God's People

Homily for Sunday, May 7, 2023
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
1 Peter 2:2–10

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

For the past several weeks our New Testament lesson has come from the First Letter of Peter.  Two weeks ago, Peter summed up the situation of the community to which he wrote when he enjoined them to “Live in reverent fear during the time of your exile” (I Peter 1:17).  Though for Peter’s community being in “exile” meant that they were being persecuted, there are any number of ways one could be in “exile”; and I have a hunch that all of us, at one time or another, have felt as though we were in “exile.”  At one time or another (perhaps even now), we have felt: away from home, different from, ostracized, not belonging, unfairly punished, held apart.  We have felt as though we were in “exile.”

In his letter—a portion of which scholars believe actually was a Baptismal homily—Peter offers an antidote to exile.  Peter writes in this morning’s lesson,

Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.

“Come to him,” Peter writes. For if before you were in exile, “conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance,” he says (1:14), now in Jesus you are brought together and have a foundation and will be “built into a spiritual house,” and you no longer will be in exile.  Jesus, claims Peter, is the antidote to exile.  “Once you were not a people,” Peter writes, “but now [with Jesus] you are God’s people.”

For the author of First Peter, being made “God’s people” and being built into a “spiritual house” comes with responsibility.  God has made us a “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,” writes Peter, “in order that [we] may proclaim the mighty acts of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

The images to which Peter’s words refer are the people of Israel and the Old Testament priesthood.  Just as Israel was to be “a light to the nations” (e.g., Is 42:6; 49:6), showing the world the “salvation of God” and how healing it is to live with God, so are we the baptized to be as a light to those around us, proclaiming God’s mighty acts, and showing the world how healing it can be to live life with God.  And just as in the Old Testament the priesthood was a sanctifying force at the heart of Israel, radiating holiness into Israel and through Israel into the world, so does Peter say that we who are now God’s people through Baptism are to be a sanctifying force in the heart of the world today.  Being God’s people involves responsibility.

There is an African priest with local Boston connections who exemplifies one who had been in exile, but who in Jesus discovered a foundation, and allowed himself to be built into a spiritual house, and who took upon himself the responsibility to “proclaim the mighty acts of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.”  Fr. Vincent Machozi was one of thirteen children born into a family of the Nande people in The Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Already from birth—Machozi’s name means “son of tears”—Machozi knew exile.  Several of his siblings died in childbirth.  His father died when he was fifteen.  And Machozi lived in a lawless area of the Congo ruled by warlords and militias that terrorized the population and enslaved them to mine the local mineral deposits.  At age 17 Machozi joined the Assumptionist Fathers, a Roman order, and was sent to France for his studies.  In 2006 he completed his master’s just down the road here at Boston College, and shortly thereafter he commenced his doctoral studies at Boston University.  While working on his dissertation, Fr. Machozi called out the powers that had brought darkness upon his people.  He started a Web site that published stories and photos of the violence in his country, and he brought to light the corrupt government officials and ultimately the military who were behind the killing of his people.  So important was this work to Machozi that, after a decade in the States, he suspended his studies and returned to the Congo to be with his people, so that he might “proclaim [to them] the mighty acts of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.”  Machozi’s return was not welcomed by those in power, and he lived with regular threats of death.  “Pray for me,” he once told his vicar general, “because I will be murdered.  I feel it… but like Christ, for the sake of our people, I will not be silent.”  At 11:00pm on Palm Sunday, 2016, soldiers arrived to the community center where Fr. Machozi was working.  Witnesses say that Machozi had just enough time to look up from his laptop to ask, “Why are you killing me?” before they opened fire.  Tens of thousands, moved by his life and witness—moved by the light he had brought to the darkness of the land—attended his funeral.

Taking responsibility for our baptism—that is, recognizing we are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” who are called “to proclaim the mighty acts of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light”—is not merely an “adult” thing to do, it is not merely a healing thing to do, both for ourselves and the world, but it is also a richly-rewarding and satisfying way to live.  Chances are, being this “chosen race, a royal priesthood… God’s own people” will not put our lives at risk in the same way as was Fr. Machozi’s.  But yet can our lives—baptized into Christ, living with Christ and following him as faithfully as we may—help (like Old Testament priests and the people of Israel radiating holiness) to spread light and healing into our world.  Thus living close to him, and allowing him to live in us, we are no longer in exile.  With him, baptized in him, we are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that [we] may proclaim [in our own circumstance] the mighty acts of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

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