So, do these codes of conduct serve a purpose? In the military, playing by the rules may seem essential to maintaining efficiency in the chain of command. But it may also lead to abuses either against fellow soldiers who disobey the code or toward the cruel treatment of our enemies under the guise of “following orders.” At an event like Bonnaroo, the effects are perhaps not so dramatic. However, on the positive side, concert –goers have banded together and committed to a “greening” of this event, but on the negative, any kind of uniform behavior can have the potential for inciting mob-like treatment toward any perceived outsider.

The arguments have been made that religion as a “code of conduct” can have the same sort of dual sided purposes. It can be a rigid structure to instill worshipful obedience of its leaders as in the concern about the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints compound in Texas, or religion can be the values that inspire a Mother Teresa to dedicate her life to caring for the poorest of the poor in India. How the impressions of these social structures play out in any one person’s life almost seems like a game of chance. How far do we take it? How much conformity do we expect, and which things are negotiable?

Is there a code of conduct for Christians, for Presbyterians, for this particular church on the corner of Oak Ridge Turnpike and Lafayette Drive? How do we articulate that code? Do you only recognize it when you bump up against it? Is it taught to our children? Do we build it through the “official” governing bodies of the church or through the “unofficial” relationships of the church? I can guarantee you that there are such rules of engagement present in this particular community – some of which may be similar to interactions at ORNL, some of which may be radically different from ORNL, some that will be like school, or soccer practice, or Rotary, and others that may set you apart from friends who go to a different church or to no church at all.

We rarely take the time to observe from an outside perspective those very things that seem as natural as breathing to us. After a while, we don’t have to think anymore about what to wear to work, or what kind of language to use in front of our co-workers, our subordinates, or our boss. We can navigate a grocery store, buy a movie ticket, and drive around town almost on auto-pilot. Go to a different country though, and these everyday things may seem like things you’ve never done before in your life.

Given these assumptions, someone who braves the doors of a church for the first time deserves a small round of applause. It takes courage to be a stranger in a new community. Sometimes it helps to be a Christian before, or even more so than that, to be a Presbyterian before – but there’s still a new way of life to learn in each and every church. It takes a lot to work at peace, and unity, and purity in a communal context, and that fragile balance of human interaction can be disrupted just by new faces appearing in the pews. That’s why religious communities may choose to articulate a strategy to welcome the entering stranger. Those who don’t may find that the visitors to their church are sometimes treated with welcome and other times excluded as “alien” to the community.

I tell you all this, not to be critical, but to raise awareness, both of our current context and of the context present in today’s scripture reading. It helps to be conscious of the social interplay that we share. Otherwise, we may find ourselves reacting from our gut rather than responding to the real person in front of us. It also helps in reading the text because 1st Peter is a whole letter about this new Christian “code.” This letter is set in a time when this newly exciting Christian community poses a threat to its big bully neighbor known as the Roman Empire. Rome was a military might, an economic giant, a force to be reckoned with – but its social constructs were a bit tenuous for holding a whole empire together. The Roman code depended on a hierarchy in which everyone knew their place, and their actions reinforced that code by treating people according to their level of importance. The Christian community threatened that structure. Jesus, the Christian model for living, valued people that Roman society found unimportant. This new religion hitched its beliefs to the already problematic Jewish sect that honored One God and would not appropriately bow down to Caeser. Peter wants to claim a radical set of Christian values without drawing too much attention from those who could have him shut up. He wants to try to say, “We are different, but not all that different.” Therefore, his “servant” language and talk about rightful authority in human relationships sounds an awful lot like what pagans might see in their own homes. He wanted them to come to Christ, so he nuanced the message to make it easier for Gentiles to see themselves as potentially part of the group.

Now, some of this is speculation on my part and on the part of biblical scholars with much more to base their assumptions on than what I know. But I see some parallels to contemporary life. Christianity is always in conversation with the culture around it. The Christian code gets mixed in with the code of being American, or the code of being a “professional,” or the code of Oak Ridge. It’s not always easy to separate out what I hold to be a Christian value and what I hold of value because of my “place” in the world. I do hope that later today, or later this week, you may take some time to pick up a pencil and a sheet of paper and really put into your conscious mind just what your values are and perhaps where you think they might come from. It’s a very interesting exercise – and one that may even begin a personal transformation.

Well, in 1st Peter, the part of the code we read today has to do with suffering and what we do with it. Leonard Sweet has said that in the Christian metanarrative – our story says a lot about suffering – and what we do with it – and how we approach it as believers. (11 Indispensable Relationships You Can't Be Without) Our interpretation of why people suffer gives some insight as to how we are to respond then to our own pain or the pain of others. The early readers of this letter would be in tune with suffering. It wasn’t quite the age of throwing Christians to lions yet, but it wasn’t far from it. These believers were ostracized at best for their beliefs. Sometimes they were shunned from family, ridiculed by friends, and thought of as strange or alien in their own culture. Peter reminds them that Jesus was not given great honors except through his suffering. These new converts were told that suffering for good reasons would be a blessing. They were counseled not to fear what the Romans feared – things like loss of status, or respect, or money. They were taught not to be intimidated by bullies who would try to put them down. They were taught to defend their understanding of the truth without being defensive. They were encouraged to live with integrity of purpose – keeping their conscious clear, so that when they are abused and maligned by others, it will be their good conduct that will put their enemies to shame.

This code of conduct that was so important for followers of Christ to preserve had to do with the values that I hope we still hold as a congregation today: To love one another as Jesus loved us, To treat every person as a child of God, To suffer for the good, and not for evil, To not be afraid to do the right thing. To do more than just love those who love us back, To give to those who have nothing, and To be merciful as God and heaven is merciful.

These are not Roman values. These are not successful business practices. This is not “look out for number one” stuff here. Yes, this Christian code is threatening to the ways in which human society normally organizes itself. We ought to be a little scared of what it means to follow Jesus down this path. When we try to mesh our “Jesus values” with the values of the world – it doesn’t all fit. It can’t. The world is full of sin, and full of sinful people like ourselves who can’t even sometimes see how we conform in the ways the government, or advertisers, or social commentators are expecting us to conform. In a rather sneaky way, the Bible is a manual for questioning authority – at least the authority that does not come from God.

Jesus didn’t give us an easy way of life that would fit in neatly to all the other communities in which we find ourselves. At times, those who are committed to the Christian life stand apart from the rest of the world. Now notice I’m not saying, “Let’s all go Amish here.” Peter didn’t reject the world. He loved the world, and more importantly, scripture affirms over and over again that God loves the world. God loves the world so much that Jesus was let loose in it to help us shape our lives in radically new and different ways. Loving the world means loving all parts of it, welcoming the stranger and alien, breaking down hierarchies, and listening carefully for which code it is we are truly trying to follow.

Will we suffer when we follow Christ? At times, yes, we will. Do we need to fear that suffering? No, we will not be afraid to lose those things that are only material. Will we be challenged and questioned for what we do? Yes, repeatedly, but we can make our defense without stooping to petty arguments. Christ suffered – real human suffering – the kind we all hate that denigrates our mind as well as our body. He suffered to show us that the human condition can be more than the sum of its pain. Like we learned at the Session retreat yesterday, creative art, Spirit filled ideas, come out of a place of pain to move us beyond our wounds to a real thirst for hope. The artist knows that human life is expressed in joy and suffering. God is the artist of all artists. What is God painting in your life? In our lives?

Amen.