May 3, 2026 - 1 Peter 2:2-10 - 5th Sunday of Easter
If youâre a kid, you can think about this now. If youâre a bit beyond that, you can think back to life as a kid in grade school or maybe a bit older. Did you have a sense of what your life was going to look like 30 or 40 years later? Did you know what you were going to do for a living? Did you know what kinds of relationships you were going to have? Career and livelihood, marriage, kids, where you live, what kinds of hobbies you were going to have, all kinds of questions that say something about who you are. Thereâs also the, perhaps, more nebulous question: what sort of person are you going to be? Are you going to be a thoughtful person? Considerate? Determined? Ambitious?
Maybe you had a role model that you really took after and wanted to emulate. If so, then you may have had some idea of what your end goal was and how to get there. If not, there may have been certain things that you really resonated with and you had to sort of figure out how to get there. You may have been like me, having no real idea and having to just stumble around until something clicked. There isnât really a right or wrong there. Some people just figure things out earlier than others.
As you get older, you start to have plans. You see the kinds of things that need to happen to move you farther along. You might not know what the end is supposed to be yet. You might not know where youâre going at all. But, you can start to tell which decisions are going to be better for you than others. Do you go to college, go to a trade school, or enlist in the military? None of those are good or bad in a Godâs eye view of things, but one might suit you more than another. If you like working with your hands, then going into plumbing or heating and cooling may be a perfectly good option for you. If you want to go into something more specialized, you might need more education. If you still arenât sure yet, then going into the military, where they train you in certain areas as part of your work and you still have money you can use for school later, may be a better option.
Marriage and kids all factor into that too. Few people are really equipped to live the single life all of their days, despite what the Catholic church might require for its priests. Getting married can be super easy, as long as you donât really care much about who you marry. If you actually want things to go well, you have to be a bit more discerning than that. Figuring out who to be yoked with can take a lot of work, not just figuring out what sort of person to be with, but then actually finding a person like that.
Each of us here has had to make those same kinds of decisions and choices. Each of us has fared for better or worse based on those choices. Sometimes we make choices that we know arenât going to be helpful. They arenât going to benefit us in the long term. Sometimes we make choices knowing they are purely for immediate gratification and we endure the consequences for those actions. For the most part, our decisions are geared toward making us better, in whatever definition we use for the term. We are always charting the course toward our ideal, our ideal situation, our ideal vision of who we should be.
St. Peterâs letter comes to us here in the Easter season. Letters like these were often circulated around to different churches. Even though they may be addressed to one church in particular and deal with their specific needs, the content of the letter was probably something that would benefit everyone. In this case, Peterâs letter is directed to people who live all over. They are scattered and separated. There is little to suggest they are in any way united. But there is one thing that brings them together, or at least one thing that should bring them together. There is one thing that will sustain them, even if they are separated. There is one thing that will enable them to live and grow. There is one thing that is always the right answer, no matter where, no matter what.
Is Peterâs answer your answer? If you knew there was one thing that would always benefit you, always make you a better person, always help you to handle whatever difficulties life threw your way, always help you to turn away from the bad and embrace the good, always be relied upon, always love you, no matter what, wouldnât that be the choice youâd always make, above all others?
St. Peter speaks to people in a somewhat unique situation. Though they are separated by many miles and most of them probably have no earthly connection to one another, Peter says they are still all one people. Each one of them may be just a single, solitary brick, but God has nevertheless joined them together as one unit.
Just saying they are one people doesnât make it so. There has to actually be something that unites them. Peter tells them that they one thing they all have in common is not just important, itâs actually the only one that matters. They are all built together in Christ Jesus. He is the firm foundation. He is the unmoveable cornerstone. He is the one thing that can be depended on in all circumstances. He is the only one with the power to do something for us that nothing else in the entire world can do. While there are earthly duties and responsibilities we have that need tending to, outside of those specific instances, there wonât be a time when spending less time with Jesus will ever be the right answer. Spending more time in prayer, spending more time in the study of his word, and especially spending more time here in his house, receiving his grace, hearing of his love, seeing what awaits you in the eternity he is creating for you. This is the spiritual milk that helps you grow. This is the cornerstone that will hold you up. This is what binds you together with all of Godâs people.
