1 Peter 2:18-25
April 26, 2026
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, Oakland, CA.
This passage is a tricky one. Even when the creators of the lectionary left out verse 18, it is still a difficult passage to preach. When I was in seminary and taking my homiletics class, my professor would often say to us students, “When you come to a passage that you are afraid to preach on, it’s precisely the passage God is calling you to preach on!” 1 Peter 2 that includes verse 18 is the passage we will explore today because we are afraid of it.
When we have the Scripture lesson listed in the bulletin and I invite you to turn to page 984 to read along with me and that particular verse, verse 18 is read aloud, we would cringe at what it says. So, it’s not in the official lectionary text today but if we avoid it, we would also deprive ourselves to a more complete biblical interpretation.
Verse 18 says, “Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh.” No wonder we don’t want to read these harsh words out loud! My dear mother always taught us little boys that once you say something out loud, particularly, harsh words, you can never take them back!
What should we do with texts that have been used to harm people? How will abused women hear words about enduring pain and beatings? How should we understand these words when African Americans and people of color are still subjected to racism, prejudice, and the denigration of their humanity?
Peter’s Community
To understand this passage, we first begin with—to whom Peter is writing his letter. Peter was speaking to new Christians who happened to be slaves in pagan households. They were being harassed for their beliefs. They were living in a world when responding to their master’s every whim was considered acceptable behavior. But these new Christians were now adding more chances of being insulted and abused because of their new found faith.
Peter was offering pastoral words to these folks. He made a distinction between suffering for a just cause and suffering for an unjust cause. Nowhere does it suggest that suffering is a legitimate condition for those who are abused, coerced, or oppressed. Nowhere does it suggest a stoic tolerance for violence against anyone. Nowhere does it suggest that God’s name be invoked as the hand strikes or the belt comes out or the clothes come off.
Peter, keenly aware of his audience was directing their focus on their obedience to God. When Christians are living in a pagan culture like this early church was, Peter is saying that there’s an alternative way. When we are in God and suffering comes, we are doing what’s right and therefore receives God’s approval.
Following the footsteps of Christ, even when he committed no sin and no deceit came from his mouth, we are called to be like Christ. The radical choice to hold fire when under attack is almost more than mere mortals like us can imagine, yet Christ modeled this. Abuse did not produce more abuse. Suffering did not produce more suffering. Hurt was not the knee-jerk response to being hurt. We are to trust God in the midst of suffering is a high calling to which these new believers should aspire, as should we.
More Than Two Choices
Today we live in a world measured in bytes and binary compounds. Choose 1 or 0. Choose 1 or 0 over and over again in countless combinations. This is the basic premise of the digital world. The one-zero choice rules our airwaves, computer screens, cell phones, almost every decision. This theory creeps into our thinking that limits our choices to one or the other. So, we tend to think of “right or wrong, either-or, yes-no, fight or flight actions.
We see this binary thinking in many aspects of our lives. On the streets, one street gang takes revenge on another. In the office, one disappointing report leads to layoffs. At school, one bad behavior labels that student to low teachers’ expectations of achievement. At home, one lapse of judgment leads to a divorce. At church, declining membership means that the church is dead.
Embedded in Peter’s letter is that there are always more than two choices. One can be abused and not become a serial abuser. One can suffer ridicule or physical harm and not fall into a cycle of never-ending violent behavior. When we can remember how vibrant Lakeshore was like some years ago doesn’t mean that we can’t ever return to such vibrant witness again.
Jesus’ experience on the cross teaches us that God always has options—life-giving options, options that expand possibilities and trigger in us instincts that only God can touch. This means that to suffer ridicule or abuse from their master does not ultimately determine their own self-worth. God will judge justly, both master and slave. This is what verse 23 says, “When Christ was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.”
It’s without saying that life whether during Peter’s times or ours today, life is frightening and dangerous. But God offers a way and it goes beyond any of our imaginations.
Identifying with these early sisters and brothers of the faith, we can understand what it may be liked to be boxed in or even enslaved. While we may not be in the situation of first-century slaves, we have plenty of reminders that makes us feel less than free. Our enslavement today may be to a mindset that is strangled by binary thinking—either or. We could be enslaved by fear and worry that limit our creativity. We can be enslaved by anxieties over our health, our jobs, our next paycheck that dim our vision of a hopeful future.
How can we learn from these early believers about trust in the midst of our own suffering? Sadly, we often find ourselves in a culture that could care less about an alternative ethic or about trusting in God. Our self-centeredness prevails over the care of others. Trusting in God is defined as the safest place to store our money. We may feel hemmed in on all four sides because we think that our resources are limited and our visions are vague.
But our Easter joy calls us to burst open the tombs that enslave us that hold us captives and liberate us for the expansiveness of God’s world. We walk out of this tomb for a life ofrighteousness and to be healed and freed.
