Be Kin And Be Humble — May 17, 2026

Be Kin And Be Humble

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1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that God may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on God, who cares for you. Discipline yourselves; keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls

around, looking for someone to devour. Resist the devil, steadfast in your faith, for you know that your kin in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to eternal glory in Christ, will restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. To God be the power forever and ever. Amen.

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Many of the letters of the Christian Scriptures wonder about suffering, not the kind of day-to-day suffering, but scandalous suffering. They wondered about the times when Christians, even Jesus, ran afoul of the authorities, be they government, religious, or culture. The early Christians wondered why Jesus suffered the humiliation and death of the cross. Some of the communities Paul worked with closely, like the community in Philippi, wondered about Paul’s suffering—his arrest—and what that meant for them. Should they continue to relate with an alleged criminal? In these letters from Peter, the question is here, too: how can we be sure that our suffering is faithful and righteous and not evident that we’ve, somehow, gotten it wrong—that we are wrong? How can we be certain that other people’s suffering is for righteousness and not for evil? 

While it seems possible that the communities who received this letter are more likely suffering by means of slander and “being maligned,” rather than violence, there are places where the letter alludes to something more sinister: today Peter talks about a fiery ordeal. The author suggests that some people might be enduring the same punishments as criminals, thieves, murderers, and mischief makers. And while a big part of Peter’s advice is, “It is better to suffer for doing good than for doing evil,” which seems a little obvious to me; Peter also says, if you want to understand suffering, to test its limits and know its realities, then be kin with those who suffer. 

This seems similar to questions in the church today about how we advocate for policy change and protest the maltreatment of others. Some of us in the church, writ large, want to compel others to do more, to show up more, and some even want to see how far we can push the proverbial envelope. I met up with a pastor-friend at a clergy protest at the Miami Valley Correctional Facility outside Kokomo last fall, where most of the prison has been converted to and ICE detention facility. My friend didn’t want to be content to remain in the free-speech zone provided in a corner far from the facility itself. He regularly wonders if a group might gather that would be willing to push the boundaries. Which would expose “the other hand” at play here: the scandal of being arrested, the media spectacle. How far is too far in protest? How can we be certain we’re acting for righteousness, and not for evil? And that’s where Peter’s words matters.

I quibble a bit with the translation of chapter five, verse nine, I think the it could also saying something like, “Resist the slanderer”—which is another way of translating the devil, and seems important because the people are being slandered—“Resister the slanderer; stand firm in your faith, for you know the ones experiencing suffering in the world are your kin.” My concern with the translation isn’t that we know the suffering of our kin, but that we know the ones who suffer as our kin. The suffering of others doesn’t separate us from them, on the contrary, our faith encourages us to move in, to be closer.

Be kin, and be humble. The point isn’t that we have to know it all, we don’t have to explain the origins of suffering, to know the history, the facts, the diagnosis, the treatment plan. We don’t have to know it all, understand it all, justify it all. We don’t even have to experience it all. A commentator I read this week wondered if this could be preached to church like ours, so different from churches throughout the world who gather in secrecy, who endure any number of hardships and calamities, but the thing is, this text doesn’t have to be about us to be for us to be instructive to us, to be the kind of good news that tells us that God sets the world free, that God sets the world to right. 

Kinship isn’t expertise, it’s practice. It isn’t perfection, it is humility, and the courage necessary to resist evil, the curiosity to keep awake to our neighbors’ needs—because they don’t come in 9 to 5, y’all. This is a practice that requires serenity, as in the Serenity Prayer known so well in recovery circles: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” Serenity to, instead, turn them over to God. Kinship is a practice that requires, at its heart, faith—faith that God is concerned for us: Peter says, “Cast your cares on God because God cares for you.” Or, “Cast your worries on God because God worries about you.” Bring your suffering to God, because God, in Christ, is kin to those who suffer.

The writer Brian Doyle once listed on a prose-poem all the things he was given after a reading in a library. He listed:“A stack of brownies as big as bricks for my children / A small paper bowl of red and orange salmonberries.”You can almost imagine him ticking the items off on his fingers like a grocery list: a baby’s sneeze, a cougar’s tooth, a man’s “remarkable impressive grip.” Toward the end of the poem, he thinks about how people give “without any things in their hands.” And, yet, as he reflects on the night, he writes:

People were hungry for something. I knew what it
Was and it wasn’t me; but I could tell stories that could
Point to what it is we are all starving for. We work and
Yearn and struggle and dream for it. Occasionally when
We gather together, if there is humility, if there is story,
If there is honesty, then there is just enough food for all.

It is the heart of solidarity there, that we’re all hungry, and, somehow there is enough. I think about the central story we tell week after week, about the night Jesus was betrayed, about this lifted bread that is body and a raised, festive drink that is, too, somehow, blood, and that in the body and the blood and the telling of the story, the remembering Jesus’s life and death and resurrection, in this gathering, in all this there is enough to make us one, to make us kin. Amen.