CELC The Seventh Sunday of Easter

The Seventh Sunday of Easter – May 8, 2005

1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11

It was a beautiful wedding. It almost looked like something out of a fairy tale. But, there was one glitch. When the little boy carrying the rings walked down the aisle he would take a couple of steps, stop, and then growl loudly. After the wedding his mother asked this little preschooler why he stopped and growled so many times. The little boy looked up at his mother and explained, “I was the ring BEAR!”

This is a cute story. I thought of it when I read in today’s lesson from 1^st Peter. 1^st Peter has this warning for all Christians: “Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour.” I believe that 1^st Peter had something very different in mind than a small child at a wedding going down an aisle growling. After all, the ring bearer thought he was a bear, and 1^st Peter speaks of the devil as a lion.

Does the devil appear to be a lion to you? Is the devil a lion prowling around wanting to devour you? You probably would answer, “No, not really,” because you know a metaphor, an illustration, when you encounter it.

1^st Peter does not mean that the devil is truly a lion and that the devil will literally devour you. You and I are sophisticated people who realize this. Unfortunately, at times we also forget that while this is not literal, it is true. The devil is like a lion, and does want to devour you and your life.

You know evil is real. It is at work in the world. It is deadly. 1^st Peter is right.

I was reminded of this truth when recently reading in the newspaper there is a new Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Germany. It will be unveiled on Tuesday, sixty years after the end of the Second World War in Europe. It is a stark memorial made of more than 2,100 blocks of grey concrete that rise crookedly and resemble new gravestones. As you walk through the memorial, the uneven angles disorient you. This Holocaust Memorial remembers the deaths of more than six million Jews as well as the deaths of Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals and others.

It is a monument that communicates to you that evil can consume us. It is a reminder that evil is real. It is a stark remembrance that evil can be more than personal, more than one individuals struggle. It is a disorienting and concrete display that lets you know that evil can grow larger than any one of us or even larger than all of us together.

So, 1^st Peter is right to tell us the truth: The devil prowls like a lion wanting to devour us. Be alert, be disciplined. Someone said “The devil’s cleverest trick is this; to persuade people that he does not exist. Then he is free to do anything.” Perhaps this new Holocaust Memorial will be one more reminder that keeps us alert to the possibility that we are only one day away from another horrifying atrocity. 1^st Peter speaks truly for God this morning: Beware, the devil prowls like a lion and wishes to devour you, to trap you in complacence that takes you away from God and places you in the kingdom of the devil himself. Beware, it begins with saying, “Ah, the devil doesn’t exist.”

1^st Peter takes things further. “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time.” Humility is all about the relationship. It is acknowledging that God is the Creator and we are the creatures. Humility knows that by ourselves the devil will do us in like a prowling lion. Humility is admitting that we are helpless and hopeless against evil without the cross.

In the cross God defeated the last weapon the devil, death itself. The Easter gospel is the truth that God raised Jesus from the dead, defeating the wiles of the devil and promising you that God will do the same for you. Humility trusts that truth: that the cross is God’s power, God’s glory to your new life. As 1^st Peter says, God “…will himself restore, support, strengthen and establish you.” You can count on God to give us the future we are promised. Death is defeated. God has the final word.

Since our future is secure, since we know that in the kingdom to come our future is secure because of the cross, we are set free to battle the devil in this world, this time, as the people of God. You can resist the devil remaining steadfast in faith.

A German Lutheran pastor resisted the devil during the Second World War. He is an example to us. No, it is not Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famous martyred Lutheran theologian. No, the German Lutheran pastor I am thinking of was also imprisoned by Hitler because he spoke out against the evil of the Third Reich. His name was Martin Niemoller. Listen to what Pastor Niemoller wrote:

First they came for the communists,

but I was not a communist –

so I said nothing.

Then they came for the social democrats,

but I was not a social democrat –

so I did nothing.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

but I was not a trade unionist.

And then they came for the Jews,

but I was not a Jew –

so I did little.

Then when they came for me,

there was no one left who could stand up for me.

I wonder if we are called today by God in Christ to resist the devil by saying something, doing something, being faithful as Pastor Niemoller advises. I wonder if God calls us to stand up against evil. Or will someone, some place, some day, build yet another memorial to another atrocity? I wonder. Amen.

Pastor Robert F. Holley

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