Gracious Goodness! – 1 Peter 3:13-22 (Year A, Easter 6)

I want to invite you this morning to take hold of a wonderful truth. Consider it a foundation upon which to build a full, beautiful, and significant life. Embrace it as a core principle in the growth of our church. Think of it as the great anchoring reality around which the universe revolves and upon which all life depends.

The truth is this:

God is good.

Not “God is occasionally pleasant.”

Not “God is good when traffic is light and your cholesterol numbers cooperate.”

But God is good — always, deeply, relentlessly good.

Our Scripture readings from last week and this week urge us to center our lives on that great fact. God is good!

Last Sunday we learned that the goodness of God is the pure spiritual milk upon which Christians are nourished. Drinking in the goodness of God is one of the basic building blocks of a strong Christian life. Today’s reading teaches that we are then called to share that goodness with the world — even when it costs us something.

Sometimes goodness requires suffering.

Back in the 1960s, my boyhood pastor rented an apartment he owned to a Black family. For that act of simple decency, he endured the outrage and anger of white neighbors. He suffered for doing good.

Martin Luther King Jr. suffered.

Nelson Mandela suffered.

And you and I suffer too whenever we swallow our pride in order to forgive, open our arms to people others reject, advocate for those who have no voice, or spend our hard-earned resources helping people who have nothing.

Sometimes doing good hurts.

And 1 Peter 3 tells us that if we are going to suffer for anything, let it be for this: suffering for doing good. After all, that is exactly what Jesus did when he gave his life so the world might find life.

The basic ingredient of Christian faith is the goodness of God.

Stories of God’s goodness appear on every page of the Bible.

A man and woman make a terrible choice, and their world falls apart. Eden is no longer paradise. But even then, God makes clothes for them and begins the long work of restoring the dignity they had lost. That’s goodness.

A father named Noah looks around and realizes the world is drowning in violence and corruption. God gives him an idea: “Build a boat.” And somewhere in history, Noah became the first man to discover that every church building project eventually goes over budget. That’s goodness too.

The Hebrew people cry out under slavery and oppression. God hears them and calls Moses to lead them to freedom.

You see, underneath all the Cecil B. DeMille-style special effects of the Bible — the burning bushes, parted seas, and heavenly fireworks — runs one steady theme:

God is good.

Everything God creates is good.

God seeks good for the people of the earth.

God is in the goodness business.

But if this is true — if God is good — then people naturally ask: *Why do bad things happen?*

Which brings us to old Fred.

One Monday morning, Fred overslept. He wanted to blame his wife Marge for not waking him up, but she was away visiting her sister. Besides, Fred had forgotten to set the alarm himself — a detail he was determined not to dwell on.

Fred had an important meeting that morning to close a major deal, so he rushed through the house, gulped down a stale Krispy Kreme left over from the night before — because apparently breakfast of champions means powdered sugar and regret — grabbed coffee, and tore out of the driveway.

And when I say “tore,” I mean it.

Before long, Fred found himself pulled over for doing 80 miles an hour in a 15-mile-an-hour school zone.

The motorcycle officer did not respond with what we might call “pastoral sensitivity.”

Not only did Fred receive a $500 ticket, but the officer also offered several unsolicited observations about Fred’s intelligence, judgment, driving ability, and perhaps his entire family tree.

By the time the officer left, Fred was furious.

“Why don’t they spend their time chasing criminals instead of law-abiding citizens like me?” Fred muttered — apparently without irony.

When Fred finally arrived at work, the client had left and the deal was gone. Furious, Fred slammed the intercom button.

“Larry! Get in here!”

Now Larry had worked for Fred for twenty-three years. He was loyal, hardworking, and recently stressed because sales had been down.

Fred unloaded on him.

“Larry, couldn’t you have kept them here a few extra minutes? We lost the sale! I’m tired of excuses. If things don’t improve, I’ll find somebody else!”

Fred was upset.

But if you think Fred was upset, you should have seen Larry.

Larry stormed into the office of his top salesperson, Robin.

“Robin, I’m tired of carrying you! If sales don’t improve, I’ll replace you!”

Now Robin was upset.

But if you think Robin was upset, you should have seen the receptionist.

Robin barked at her over the phone. The receptionist spent the rest of the day answering every call like she had personally been offended by the invention of telephones.

Finally, the receptionist got home and found her teenage son sprawled on the couch watching television in the middle of a messy living room.

She exploded.

“Go to your room! You’re grounded for life!”

Which, for the record, is a sentence every teenager knows really means “until your mother calms down and needs help carrying groceries.”

The boy stomped off toward his room and noticed Ellis the cat lying peacefully on the floor, purring away, blissfully unaware that he was about to become a sermon illustration.

“You lazy cat!” the boy yelled.

And he kicked the cat clear across the room.

Now, this story raises three important questions.

First: wouldn’t it have been easier if Fred had simply driven straight to the receptionist’s house that morning and KICKED THE CAT HIMSELF?

Second: have YOU been kicking any cats lately?

Not literal cats, I hope. Some of you are looking sort of nervous.

But emotionally? Verbally? Spiritually?

Have you ever taken out your frustration on someone who had nothing to do with the original problem?

And third: can you see how this story is THE STORY OF THE WORLD?

Multiply Fred by billions of people. Turn his office into corporations and governments and nations. Include among the kicked cats children, vulnerable people, the poor, the lonely, the forgotten — even creation itself.

And suddenly we understand why the world is the way it is.

Theologians call this sin.

What they mean is that human beings turn away from God and God’s goodness. We want to run the universe ourselves. We want to be our own gods, masters of our own fate, CEOs of creation.

And when we turn away from God’s goodness, we end up hurting each other.

We kick cats.

And dogs.

And people.

And relationships.

And communities.

And the earth itself.

So if YOU were God, what would you do with a world like this?

Some people think God’s answer is destruction. Wipe the slate clean. Start over.

But that is not what God does.

Because God is good.

God loves this world — and every Fred in it.

God loves you. God loves me.

And so God reaches toward us with a goodness almost too beautiful to comprehend.

We see it most clearly in Jesus.

Jesus feeds the hungry.

Forgives sinners.

Heals the broken.

Welcomes the rejected.

And in the most astonishing act of goodness imaginable, he takes our sin upon himself and lays down his life on the cross.

Yes, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Yes, we have made a mess of the world and of our own lives.

But God responds not with vengeance, but with goodness.

And when we receive the goodness of God in Jesus Christ, we are given a ministry: the ministry of goodness.

If I were starting a church from scratch, I would build it on that foundation:

God is good, and God’s people are called to share that goodness with the world.

Where there is hatred, we would sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness, joy.

IHow would you feel about being part of such a church? It’d be a lot different than what we see in a lot of churches these days. Could you commit yourself to such a ministry? Would you dedicate your life to drinking in and then sharing out the goodness of God?

I dare say that if only one of the people in old Fred’s life that day had been committed to God’s goodness, things would have turned out a whole lot different. If only one person had been committed to forgiveness, if only one had been committed to cutting other people a little slack when they’re having a bad day, if only one was committed to building people up rather than tearing people down, if only one person had been willing to absorb and suffer the insult in order to stop the cycle, if only one person had spoken the truth in love rather than just expressing their anger, that receptionist’s cat might still be purring away!

What if you were that one person?