I Peter 1:13-16, 18-19 (NRSV) 13 Therefore prepare
your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace
that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed. 14Like
obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in
ignorance. 15Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy
yourselves in all your conduct; 16for it is written, ‘You shall be
holy, for I am holy.’ 18You know that you were ransomed from the
futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like
silver or gold, 19but with the precious blood of Christ, like that
of a lamb without defect or blemish.
A holy life is one separated from the pressures of
life and responsive to God. It is life freed from the mold that the world
pushes us in. It is a life filled with a sense of call and direction from God. Our
church ancestors spoke of Otium Sanctum, what was known as Holy Life & Holy
Leisure, and which refers to a sense of balance in life; to work when it is
time to work and to play when it is time to play, both to sense God’s call and
presence. The Holy Life is the ability to pace ourselves. It is the gift of
being at peace within regardless of the chaos or pressures around us.
Holy Ones are people who truly live what they
profess and who gain guidance and strength from their personal convictions. The
Holy Ones, also now called saints, spend a significant amount of time helping
people with physical and emotional needs. They are generous in their giving and
forgiving in their relationships. The Holy Life is seen in those who turn a
deaf ear to the way of noise and chatter, conflict and gossip, to the
unexamined statements that someone believes are true simply because someone has
said it. The Holy Life is a chosen life, a focused life. The Holy Life has
chosen the way of listening and responding to God.
Are our hearts alive to the hope of a Holy Life, or
captured by the promise of the Happy Life? Don’t let the culture get a hold on
you with its contrived need and false expectations. To separate ourselves from
these pressures means we have to do something. The call is to go to a place
where we are free from the pressures; where we at least stand a better
opportunity of hearing and receiving God’s word that we were ransomed. Ransom
was the first century custom of paying money to buy a slave’s freedom. It is a
statement about God’s commitment to us and about our worth to him. It is about
our ransom worth, not our inherited worth. While we were sinners we were
ransomed, not because we were nice underneath it all, but because we are
important to God, faults and all.
And the question for us is” Does that commitment of
God bounce off our souls, or does that commitment make it to the heart? The
call to Holy Living says we must get away from the pressures of our culture.
Receive the reality of God’s commitment to you in Jesus Christ. Recognize,
realize, receive your ransomed worth.
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell (Broyles)
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