Preaching Hebrews and 1 Peter

James W. Thompson

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781666705317
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Because commentaries are increasingly complex, preachers face the challenge of mastering the results of critical scholarship and merging the horizons between exegesis and a living word for the congregation. In this volume, Thompson offers a guide for preachers, using the results of current scholarship on Hebrews and 1 Peter to enrich the preaching task. He demonstrates that these ancient letters, which speak to believers whose faith has made them aliens and exiles in their own land, offer insights that speak to believers who are aliens and exiles in a post-Christian culture. While the standard commentaries analyze the historical and grammatical issues in detail, this book demonstrates the focus and rhetorical effect of each section, making it accessible for preaching. He focuses on the argument of each letter and its pastoral dimension for the ancient and contemporary audience. Thompson also demonstrates the path from exegetical insight to the focus and function of each pericope for the sermon. Brief sermon sketches demonstrate the relationship between the focus of the text and the focus of the sermon.

1 Peter

A Brief Introduction to 1 Peter

As I indicated in my reflections on Hebrews, some books of the New Testament lie in obscurity until their message is rediscovered as a word spoken to our own circumstances. In the past generation, scholars have recognized that Hebrews is not merely a book containing esoteric arguments but a word spoken to “the wandering people of God”—those who are homeless in their own culture and looking for a homeland. Indeed, the great heroes of the faith were, according to the author, “strangers on the earth” (Heb 11:13) and models for readers whom the author urges to go “outside the camp” of their own culture. Similarly, 1 Peter has emerged from obscurity in the last generation because this word, addressed to “exiles of the dispersion” (1:1) in a pre-Christian world, also speaks to Christian exiles of a post-Christian culture. Thus 1 Peter and Hebrews are combined in this volume because they both speak to marginalized believers who have discovered the cost of their Christian commitment.

The letter is addressed to “the exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia”—a land mass that includes regions that comprise a major part of present-day Turkey. The date and the circumstances of the writing are matters of debate. The author, who identifies himself as Peter, writes from “Babylon” (5:12), which is probably a coded reference to Rome (cf. Rev 14:2; 17:5; 18:2). The consistent themes of exile (1:1, 17; 2:11; cf. 4:4) and suffering (2:19–20; 3:14, 17; 4:1, 15, 19; 5:10) throughout the letter are central issues for determining both the authorship and date of the book, indicating that the occasion of the letter is a time of persecution. However, scholars debate the nature of the persecution. If Peter is the author, the occasion of 1 Peter is the official persecution under Nero (ca. AD 64). However, since the persecution under Nero was largely limited to Rome, others have suggested that persecutions under either Domitian (AD 81–96) or Trajan (ca. 110) were the background of 1 Peter.10 Most of the references in 1 Peter, however, do not suggest that the suffering of believers was initiated by the authorities but consists of the continuing discrimination and slander (2:12, 16) against Christians because of their withdrawal from the civic and the cultural life in their respective cities (cf. 4:4) as well as the divisions they created within families (1 Pet 2:18–25; 3:1–7). This kind of harassment was common in the first century, as Paul’s epistles demonstrate (cf. Phil 1:28–29; 2 Cor 1:6–7). The worship of a Savior convicted of offenses against the state ensured the hostility of the populace in each region.

However, the advice to those who “suffer as Christians” may suggest a more official form of persecution. Indeed, to “suffer as a Christian” (4:16) apparently involves suffering simply because of the name Christian. This suffering fits well with the later persecution under Domitian, who was emperor from AD 81 to 96. Some have even associated the persecution with the period of Trajan (AD 98–117), whose correspondence with Pliny is a mirror into the conflict between the Roman government and the Christians in the early second century. Pliny, the governor of Bithynia, one of the regions addressed in 1 Peter, writes to Trajan, inquiring about the punishment given to those who bear the name “Christian.”

Pliny writes:

It is my custom to refer all my difficulties to you, Sir, for no one is better able to resolve my doubts and to inform my ignorance. I have never been present at an examination of Christians. Consequently, I do not know the nature or the extent of the punishments usually meted out to them, nor the grounds for starting an investigation and how far it should be pressed (Pliny, Ep. 10.96).

Pliny’s letter, indicating that believers were persecuted for no other charge than being Christians, corresponds to the reference to anyone who “suffers as a Christian” in 1 Peter.

Although both the date and the identity of the author are debatable, in this book I shall refer to the author as Peter, the implied author. Our interpretation does not depend on the actual authorship, but on the witness of 1 Peter to the struggles that believers have repeatedly faced throughout the history of Christianity. The letter consistently addresses the tenuous place of believers in their own society. Twice the author addresses them as aliens (parepidēmoi, 1:1; 2:11), using the term that commonly referred to resident aliens. He also addresses them as exiles (paroikoi), a term that literally means homeless (1:17; 2:11). These terms comprised the dominant metaphor to describe the Christian’s relation to society.11 This image resonates throughout the history of Christianity.12 Until the Constantinian era, which began in AD 313, the image characterized the place of Christians in the world. One needs only to recall the impact of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship and the accounts of life in a totalitarian society. Martin Niemöller was imprisoned in Berlin because he rejected the interference of the Nazis in the affairs of the Protestant Church. Under Nazi pressure, the German church had passed a resolution barring anyone with Jewish ancestry from being ordained to the ministry. Niemöller resisted the Nazi pressure and openly spoke out against the resolution. He wrote to his wife from prison, “We do not want to forget that even the German fatherland means a foreign exile to us, as for the man who had nothing as he lay in the manger because he laid down his head out of love for the people.”13

The metaphor of “aliens” has a powerful influence because it sums up central themes from the Old Testament and expresses fundamental realities about the life of faith. Abraham was called from his own country, his relatives, and his father’s house (Gen 12:1). His grandchildren and their grandchildren became “aliens in the land of Egypt” (Lev 19:34). Even when Israel was in its own land, they were instructed “not to do as they do in the land of Egypt,” and “not [to] do as they do in the land of Canaan” (Lev 18:3). The nation then lost its land and lived as aliens in captivity.14 The ultimate alien was Jesus, who “came into his own and his own received him not” (John 1:10).

Exiles were commonly identifiable by the language, customs, and skin color of their homeland. Because ...