A Greater Inheritance

​A Reflection on the Second Reading  for Sunday, April 23rd, 2023:
The Third Sunday of Easter

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1 Peter
1:17-21

Beloved: If you invoke as Father the one who judges each person impartially according to each one’s deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile.

You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.

Christ was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.

“You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors.” 

Here in Nova Scotia, there are very few things we enjoy more than figuring out to whom you belong. We want to know which small community your people come from. We want to know your father’s name. It’s a funny brand of 20 questions to get a glimpse of who you are, where you’re from, and how we’re connected. Nine times out of ten, if your family has lived here for more than 50 years, your family tree is likely intertwined with branches of dozens of other family trees. We enjoy seeing those connections between your family and mine. And where there’s no blood relation, we still find other ways to make that connection through the web of our social connections. You work with so-and-so? Your second cousin works with someone my aunt used to babysit? We went to the two rival high schools downtown? Whatever that point of connection is, we use it to help get a head start on understanding you.

Maybe that’s why readings that speak negatively of our inheritance from our ancestors don’t necessarily resonate with me. While there are rotten fruits in our family trees, there are many wonderful people who have contributed to our story. While that’s true, Peter reminds us that we’re living in exile. The inheritance we have of our human connection with our family is like gold or silver – beautiful and precious. But gold isn’t worth much when you’re wandering in the desert. You can’t eat and be filled with silver.

The inheritance we have in this life, no matter how precious, is like straw when compared to the inheritance we have in Christ. He gives us life-saving nourishment in the desert. But that nourishment does more than connect us with other humans; it connects us with God Himself. Through partaking in our inheritance as the Church, we are all not so many degrees of connection on a family tree, but grafted right on to the root of Christ. That direct connection to Him lasts beyond the end of the ages. What we’re grasping at through our 20 questions with new friends? It’s totally available to us in Christ. Perfect connection. Belonging in a community.

The inheritance our ancestors give us belongs to us primarily because, as the saying goes, they couldn’t take it with them. It was the things they left behind because money, property, possessions, and worldly titles mean nothing in death. What we perceive as inheritance, the stuff of wills and bequests, is part of the baggage cast off in death and left behind for family to claim and use. 

But, as Peter reminds us, our true inheritance is what we have gained through accepting Christ. Through our faith in Christ, our hope for the future is set on God’s promise that we will be welcomed into the Kingdom as His children. As we celebrate this Easter season, we are again reminded to focus on the inheritance that lasts, not the one we’ll cast off when we go to join our Father in His Kingdom.




Stephanie Potter

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