Endurance

by Margaret Killingray (Word for the Week 16-06-2008)

Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh…  For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example… when he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten.
1 Peter 2:18,21,23

There are situations in life, for some of us anyway, that we cannot escape, however much we may long to.  This was certainly true for Christian slaves.  Peter told them to follow Jesus’ example of patient endurance, to submit not just to considerate masters, not just when they had done something wrong, but to harsh masters who beat them when they had not deserved it. 

Peter wrote with an intensity of feeling about the way Jesus had behaved as he went through 24 hours of betrayal, injustice, mockery, and torture.  He pointed to Jesus’ silence before his accusers and his non-retaliation.  Peter, by contrast, was the one who snatched up a sword and swiped off Malchus’ ear when Jesus was arrested, and then, when accused for the third time of being a follower, denied it vehemently.  No doubt, he was deeply affected by the difference between his own swashbuckling cowardice and Jesus’ courageous dignity.

Submit yourselves, said Peter, and so, by following the example of Jesus, make the unendurable situations you cannot avoid or change, endurable, as places of fellowship in his sufferings and of growth in Christlikeness.  There are plenty of testimonies today to such Christlike submission in the persecuted churches all round the world.

But how should we read these instructions for ourselves?  Through God’s grace many of us live in societies where brutal working conditions are against the law, where there is a way out of even minor forms of harassment.  And in a free society we should not simply accept an abusive boss or an exploitative employer but seek to address the situation, for the sake of fellow employees as well as ourselves.  Nor should we ever be party to the subjection, exploitation or abuse of others.  There are several areas, recently in the news, where the church needs to be proactive in protecting the vulnerable – abuse in homes for the elderly, exploitation of immigrant workers in agribusinesses, sex trade trafficking of women and children.  Endure we may have to, but we must have no part in our fellows being forced to endure.