Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. For,

“Whoever would love life and see good days
must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech.
They must turn from evil and do good;
they must seek peace and pursue it.
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous
and his ears are attentive to their prayer,
but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” (1 Peter 3:8-12)

In my last sermon before leaving for vacation, I said I’d be picking up a new, more intentional habit of personal devotions through the summer. So, I’ve begun praying again through the book, Seeking God’s Face—a book set with daily scripture readings, prayer prompts, and written prayers drawn from the Reformed Confessions compiled by a pastor just down the road from us at Clearview CRC in Oakville.

This passage from 1 Peter was part of yesterday’s scripture reading in that book, and I thought it worth bringing to us here. It echoed with what seems most important to me at this moment of church and Christian life, but also with a picture drawn for me at the wedding of Peter & Stacey Kranenburg this past Sunday.

At the wedding, our former pastor, Henry, spoke on Genesis 12 and the blessing given to Abraham. “What does blessing mean?” he asked. Then he told of us the word’s literal meaning in the Hebrew, which is “to bend the knee.” Illustrating what this means in practice, he invited one of his grandsons to the front to stand next to him and asked: “who of us is bigger?” The grandchild only stood about a meter high, so obviously, Pastor Henry was the bigger. And then Pastor Henry, in his full suit and tie, bent down to his knee before his grandson. “Now who’s bigger?” he asked. The answer had changed.

What it means for God to bless us is that he bends the knee to us—serves us—makes us bigger. So far does God go that he empties himself and makes himself nothing, takes on humanity and the very nature of a servant, submitting himself to death, even death on a cross. This is Jesus bending the knee to wash his disciple’s feet. He, the greater—their teacher—bends the knee to them. He blesses them.

But this is also Jesus on the cross. In the face of evil—our evil and that of the world—Jesus bends the knee. In the words of 1 Peter here, he does “not repay evil with evil or insult with insult,” but rather repays “evil with blessing.”

And this, Peter says, is the life of blessing to which we are called that we may inherit a blessing. The “Blessed-to-be-a-blessing” blessing of Abraham, but also the “now that you know these things you will be blessed if you do them” sort of blessing offered by Jesus to his freshly foot-washed disciples.

The cross the picture of the sort of blessing God means for us to offer the world: responding to sin and evil by bending our knee to serve, making ourselves less, and so lifting others up. So it is that peace is made and love is lived.

Let me close off with the closing prayer from Seeking God’s Face: “Prince of Peace, it is so tempting to repay evil for evil, to lash out instead of do good. I can only give that up to follow your way of love and blessing when I know that you will not allow evil to go unpunished. Thank you for freeing me to seek peace, leaving your justice to settle the score on all the evil ones who tyrannize, oppress, and torment in this world. Amen. [drawn from Belgic Confession, Article 37]”