Sojourners and Exiles

Sermon: Sojourners and Exiles, I Peter 2:11-12 Sunday, March 21, 2021 It has been so good to see the sun doesn't it. To see spring coming upon us. What a joy. We have been journeying in this Lenten season through the opening parts of I Peter. We have been looking for nuggets to help us in this time of preparation. This time of getting ready for Easter for the celebration of the risen Lord. And in this time of preparation we want to see areas in which we may grow as individuals and as a full body of Christ. So here we are in the 5th week of Lent and we are in the 2nd chapter of I Peter and we are going to read just 2 verses. Please read the verses 11 and 12. So in preparation today getting a new tool for how will work on our lives as Christians as followers of Jesus Christ. Peter decides to begin with identification. Identification. You need identification if you are going to go do anything with your license or the car. You need to go to the Secretary of State and you have to have identification. You need to have identification if you are going to get on a plane or write a check for a large amount, or as I found out recently, even if you are going to get the virus. You need identification. Those are the formal forms of identification and I'm sure you could add to that list. There's also informal identification. Informal identification looks something like who we are and what we do. So informal identification could include that you are a grandma or grandpa or a mother or father, an aunt or uncle, sister a brother. You are in some form of relationship with someone else and that is an identifying factor of who you are. Could also be what you do or what you have done? What was your profession or is your profession; doctor, nurse, healthcare worker, business owner, sales representative, teacher? Any number of labels we can come up with that identify what we do and how we interact. These are the informal ways of identification. Peter wants to address our identification. He wants us to remember who we are and what we are about. He wants us to carry that identification as we go into life such as if anybody wants to check our identification they can see who and what we are. How we behave. So he gives us two different descriptors. Two different ways to understand ourselves so that in all of this identification we can then be prepared for what we are being asked to do. For Peter the preparation for what we are about to do begins with who we are. If we skip over this identification, if we skip over this part and race through, it's like, well it's kind of like entering a sports game without ever doing practice. Or entering surgery without ever doing the review of tests. We need to know what we are about and what we are about to do. So Peter gives us two ways of looking at our identification. First he says, "Beloved." Beloved. I don't know about you but a title like that you hear it, you read it, you move on. But in that title is an acknowledgement of what happens with us. There's been a change. Maybe some of you can recall that moment when you moved from being a fiancé to a wife or husband. Maybe you can remember those early moments of introductions to someone else; this is my fiancé, I mean my wife. Sometimes there is a delay in the shift. Or maybe a promotion at work took place and your co-workers struggle to keep up with your new position and your new roles and responsibilities. There is a delay sometimes and Peter wants to acknowledge that we need to remember that something has happened that we are now beloved. Which means someone loves us. We are beloved by someone and obviously, as we are here, we are beloved by God. We are so loved by God, each and every one of us. Peter is harkening back to that reality that we are loved so deeply, deeply that God would send his Son to die on the cross for each of us. To take our place. To take our sinful place. To take the place of us who should be in every way separated from God have no right into the kingdom. And yet Jesus takes that path and dies on the cross for each of us. It is a love that is so sacrificial, so emptying and so deep that we truly will spend all of our lives trying to fully understand how much God truly loves us. So Peter reminds us, "Beloved" you are loved so much by God that at this place that I'm going to call you into this next action. That's the first identifier. The second form of our identification is what he calls us, "Sojourners and exiles." Sojourners and exiles. I don't know about you but I even struggle to get out of my lips that word "sojourners." I have that hesitancy that someone is going to come up to me later and correct me on how to pronounce that word. I just trip over "js" all the time. Sojourners and exiles. We could go into all sorts of effort trying to delineate what the difference sojourners and exiles and that might be a fund exercise but in this case Peter is simply having fun with alliteration. It would be as if he were saying, "Care you compassionate and caring." Did you notice what I did there? Care, compassionate, caring. That's what Peter is doing in the Greek. It's "para, para, para," which just plays with this fun word play. You can see that his heart is kind of lifted in playing with the fun of who we are while calling us sojourners and exiles. Which is his way of reminding us that our home has shifted. That