Even if your goal is life is to be a pro football player, a high powered executive, a Nobel prize winning scientist, a world traveller, or anything else you can imagine, nothing else you might doing throughout the week and certainly not on Sunday morning, will do more for you than what Jesus gives.
Even if all we were talking about was salvation, the forgiveness of sins, and eternal life, spending time with Jesus just talking about that would already be invaluable. Satan would like nothing more than to draw you away from all of that, so that when the end comes you are left out in the cold, empty darkness. Knowing that your sins are forgiven, knowing that, through Christ, you have eternal life is a gift beyond compare and nothing else is worth losing that.
But, we tend to boil church and Christian life to just that. âAs long as I know Iâm saved I donât need to worry about much else.â You are saved through Christ, that much is true. Peter addresses the scattered Christians, giving them the same message God gave the Israelites in ancient days. âYou are a holy people, a people for his own possession.â That much is already done. Like the Israelites, we have already been rescued. Our sins are already paid for. We have already been joined to Christ through his death and resurrection.
Still, God isnât done. Nothing we do can earn salvation. Aside from the fact that you never could earn salvation, that just isnât how it works. It is your connection to Christ, it is your salvation through him that enables you to be a good person and do good and God-pleasing things, not the other way around. It is your connection to Christ that makes you a better person. The more time you spend with him, the more like him you become. You will never be perfect in this world, but you can always be better. Sin affects everything you do in life and everything that happens to you. Making Christ come second in your life means something else has more sway, more influence than he does, is more important than he is. Whatever is most important to you, that is what your life will end up looking like. It happened to the Israelites in the past and it will be that way until God returns.
God wants more for you than to see you succumb to despair. He wants more for you than a life of chaos and instability. He wants more for you than a endless line of false gods, false ideals, false institutions that all fail you because they donât love you or care about you at all.
I talked before about martyrdom and what Christian martyrs said to the world around them as they died for their faith. You arenât necessarily called to die for your faith, but you are called to live by it. Few things stand out to those outside the church than someone who lives each day in the certainty of the resurrection, in the peace that comes from knowing their sins are truly forgiven, in the joy of living a life that holds Christ up as the savior and ruler of all things. That is who we are as holy people, as baptized people, made clean and worthy to enter into Godâs presence. We alone have that privilege and our lives are called to reflect that.
Proclaiming the excellencies of God isnât intended as some great burden. It isnât like a job or household chores. It isnât work you have to do to earn something. St. Peter speaks to people who have already been chosen, who are already holy, who are already a possession God treasures. Proclaiming his glory is a sign that all is well. Living our lives loving God and our neighbor, giving thanks for his gifts, sharing the message of his grace, these are all a sign of who we are. We are people who have been redeemed. We are fulfilling the purpose for which we were created and that means things are working as they should.
The Easter season is one that reflects on what Christâs resurrection means. Deathâs days are numbered. Christ stands above all things as the unconquered Lord of all. Death can never touch him again. Indeed it could only do anything at all because he allowed it. Little by little, Christ is restoring the world. While sin still fills the world, Godâs love and mercy move slowly. Here and there, people encounter God through his word and through the work of his people and they find forgiveness. They are restored. They receive eternal life.
Godâs people continue to look forward, and point everyone else forward. The God who promised a messiah sent him just as promised. Now death is conquered. Sins are forgiven. Life is assured. We still look forward. God is not yet done. This sinful world will pass away when Christ returns to finally vanquish all of his enemies forever. There are still things for people in this world to look forward to, and so we share the glory of God with them. God is still building his people into one, each of us joined into the greater work God is doing. Christ is unshaken and unshakeable, unconquered and unconquerable. Standing on this foundation, we too will never be shaken, never be conquered. We will live forever, just as Christ already does.