t really have problems if someone else has them worse than you. Peter doesn’t say, if you have faith, you won’t have problems. No, what Peter does say is that you are not alone. Too often, we reduce things down to the singular. These are my problems, my worries, and my cares. These words from 1 Peter dispel this illusion. We are not alone, we are part of the whole. English poet, John Donne, put it this way, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”[1] If we go back to Peter’s words, he says it this way: “Throw all your anxiety onto him, because he cares about you.” Who is this he? It is God. Even if no one else has ever had the problem that you face, there is at least always one who is with you. Though in truth, our sufferings and anxieties find echoes across the human race. We are not alone. This is important to keep in mind for what needs to be said next, namely that Peter isn’t talking about casting all your cares on Jesus, just your care. You see sometimes this verse has been translated as something like “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you” (1 Peter 5:7 NLT) When in truth the Common English Bible and even the King James Version capture the intent better with “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you” (1 Peter 5:7 KJV). Not cares, care. Not anxieties, anxiety. Not worries, worry itself. We all have problems, but what Peter tells us to throw to God is how we approach them. As I said before, we get singular with things, letting our host of worries and anxieties define us. We become the worst things that have ever happened to us, we allow these cares to have power over us. It also means we can become immune to the cares of others. For instance, I will tell you that I have been shocked by some of the things Caitlin has shared with me from her online mom forum through What to Expect When You’re Expecting, especially when it comes to labor. Some moms would pop on to share about especially difficult labors, and then instead of compassion, many times the suffering Olympics began. Instead of saying, “I am sorry to hear that you had a difficult 12-hour labor,” it was instead more like, “12 hours? I wish mine was only 12 hours! Mine was 24 hours!” People had become so consumed by their singular problems and worries, they couldn’t see past them to respond to another. This singular nature can even be a problem in our Christian faith especially. This is my personal relationship with Jesus. This is my faith. This is my singular set of concerns to bring before God. We can have the same response problem! There is a second part to that quote from John Donne that goes, “if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, [...] any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”[2] We do not exist just for ourselves and our own needs. Donne’s words remind us that needs not met in another become my loss, for I am part of the whole. This is essential to those classic words of Christ, “love your neighbor as yourself.” If I cannot see how I am connected to others, I cannot empathize or find solidarity with them or their cares. I cannot even begin to love them. Conversely, if others cannot do this for me, how can I possibly be cared for? It all hinges on seeing that we are not alone. You are not an island. I am not an island. Not even Thermopolis is an island. Being Christian makes me part of Christ, part of the whole body, made up of many parts. I have common ground with everyone else who claims Christ because God cares for them as God cares for me. The lion roars, prowls, and seeks to devour. However, as anyone who has ever watched a nature documentary knows, the lion consumes the isolated individual, the one forced or trying to be an island. God cares for me and cares for you. God’s care is based on God’s love seen in God’s constant grace in and through our lives. God is constantly trying to work for the good of God’s children. Instead of focusing on the power of suffering and anxiety, Peter focuses on what God has done and is doing, saying “Instead, rejoice as you share Christ’s suffering.” Christ suffered to end suffering. God took on sin and death and destroyed their power. We are not defined by the worst things but by the best things, by the things of God. Freed from this we can be the sign of God’s presence in the world. We can see past ourselves. We can see the needs of others and have our needs seen by them. Guess what happens then? We can start loving each other as God loves us. We can start caring for each other as God always cares for us. We become a people of response. Amen. [1] John Donne, The Works of John Donne: Vol. III, ed. Henry Alford (London, J.W. Parker, 1839), 574-575. [2] John Donne, The Works of John Donne: Vol. III, ed. Henry Alford (London, J.W. Parker, 1839), 574-575.
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