Swarms of beach goers over the weekend suggest some people imagine they’re invincible. They’ve had their fun and now are bringing the contagion home to us? What’s true physically is also true spiritually. I often tell students that I go to church desperate for spiritual insight and help. “Oh for a faith that will not shrink” goes an old hymn, but in many moments my faith does shrink.
So, Sunday I perked up at the reading from 1 Peter. “If the righteous is scarcely saved, what shall become of the ungodly and the sinner?” (4:18). Your salvation is not a slam dunk. Peter was writing to Christians who were under intense pressure to conform to popular spirituality and defect from living hope in Christ and the practices of His church. Sadly, some did defect, went with the crowds. “If the righteous is scarcely saved…” Peter’s entire epistle is a plea to stay with Jesus and the church.
Like physical contagion, spiritual contagion can spread among us. We’ve been living for decades in a society that imagined it was getting along nicely without God. The first weeks of shutdown many watched the streamed services, but now I wonder if “attendance” has declined? And when churches do reopen, will we all come back? Old Lutheran theologians spoke about “Epicurean indifference.” Epicurus was a Roman philosopher whose followers pursued happiness with no thought of the gods. Are some of us so desirous to find happiness out-and-about that we’ll be indifferent to getting back to physical church when it’s safe to do so? “If the righteous is scarcely saved…”
The goal of faith is the salvation of your souls (1 Peter 1:9). Amidst spiritual indifference, Jesus shows us where we get a faith that will not shrink. “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:14-17). Fear the contagion of “Epicurean indifference.” “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you” (Philippians 2:12-13).
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