Into a Spiritual House

Our home on Barrett Street.

My dad had a saying he would use a lot when the four of us boys were growing up. More of a declaration than a saying I suppose. It would go something like this. Someone would do or propose something that didn’t quite sit right with him. Suddenly he would retort, “Not in my house!” Or the derivative, “As long as I am paying the mortgage, then you will do it how I say we do…and do it!” The last little part always coming after some incoherent mumblings under the breath about how things were different in his day and kids these days, that kind of thing.

I think it is safe to say we had a different way of doing things.

Anytime a friend came over to spend the night on a Saturday, they had to go to church with us the next morning, which explains why I didn’t have any friends.

For our annual Thanksgiving Day football we used to shovel our front lawn, piling feet of snow on the sidewalks.

When we went on trips we never got a enough beds at the hotel for everyone to sleep on. “We’re not here to sleep,” my father would say. This practice lead to some pretty awkward moments looking back including one time I brought a girlfriend to my cousins wedding; she met my parents for the first time and ended up having to sleep with my mother in a double bed. It was either that or the floor next to the bathroom. We had about eight of us in the room for two nights.

To be honest I thought this was all perfectly normal, until I went to college and got to talk to people from the outside whose families believe it to be a basic human right for everyone to get to sleep on a mattress on vacation. I was shocked to find out we were the only family on the planet to do that. I felt a little like I had just escaped from the Dunham Family Compound or something.

But my dad, maybe my mom, but I know that my father did not really care what other people thought. He was doing things the way he saw best. I think it is one of his greatest strengths. He was building his house, his boys, according to a different set of values, a different way of looking at the world.

My parents shopped at garage sales because they wanted to be able to take their boys to see the world. We never had a new car or new furniture all the time I was growing up. I am not sure my mother ever bought a new item of clothing. She thought Goodwill was just fine for her. To be honest this irritated my dad who always tried to buy her fancy clothes. She would just respond, “Honestly, Paul!”

In spite of our eccentricities (and I think every family has them) our house was a great place to be. There was a lot of love there; I know this because I felt it, but I also saw how our friends wanted to be there. I don’t remember too many meals when we didn’t have an extra guest or two. I am proud of how my parents built our house.

I think it is interesting that Peter uses the metaphor of a house to describe what God is doing with his people. A house is where a family lives, where meals are shared, people laugh and cry together. A house is a roof under which values are learned and passed down, young lives are built into something, hopefully good, sometimes into something less than that.

Peter writes that God is building us into a spiritual house, a living house, put together in a different way, but one that is acceptable to Him. He continues that Jesus Christ is the foundation, the chief cornerstone for this house. LIke my father, in this house, we do it his way. And I think for Peter this means just one thing, we suffer, we serve, we lay down our lives for others. In this house, we are all about “offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

Peter mentions three distinctives that characterize this spiritual house of God:

Rejected and Chosen (2:4-8)
Jesus was rejected by most people, but chosen by God. I often wonder why the religious people in those days were so dense. Jesus was awesome: he was healing people, told great stories, could do all kinds of amazing miracles with fish and loaves and wind and waves. What’s not to like?

The thing is that Jesus kept talking about something that drove most people nuts. He kept talking about love and sacrifice and serving. The Jews lived under the thumb of the Roman empire. Everyone believed in an ethic of power and domination. That’s just how things were done. You dominate those against you. You certainly don’t love them and serve them, or die for them! They stumbled over that. And ultimately had to do what had always been God’s chosen plan. He let them kill him, because he loved them.

Not a People (2:9-10)
There are privileges to being part of a family, to belonging to a house, so to speak. You have a place to lay your head at night, a meal, clothing, you get to go on vacation sometimes. But it also means you have things you have to do. In our house it was to pull dandelions, pick up dog poop and shovel snow. I am sure there were others but those were the big three.

Peter reminds us that at one time, we did not have a house a family, but that God made us into his people, people that belong to him. And as such we have certain privileges and responsibilities. God has chosen us to be his people, a new priesthood, to live and declare out his values, his way of being in the world; out of darkness and into light. Priests are  a special link, mediators and representatives between God and humanity; that is part of what it means to be in the house of God.

Live Such Good Lives (2:11-12)
I know, like every kid, that my parents sometimes embarrassed me. Thats is kind of part of the gig. In the case of my mom and dad it was usually s for trivial things like wearing a teal green track suit that made him look like some kind of giant Easter egg or my mother ordering hamburgers at McDonald’s and asking for them to hold the bun. The BUN! Who does that?

Rarely have I stopped to consider if I have embarrassed them. I don’t know that my parents were all that concerned with our family reputation, but I know that I did some pretty stupid things growing up (and as an adult). I have probably also done some things that have reflected well on them. The point being, that whether I like it or not, what I do has an impact on the Dunham name, good, bad or indifferent.

The same is true of our spiritual family, our spiritual house and Peter’s encouragement to us is to remember that we should “abstain from sinful lusts” and live differently, “that they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (2:12)

[1 Peter 2:4-12]

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