I am not good at the epistles. I am not. Those letters in the Bible there at the back of the New Testament– I am bad at these. They are long (some of them), they are not specifically addressed to me (though I realize that they are applicable to me and are therefore, by extension, addressed to me), and they often expect me to be living in an awareness that I am not always aware of. I mean to be living in it, of course, but I am not. That bit there is the real problem, I think.
We are studying 1 Peter at my church these days, and I tell you that I really get on with Peter. The most passionate and foolhardy of the disciples, the one ready and willing to give walking on water a try, the one who denied Jesus three times: I identify with that kind of zeal and that kind of epic failure. Yes, I do.
So I’d like to think that Peter’s letters would be real to me– and they are. I mean, I do get this: “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (I Peter 1: 8-9). Yes, I identify with that. I do believe in Him. I do love Him. And sometimes I am filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. But not always.
Yet this is what an epistle is for, isn’t it? To remind us of what we know, to put into words what it is we are learning. Reading the words of the epistles is, perhaps, like tapping a wall, sounding it to discover the studs underneath. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1: 3-4). That’s some language one can drive a figurative nail into, something one can hang on with confidence. I need to read these words and hear the joyous confidence of the apostles, to be reminded in my everyday of the life that I am called to.
These days, Peter is placing a firm hand under my chin and drawing my gaze Up. In the midst of my present troubles, reminded of this world’s brevity (my children are growing oh, so fast now; and look! did you know that it’s the middle of April?), Peter speaks of “an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade” (4) and being “born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God” (19).
I hear you, Peter, I want to say. I know, and have known, and am beginning to know what you are talking about. And oh, it makes me hungry, like, perhaps, “a newborn baby, (who) craves pure spiritual milk, so that by it (I) may grow up in (my) salvation” (2:2).
The best days are these craving ones. I mean, I think, that the craving might be the closest that we get. We took Communion today and I looked for the biggest piece of bread; I drained my little plastic cup to its dregs. If I could just drink Him, I think. If I could only swallow Him whole.
I wish Peter would write me an epistle from the Other Side.
I told Bill today that I am flat against the wall, pressed full-front to it, arms outstretched, palms spread open, ear turned and listening. What is there? What is that? The movement, the rustling? What means these murmurings, the occasional burst of laughter?