our home has changed. You understand the word "exile" but the word "sojourn" will help us just the same. It's actually born out of the word for house, or home. And yet it means the opposite, it means without house or without home. As we study in Genesis with those who gather in the Genesis Bible Study, it's that idea of a wonderer. Someone who settles in a place but who is not permanently settled. Still moving, living in tents as it were. Peter calls us sojourners and exiles. He reminds us that our home is not in the reality in which we presently live. He reminds us that Jesus, through this gift that God has given us in Jesus, that our home is now changed. We are no longer bound and living in this space that we call reality. We have a new home that God who planted his son in our hearts and made his home in us has now given us a new home as well. Our identification is a reality that this is not my home. My home now belongs in the kingdom of God and that I live now in this place while being a resident of the Kingdom of God. I may wonder in this world. I may be present in this reality. But my kingdom is in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. That is my final and true reality. Your true and final destiny. It is in that reality of destiny that you are in the kingdom of God. That Peter calls you sojourners and exiles and you might think that suggests that I'm just wondering in this world just waiting, unable to find a place to settle. That's not at all his purpose. You see we are wondering in this world with purpose. We are here still with purpose. Otherwise God could just snap his fingers and take us all home. Make a new heaven and a new earth. Bring it here on earth and everything would be done. But that is not what God has chosen to do. God has chosen to have this interim period. This time of waiting for the return of Christ. He has chosen to take us and place us in this reality to share the kingdom of God that is to come. We are here with purpose. Our waiting is with purpose. So for Peter, again, it begins all with identification, beloved, you who are sojourners and exiles. He sets us up for what he is now calling us to prepare for what he is calling us to do. The challenge we have here on this 5th Sunday of Lent, what is it we are to be and do. And this is where we excel. We love tasks. As Christians we are often like, "I can't take in all of that, just tell me what to do." Just tell me what to do. So here it is. Peter says, conduct yourselves. Conduct yourselves honorable. Conduct yourselves with that day of visitation in mind. He's doing something fun here. He's playing with this day of visitation. This expectation of an event that is going to happen. This day of visitation. Talking about us conducting but he is putting before us an end marker, a goal. It's helpful to have a goal in life isn't it? It's helpful to know what we are working toward, the clock is ticking. It's helpful to know how much time we have in our preparation. Or what we are preparing for even if we don't know fully the time, we know what we are working toward. And he uses this reference to a day of visitation and it has a double meaning. Peter, I can imagine him even as he is dictation to Silvanus who writes this on behalf of Peter, I can imagine his dictation just kind of stopping and kind of riley giving a little smirk or smile as he says, "The day of visitation. Yah that will work." Because it has a double meaning. It conveys more than just one thought. It conveys 2. The first thought would have been very present for those who received this letter. Those who lived throughout what we think of as modern day Turkey. All those believers weren't exiled. They weren't all wondering in the physical sense. But they were all believers now living still in their homes and yet they have a new home. And because they have made a change in their lives they are no longer fitting in culture the way culture works. Things are becoming more difficult. We have heard about the persecutions. The formal persecution, the governmental formal persecution were really rare. But the ostracizing, the abuse was often ramped. You see because to follow Christ was to pull out some of the cultural activities. No longer were you worshiping all the other gods. No longer were you playing part in all the different ways that melted into society. And because of that your business might have been affected. Or you might have to think differently what you were going to buy and where and how. In every step of life suddenly life became more difficult and there was an added worry as well. Day of visitation has a meaning that says day of the official or the overseer. It would have meant that there is a chance that you will at some point be brought before the local government to give answer for some level of accusation about how you are disrupting society because of your new found beliefs. That you would in some way incur a difficulty in coming before what would not be a fair reality. You would live in dread of the day of visitation. Peter was calling them to prepare themselves for that reality and how they would conduct themselves. Furthermore that day of visitation, the second meaning I think you had the moment you heard it. That idea of the end times that God would be judge. The end times in which we would answer for how we behaved and what we have done with this