Sixth Sunday of Easter 2026: Year A – For the Good of the Neighborhood: When Doing Good Costs You – I Peter 3:13–22

(The following was first preached at the 8th Street Church in Oklahoma City, OK, USA)

1 Peter 3:13–22

There is a line in this passage that does not fit easily in our mouths.

Peter writes, almost casually:

“If you suffer for doing good, you are blessed.”

It sounds like something from another world. It runs against the grain of how we understand life.

We assume, almost without thinking, that goodness should lead somewhere good. That if we live faithfully, things should open up. That if we give ourselves to others—if we care, serve, and love well—then the world should respond in kind.

That lives should improve.

That our lives should improve.

But Peter says otherwise.

Not always.

Not necessarily.

Sometimes doing good does not make your life easier. Sometimes it places you directly in the way of resistance. Sometimes it exposes something in the world that would rather remain hidden.

And when that happens, the world pushes back.

So the question begins to take shape:

What kind of world are we actually living in? And what kind of people are we being formed to become within it?

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Peter is not writing abstract theology.

He is not offering detached spiritual reflection.

He is writing to people whose lives have been disrupted precisely because they have chosen to live differently.

They have aligned themselves with Christ, and in doing so, they have begun to live lives marked by ordinary, persistent goodness.

They care for the vulnerable.

They refuse to participate in systems that dehumanize or degrade.

They live in such a way that their lives become a quiet contradiction to the world as it is.

And because of that, they suffer.

That is just the truth of the matter.

Not because they are loud.

Not because they are trying to draw attention to themselves.

But because of what they are doing.

Their lives begin to reveal something—and not everyone wants that kind of revelation.

Which is why Peter says:

Do not be afraid.

Do not be afraid of what others might do to you.

Do not be afraid of their threats.

Instead, set Christ apart as Lord.

Speak with gentleness.

Hold steady.

Keep telling the truth with your life.

And then he says the thing that unsettles us:

If you suffer for doing good, you are blessed.

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That line has been misunderstood in more ways than one.

Some have ignored it altogether, preferring a gospel that promises reward—as if faithfulness were a transaction. That is the prosperity gospel.

Others have assumed suffering itself must be pursued, as though pain were the point. That is a masochistic gospel.

Still others have used words like these to justify the suffering of others, to keep people in their place, to bless what should never have been blessed. That is the “gospel” of bigotry and racism.

None of that is what Peter is doing.

God does not delight in suffering.

The story of Scripture is not a story of divine cruelty. It is the story of liberation for all, made possible by the suffering of the Son of God and those who follow in his way.

Again and again, God moves toward the vulnerable, the broken, the overlooked—the ones pressed down by forces larger than themselves.

The arc of the biblical story bends in that direction.

Toward liberation.

Toward healing.

Toward restoration.

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Peter is writing to people who know what it is to live underneath the weight of power.

People who do not control the systems around them.

People who are, in a very real sense, exiles.

And yet they are told:

You are a chosen people.

A royal priesthood.

A holy nation.

A people who belong to God.

Remember that.

And have the courage to live like it’s true.

Live in such a way that your life is marked by goodness—so unmistakably marked that even those who oppose you have to reckon with what they see.

Justice.

Mercy.

Humility.

Love.

A different way of being human.

And even still, Peter warns, there will be resistance.

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Peter names this with language we often avoid.

He speaks of principalities and powers—forces that oppose the good.

Not always visible.

Not always easy to name.

But real nonetheless.

These forces take shape in systems, institutions, and patterns of life that become so normalized we no longer question them.

You see it when efforts to care for the vulnerable are met with suspicion.

When systems designed to help are quietly dismantled.

When the work of healing is treated as a threat.

When truth becomes inconvenient.

You begin to realize that goodness is not always welcomed.

And if that is true, then Peter’s words begin to make more sense.

If you suffer for doing good, you are blessed—not because suffering is good, but because it reveals something good.

It reveals that you are participating in a reality deeper than the one we see on the surface.

It reveals that your life is aligned with a different kingdom.

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Still, this is hard for us to hear.

Because many of us have found ways to live comfortably within the systems as they are.

Which makes it possible to read a text like this from a distance.

But there are others for whom this text is not theoretical.

Neighbors, in fact.

