Sixth Sunday of Easter (A): 1 Peter 3:15-18
“Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence”. – 1 Peter 3:15
“I freed thousands of slaves, and could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves.”
― Harriet Tubman
You may have noticed an unusual thing about the Scripture readings during this Easter season. The second reading has been taken, not from one of the letters of St. Paul, but from the First Letter of St. Peter. There is a good reason for this. This letter would make an excellent Easter Vigil homily, as it reads like it is addressed to people who have just been baptized. It has many allusions to baptism. It offers encouragement as well as reminders that both joy and struggle are to be expected for all who follow the way of Christ. This was necessary, as sporadic persecutions of Christians had already begun in the eastern Mediterranean world.
In this Sunday’s second reading, these new Christians are advised to “be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope”. Christians may not dress in a distinctive way or speak an unusual language, but the expectation was that a Christian’s life will be distinctive. It will stand out, whether the Christian wants it to or not. Other people will wonder why this person lives in this way, or thinks or perceives life in this way. Indeed, any newly-baptized adult of the time was likely someone who had themselves asked a Christian this very question: What is the reason for your hope? Why is your life somehow different from that of others? The answers they received must have attracted them. And not merely verbal answers, though that’s where it began. These people were invited to come and see how Christians lived: how they loved and forgave one another, how they dealt with adversity and persecution, how they could forgive even their enemies. These people were invited to come and see where Christians drew their strength to live such a life: prayer, the Eucharist, the words and the entire life of the Lord Jesus. Their hearts were opened to the Holy Spirit. They wanted to learn more. Soon, they, too, fell in love with the Lord Jesus and gave their lives over to him, in union with all his people.
If we look around at life as it is now, we can easily see that hope is just as needed now as it was in the first century. We see signs all around us of people who have bought in to the promises of our secular society, only to find them unfulfilled. At best, they are like a mirage – always tempting, always beckoning, and yet always just out of reach. At worst, they are like bait on a fishing hook. We bite, and find ourselves caught and enslaved once again. We see so many people who have given themselves over to various addictions – drugs, drink, pornography. A lack of real hope makes people much more vulnerable to any addiction. We see that lack of hope in the prevailing cynicism of our times. We see it in acts of violence – whether physical or verbal. We see it in the depression and anxiety that torment so many.
And yet, many people do not look to Catholics, or other Christians, or people of other religions, as people who can offer hope. Faith in general, and religion in particular, is often discredited and ridiculed. Moreover, we Christians must acknowledge how we ourselves have not always lived according to the hope that we claim is ours. We are often obsessed with our status – as individuals or as a community. Scandals have damaged our credibility, whether we want to admit it or not. We can be too quick to condemn the evils we see around us, and yet too slow to offer an alternative. It’s easy to tell people what they should turn away from. The real test is to show them what they should turn toward. If what we are offering looks no different than the lives other people already live and see around them, why should they believe? Why should they join us?
We begin by acknowledging the unpleasant realities around us. Life for many people can feel vain and hopeless. We are told that we are what we can buy, and that we must always buy more and more, or we will cease to exist as “real” people. No one is ever told that they have enough. People are expected to look a certain way, dress a certain way, and think a certain way. Social media have made it easier to communicate in some ways, but they have also added greatly to this pressure to conform. Besides this, many people are beset by anxieties about the future. One could list many, many more challenges that people face these days. The point is that we need hope, but that hope is hard to find in the world of today. Our lives are affected by sin, and nothing we do on our own can free us from the power of sin – or anxiety, or fear, or depression – over us. Without hope, we are slaves of something.
Where is our hope? It is centered, as always, in Jesus. We believe that, in Jesus, God has entered our hopeless world. By the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God has embraced our pain, our suffering, and even our lack of hope, and has offered us something which – if we think about it for a moment – still staggers our imagination. God became like us so that we might become like him. In Jesus, sin, fear and even death are overcome. All the threats of the world are shown to be powerless in the end. All who believe in Jesus find in this faith a hope than enables them to turn from sin or fear and turn towards love. We look around and see how so many Catholics – and other Christians – give of themselves in service to others in many, many ways. We see how people of faith live out a genuine humility. They are not concerned about the status they may have in society, for they know that they are already children of the Father and siblings of Jesus himself. They know that suffering and even death cannot have the last word, for Jesus has promised eternal life to all who believe in him. This eternal life is something we encounter even now, whenever we still the noise within and listen for the Lord in silence and trust.
How do we share this hope? We begin by our own efforts to be faithful to the calling that God has given us. This fidelity in itself will be a witness. We share what God has done for us – not only for us in general, but what God has done for us as individuals, as families, as communities. We point to other faithful people who obviously are close to the Lord. We share stories from the Scriptures that shed light on every aspect of our lives and offer us wisdom and discernment. We lead people to come and see our own communities of faith. Of course, none of us are perfect. But that actually is an argument in our favor. If we, who are in no way “better” than others, can live a life based on our hope in God, that in itself is evidence that this hope is not a fantasy, but is based on reality. The most solid reality possible – God.
Not everyone will be open to our witness, of course. As Harriet Tubman said, many people do not know – or do not want to know – that they are slaves. But our fidelity to the Lord is itself a gift for others and an invitation to others. Some will want to know the reason for our hope. May we be ready to invite them, and help them find the Lord who has already found them.