Coolie for Christ
After I completed my seminary studies and before I accepted my first call to ministry, I was ordained at my home church, First Baptist of Boston. I invited my homiletics professor, Dr. Eddie O’Neal to preach, the same professor who told us that when you come upon a Scripture text that you are afraid of, that’s the passage that God is calling you to preach.
Joy and I were so busy at the time of my ordination. Joy was 4-month pregnant with our first-born. I was called to go to San Francisco. I just passed my ordination council. We were making plans to relocate from Boston all the way across the country to San Francisco that I didn’t have the chance to check in with Dr. O’Neal about what he was going to preach on. I think that even if I did have the time to speak with him, Dr. O’Neal probably wouldn’t have told me what he was going to say anyway.
His sermon title was “Coolie for Christ!” I was stunned and speechless. I was in my new pastor’s robe. My mother and family were all in the pews. My parents-in-law were there from New York. Everyone who shaped me into who I have become were there to gloriously send me off to San Francisco.
But when Dr. O’Neal called me a “coolie,” I was taken down from my high pedestal of being overly confident and overly important. I was humbled not only in the sight of my family and friends, but I was humbled that I was only a coolie, a slave for Christ.
I thought that I made it through school while others didn’t. I thought that I was a “reverend”when others were not. I thought I was more important while others were not as important as me. When Dr. O’Neal called me a coolie for Christ, he shocked me into knowing that God is never binary but that in God’s plan, it’s much, much more expansive to include everyone.
I was no longer just a coolie, a slave, a migrant, a foreigner but I was a servant for Christ. I was no longer an inflated ego but I was deflated to deflect the spotlight on Jesus.
From that date in January 1975, I pray that when I have suffered for Christ, God has approved. Peter said, “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. (v. 21)
I may have been one recipient of the 2026 National Treasure Award which I am surely honored and grateful. But I see myself more clearly as a common clay pot with no polish. The true treasure here, what is inside of me is Christ Jesus. Inside this clay jar is the treasure of Christ who has inspired me and is shining through me to suffer with him in Christ’s glory.
Howard Thurman
Today, we haven’t avoided verse 18. When Peter wrote this letter, slaves were part of this community of faith. Those who received this letter included people who were at the bottom of the heap in the larger culture. How could slaves live as followers of Jesus within the oppressive reality of slavery? Could they see their own lives reflected in Jesus, who also suffered, but ultimately triumphed?
Howard Thurman, the noted pastor and professor and chaplain at Boston University Chapelknew what it meant to redefine himself and his children in the face of racism, the residue of slavery in America. In his autobiography, he recalls the day he took his little daughters to Daytona Beach, Florida where he had grown up. He wrote…
We sauntered down the long street from the church to the riverfront. This had been the path of the procession to the baptismal ceremony in the Halifax River…At length we passed the playground of one of the white public schools. As soon as Olive and Anne saw the swings, they jumped for joy. “Look Daddy, let’s go over and swing!” This was the inescapable moment of truth that every black parent in America must face soon or late. What do you say to your child at the critical moment of primary encounter?
“You can’t swing in those swings.”
“Why, Daddy?”
“When we get home and have some cold lemonade, I will tell you.” When we had our lemonade, Anne pressed for the answer, “We’re home now, Daddy. Tell us.”
I said, “It is against the law for us to use those swings, even though it is a public school. Only white children can play there. But it takes the state legislature, the courts, the sheriffs and policemen, the white churches, the mayors, the banks and businesses, and the majority of white people in the state of Florida—it takes all these to keep two little black girls from swinging on those swings. That is how important you are! Never forget, the estimate of your own importance and self-worth can be judged by how much power people are willing to use to keep you in the place they have assigned to you. You are two very important girls.”1
Thurman refused to let the unjust laws of the state and nation define him or his daughters. For him this was not only a worldly issue, but the strong assurance that he was a child of God. No matter what the world said, Christ had been a ransomed for us and we are set free.
I will always be a “coolie for Christ.” And let us never be enslaved by any binary thinking, never be enslaved by others’ ungodly behavior, never be enslaved by any state and national unjust laws, for in Christ Jesus, who is risen that we are saved. We are no longer astray or lost, but we have returned to Christ, our shepherd to be with God.
Just as how important Howard Thurman’s two daughters were in his sight, “You are two very important little girls,” we too are very important in God’s sight because God’s expansive love led to God’s only son, Jesus Christ to die on the cross for our sins and in his resurrection, we have everlasting life.
Let us pray.
Lord God, any time we deny your children from their valuable worth, we also hurt you, forgive us. Any time, we create divisions, separations, and any forms of denigration of others, we disappoint you, forgive us. And if there is any time that we are called into bearing the cross that you first bore for us and we endure suffering, grant us the strength and fortitude to do what is right and may we receive your approval. Free us from whatever bondage that we have so that we may freely give you praise. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.
1. Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1979), 97.