MMM...MMM...Good

Reflection: Do you remember the old Campbell Soup ads?  The boy or girl coming in from the cold to be greeted by mom and a steaming hot bowl of chicken noodle soup.  Remember the catch phrase: “Campbell’s Soup is MMM…MMM Good!” You could almost taste that soup yourself, right? And just the look on the kid’s face made you feel satisfied and all warm inside. 

The point of the ad was, of course, to get you to buy Campbell’s soup – to taste and see for yourself just how good it could be.  And it worked!  It’s still the most popular soup brand.  But how did it work? By making you think of your own younger days.  A sense of nostalgia, perhaps, helps us feel warm and accepted, safe and connected – even as we get older and perhaps life gets a little colder and less predictable.  The ad made us identify with an experience - one we longed for, hoped for and made us hungry for more.

In 1 Peter, the evangelist is promoting something that is, to be sure, much better, much more satisfying than chicken noodle soup! Peter is promoting our faith and encouraging the early Christians to latch onto their new identity in Christ.  He does so by weaving into his own writing Old Testament scriptures that would help the early Christians to remember and connect to the old in a way that made their new identity in Christ come alive and give them hope and courage to keep up the fight.

Their new identity was as “God’s own people” – a people who have received mercy and a calling to be “a royal priesthood” and “a holy nation.” This identity comes with a purpose: “in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” This was the purpose then and remains for us our purpose today as Christians. 
Questions for reflection: How do we proclaim God’s mighty acts?  Are they to be private reflections or public proclamations?  How and where and in whom have we tasted the Lord’s goodness (verse 3) in a way that makes us crave more and helps us “grow into salvation?”