I remember very clearly the first day of a sociology class I took in college.  I was seated near a couple of friends.  I noticed that the man sitting directly behind me did not look familiar and un-like the rest of the class he looked like he was in his mid 30s or early 40s.  I didn’t think much of it since Muskingum had a fare share of non-traditional students many of whom were commuters so you didn’t see them often.  Sorry after using the illustration last week about the pastor who had used the same sermon four weeks in a row I couldn’t help but begin this week’s sermon with the first four sentences of last week’s sermon just to see if anyone would notice. 

While channel surfing a show that will get my attention every time and cause me to at least give it a look is the Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe; which chronicles the extremely dirty, disgusting, and often dangerous work men and women do every day to make life a little more civilized for the rest of us.  Without fail there comes a point in every show where Mike the host is stunned by disbelief at what he has to do to complete the jobs ordinary men and women do every day.  Collecting alligator eggs from a swamp with a momma alligator very near by he asks “You want me to get out of the boat and collect eggs from that nest filled with fire ants with the momma alligator this close?”  “Yes”  “You have to be crazy.”  Or there frequently will be a shot of Mike in rubber boots and a rubber suite at the entrance to some cavern of filth and foulness and he asks “You want me to go where and do what?”  My personal favorite is the time Mike was standing at the south end of a cow with a plastic glove that went all the way up to his shoulder and a glum look of terror and disbelief as he asked “you want me to put my hand and arm where?” 

I apologize if these images are appalling to anyone here this morning.  They are after all real jobs that real people do daily.  I also think they are appropriate images for today’s text because if we are honest with ourselves we look at the passage of scripture we read today with the same stunned disbelief Mike often has before performing a dirty job.  We might even be appalled by what scripture challenges us to do today that is if we heard it right.  “If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong what credit is that?  But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval.”  I doubt very much that there is anyone here who wants to suffer for doing anything right or wrong.  What is worse is this is in the context of slavery and I know there isn’t anyone here who thinks slavery is acceptable and certainly none of us wants to be a slave.  Good to know then that the real issue at hand isn’t slavery but servant-hood.  The passage is about being a servant of Christ.  The bad news is to be a servant of Christ calls us to swallow our pride and at times endure hardship even when we are trying to do the right thing. 

To be honest I am not sure we understand this concept.  Jesus calls us to forgive the way he has forgiven our sins by his own blood and to forget the way he has forgotten our offenses by making us new which sounds really nice in the context of church but out in the world we are much more comfortable with an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  Perhaps the dirtiest of jobs we are called to do as followers of Christ is to love our enemies, to be kind to those who persecute us, instead of returning their punishment and abuse.  If forgiveness comes naturally to you then God bless you, but I think for most of us we are naturally more eager to get even than we are to forgive.  To prove my point I would submit to you the following gizmos and gadgets that are either currently on the market or soon to be. 

Have you ever been at a nice restaurant trying to have a peaceful meal enjoying the pleasant conversation of those you are with only to have the evening ruined by the man or woman seated at the table next to yours who is caring on an annoyingly loud conversation on a cell phone?  You would like to go up to this person and ask him or her to keep it down or perhaps step outside till they complete their conversation but intimidated by what their response may be you fuss and fume your way through dinner.  Wouldn’t you just love to have an electronic device that would scramble their cell phone signal ending their conversation without them knowing it was you doing it?  Well it is in the works and soon you will be able to buy just such a device.  Perhaps you are annoyed by the other drivers on the road who are not nearly as safety conscious in their driving as you are, to say nothing of their lack of driving skill compared to your own abilities behind the wheel.  Well there is already available a luminescent screen designed to fit securely in the back window of your car that upon your command will flash one of five messages along with corresponding emoticon faces.  “Back off” and “Idiot” are among the messages currently available but due to popular demand you may soon be able to get screens programmed with certain hand gestures also.  There is the jacket that when activated delivers and electric shock to anyone who touches the person wearing it designed for those women tired of being groped by others on the subway.  Also currently available and gaining popularity especially in the UK is the “Mosquito” a device that emits a high pitched frequency that is annoying to teens but inaudible to most adults who have in their advanced age lost the ability to detect pitches that high, causing the teens to move elsewhere making it safe for the adults to go about there business free of menacing groups of teens.  Sad to say but this is in no way an exhaustive list of the products available to us designed to get even with or stick it to another rather than be reconciled with or at the very least be able to tolerate others as they are. 

My guess is at least one of these devices sounded pretty appealing to you, I know a couple caught my attention that is why they made the cut and got put in the sermon.  If only they would develop some kind of shopping cart that zapped users for leaving it in an open parking space and forced them to return it to the store or the appointed choral life would be grand.  Only trouble is today’s passage especially, but actually the greater message of the gospel calls us to let go of these things and calls us to forgiveness rather than retaliation.  That is what makes being a Christian such a dirty job and why we are often shocked into dumbfounded disbelief asking “You want me to do what?”  We wouldn’t like it one bit if someone cut our cell phone conversation short with their little gizmo but we would at least figure we had it coming.  But no way should we have to endure the rudeness of others talking loud on the cell phone in public that just isn’t right.  “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’ When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.  He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”

So should we seek occasions to suffer unjustly?  Should we ask the host or hostess of the restaurant to seat us next to loud cell phone talkers?  If we possessed a device that could scramble their signal and end their conversation but chose not to use it and instead suffer in silence should we be blessed by God?  I don’t think so and the trouble is when we focus on a single incident like this of minor inconvenience we trivialize Peter’s message and the greater message of the gospel.  That message which is anything but trivial is that in all of life’s circumstances, in all of our dealings with others we are called to be Christ like.  We cannot divide life into compartments having different rules of conduct acting one way in church among our fellow Christians and acting entirely different out in the world among our business aquatints and the annoying people we encounter on cell phones, those who cut us off in traffic, those who leave shopping carts in perfectly good parking spaces!  The principles we uphold when relating to other Christians ought to be upheld by us when relating to annoying strangers also and both circumstances ought to be guided by and our actions modeled after the example of Jesus the Christ.

Like I said being a Christian can be a dirty job.  Truth be told we struggle to treat other Christians this way making it even tougher following the example of the savior out in the world.  But think about how much more civilized life would be if each of us did our part to follow Christ’s example and not repay evil for evil but extended to one another self sacrificing love and forgiveness.   The world would be a better place and this is what we are called to do.  Not just to make the world better but we are called each of us to this way of living because Jesus is our model for how we are to live.  May we become practitioners of this way of living and in so doing may we discover the words of Frederick Buechner to be true that “Forgiveness is when you set a prisoner free, and then realize the prisoner was you.” Amen.