faith that is now ours. And how much greater would it be that we would be there in a place and be able to say, "I lived in a manner that allowed others to see who you were, Christ. Who you were, Jesus." And they too came along. Peter says, "Conduct yourselves." Conduct. What a powerful word for our behavior. Our way of life. The manner in which we present ourselves and work with others. It's really born out of a basic word; to turn. In the very base of the word - so if you were to think of the word "review" for example, you know that word is to view and if you are going to re-view or look at again. You are going to look for another time. You are going to put more effort in and look it over. In the same way, this word is based off of a root or a foundational understanding to turn; to turn this way, to turn that way, to turn another way. To turn. How does conduct work with the idea of turning? The conduct is that they turned this way and then they turned that way. No. The idea is that in our conduct or in our behavior that people would know which way we will turn. You know what that is like. You can be with people and anticipate how they will act, how they will respond to different pieces of information or different activities. You can anticipate who will respond and in what way. That's conduct. That's conduct. Peter is saying let people know which way you will turn. And he is not so much concerned about how you have done, he wants you to build up a body of evidence that makes it clear that in the future should you be presented with whatever reality that those who even bring accusations against you can know which way you will turn. Peter is telling us to work on our conduct. That people can anticipate and know how we will respond. And in particular he wants our conduct to be honorable. He wants our way of life to show that we live for others. There are two different ways in which Peter is pushing on us in our manner of life. The first is to give up or to abstain from the passions of the flesh. Oh, boy! Passions of the flesh. Put aside what you think Peter is saying there because Peter is actually saying far more. Peter is talking about those desires of our material reality. Those desires we have in life. The many different pursuits we are after that are for ourselves. The many different ways in which we are looking out for number one. So much of our life is filled with building a nest around us in which others can't touch in which we are safe and secure in which we get angry if someone else threatens that reality. And Peter is telling us to put aside the passions of the flesh. Those things that we use to fill us and make us whole and feel good about ourselves. Timothy Keller, a minister for many years in New York City wrote a book called, "Counterfeit gods," in which he unravels that sense of idol where we know we are not supposed to worship idols and so we say, "Well, I'm not doing that. I don't have a golden figure tucked away in my closet. I'm not secretly worshiping idols." He dispels that idea and begins to show us the many ways in which we are filled with idols. Filled with other avenues of worship and dependence. Peter is calling us to let go of all that for which we are trying to benefit ourselves. To abstain from it to put it aside. That alone will mark us as different in a world that is obsessed with self. Obsessed with complaining about the other. Obsessed with oneself. Put away the passions of the flesh. As he says, it wars with your soul. It gets in the way of who God calls you to be. Gets in the way of who I am. He says, conduct yourselves. Live in a manner others will understand and can see who you will be and let that be honorable. Let that be for the other. Let others see your sacrifice and willingness to serve the other. To reflect who Jesus Christ is that he himself gave himself fully sacrificially so as Peter here says, even when others speak against you as evil doers they may see your good deeds. We can boil down this to simpler. When people say badly of you, they at the same time are presented with your good such that when you come before that overseer, that governmental official the two things simply don't match up. And in that way others will come to know the message of Jesus Christ. What is it that isn't a person makes a person suddenly humble and sacrificial and willing to empty oneself and let go of all my claims and all my rights. What is it that makes someone do that? That gives us pause even now in this culture and in this time when someone comes to us and is willing to be compassionate and caring even to their own expense. We Look at you them and say what is wrong with you, why do you do that? And that is precisely the entrance point that God uses through his Son Jesus Christ to help others know of his tremendous love. Because we have a God of the universe who emptied himself for us. Who gave himself fully for us. So we are sojourners and exiles. This place is not our home. This reality is not our home. Our home is in the Kingdom of God and it is for us to live as if we are in that home already in the midst of the people with whom we are among. We know their ways for they are our ways. They live the way we live. Peter is calling us to put it aside to abstain from it. To choose the path that God has given through Jesus Christ. To abstain and in that way we glorify God. Let us pray.