There are people who live beneath the belly of power. Those who are passed over, overlooked, misjudged. Those whose lives are shaped by systems that were never designed with them in mind.

For them, Peter’s words are not abstract.

They are a way of making sense of a life in which doing good does not guarantee safety, and faithfulness does not lead to ease.

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And then Peter turns to Christ.

“Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.”

He reminds them—and us—that this pattern is not new.

The life of Jesus itself is marked by this same tension:

Faithfulness leading to suffering.

Goodness met with resistance.

And yet, that is not the end.

Because Peter says something strange.

Christ, having been put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit, went and “preached to the spirits in prison.”

It is a difficult image, but perhaps it is meant to stretch us.

To suggest there is no place beyond the reach of Christ.

No depth he is unwilling to enter.

No darkness outside his authority.

The church has called this the Harrowing of Hell: the claim that even in the deepest, darkest, most isolated places, Christ is active—confronting, redeeming, declaring that the powers do not have the final word.

And if that is true, then there is no place—no system, no neighborhood, no human story—where Christ has not already gone.

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Which brings us to us.

Because the intent of this church has always been clear.

From the beginning, 8th Street has been about the good of the neighborhood.

Not just building something here, but being something here.

A people who make space.

A people who love well.

A people who take seriously what it means to be good neighbors.

But there is a kind of gravity that sets in as a church grows.

And frankly, I am concerned.

It does not announce itself, but it is there—a steady pull toward self-interest for the sake of preservation.

Toward learning how to manage what has been built.

We begin to think about space, systems, budgets, sustainability.

None of that is wrong.

But it has a way of becoming central.

And when it does, something shifts.

The focus moves, almost without our noticing, from joining God in the life of the neighborhood to maintaining the life of the institution.

From neighborliness to infrastructure.

From risk to control.

And slowly, quietly, we begin to turn in on ourselves.

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I have seen where that road leads.

There was a church here in the city that held its final worship service when it was about seventy years old.

The congregation had built a beautiful building in the middle of a living neighborhood. Children just down the street. Families all around. A school nearby.

And yet—empty.

Not all at once, but over time.

Until what remained were a couple of people sweeping up what was left, like they were cleaning after a funeral dinner.

It was not just that a church had closed.

Something had been lost long before the doors were locked.

The capacity to see the neighborhood.

To listen.

To discern where God was at work and join in.

The willingness to suffer with that place rather than withdraw from it.

That had faded.

And you cannot help but wonder when it happened.

The harder question is whether that same pull is at work in us.

Whether we are learning how to make space for others while quietly learning how to protect what we have built.

Because those are not the same thing.

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One is love that will cost us.

And it is not easy to do it that way. The pathway is difficult. Painful, even.

But some of our earliest virtues were commitments to do the hard things first, to make space and not just take up space, and to make decisions not based on what the majority wants, but on what the most vulnerable need.

Because we have faith—deep faith—that in Christ, this kind of work remakes us and our neighbors, and unmakes the brokenness in our world.

The other option is preservation that will slowly hollow us out.

Peter’s words land here with weight:

If you suffer for doing good, you are blessed.

Which means that if our life together never stretches us, never disrupts our comfort, never brings us to the edge, then we have to ask what kind of good we are actually doing.

It may be that we have learned how to be good in a way that costs us very little.

And if that is true, then we may also be avoiding the very places where Christ already is.

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Because Christ is present where suffering exists.

Which means the call of the church is not to insulate ourselves from those places, but to move toward them.

Not dramatically.

Faithfully.

Because that is where Christ has already gone.

And when we move toward those places, we are not bringing Christ with us.

We are discovering that he is already there.

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So we are left with questions that do not resolve quickly, but Peter forces us to ask:

Where might we be resisting the very places Christ is inviting us to go?

In what ways have we begun to turn inward rather than outward?

Who in our neighborhood remains unseen—not because they are invisible, but because we have not yet learned how to see them?

What would it look like not just for this church to grow, but for this neighborhood to flourish because we are here?

And are we willing to become the kind of people who would choose that, even if it costs us something?

These are not easy questions.

But they are the ones that prepare us to come honestly.

Because what we receive is not a symbol of safety or success, but a sign of a life given for the sake of the world.

And we are invited, again, to follow.