We Need a Place to Belong

I Peter 1:1‑2

I learned in 1990 when I went to Europe after the fall of the Berlin wall that 1 Peter had been the favorite book for the Christians seeking to honor God under an atheistic, communistic regime. But, I’ve rarely heard Christians in the US say it’s their favorite book of the Bible. Christians who were in the minority in their countries – both in former East Germany and Czechoslovakia -- and constantly under duress found help for living. As I was told, “We would gather together and study this book. Again and again, we discovered not only encouragement but also specific instructions for living.”

I can see why Christians in an anti-Christian environment loved this book. I’m sure it seemed as if it was written specifically for them! The letter was written to churches in Asia undergoing tremendous adversity ‑‑ adversity that was escalating. Probably it's to be dated somewhere around A.D.64 when the hatred of the crazy emperor Nero for the Christians was beginning to make itself felt around the Roman Empire. Read the whole letter and you'll find it's full of references to a persecution that is to be expected. But in spite of this context for the letter, there is nothing depressive or somber about the epistle at all. On the contrary, it radiates an unexpected optimism.

Peter points us past the world's difficulties to the One who really is in control. See v.3. You see it, don't you? He wants all his readers to know that in spite of all the problems and adversity in this world, to be a Christian is to be the most fortunate person alive. The point of 1 Peter 1:1-2 is that although Christians are strangers and aliens in term of what this world values, we have a greater sense of belonging than anyone in the world. Why? -- because we belong to the eternal family of God. And, in tough times, we need a place to belong. The family of God, according to I Peter is a spiritual home for those who are beginning to experience a deep need of belonging. And I hope I can show you throughout the coming months that it is as relevant and helpful book for us as it has always been.

Who Needs a Place to Belong? …to chosen refugees of the dispersion…

1:1‑2. One of the greatest needs expressed by people in our day is the lack of identity. People say that they feel isolated, rootless, that they don't really fit in or belong anywhere. That theme, called alienation, has been explored again and again in our movies and TV programming and novels.

Well, in the first century, if anybody should have felt desolate and forlorn, it was these Christians to whom Peter is writing. Did you see what he calls them? "Strangers in the world." Literally, the phrase he uses is "chosen refugees of the dispersion." This is a rather technical Hebrew expression associated with the Jewish people who long before had been scattered during the Babylonian conquest of Israel and the subsequent exile of the people. Indeed, many commentators have assumed that simply because Peter used this phrase, he was therefore writing only to Jews living in these Roman provinces that he lists here: Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. Show map.

But, I think that a careful study of the whole of the letter makes it almost certain that such a conclusion is false. I believe there is good evidence that Peter is speaking both to Jewish and Gentile believers in this letter. Their lives had been forged together by their shared faith in Christ and by the shared ostracism they were facing because of their faith. In fact, I believe it is the same audience Paul was writing in his Ephesians’ letter, i.e., Jews and Gentiles found themselves in one unlikely family with God as father.

Why does he call them "refugees of the dispersion." There are several reasons for that but the main one is this: These Christians were at the time experiencing the same kind of social ostracism as the Jews had endured when they were taken into exile.

They felt like strangers in the world as a result of the persecutions they were suffering. They were being ill‑treated, abused, mocked… Read the letter and many of them had seemed to have become insecure, distrusted by those formerly close to them. And historical records let us know that Christians increasingly became the scapegoats of a more and more corrupt and decadent empire.

You can imagine it easily: Once, these people had been a central part of the community: community and civic leaders, successful merchants, good family men. But, this faith in Jesus had seemed to place a wall between themselves and those around them. I’m sure their families thought they had gotten into some sort of cult. Their friends probably thought they had gone weird.

This is where I began to see the relevance of this letter for us in the American Church. Over the past four weeks, I have received four letters from students in US universities. All of them expressed the same thing.

“Pastor Greg, this is not easy. I’m not being imprisoned or killed for my faith, but I still feel rejected… Mostly I feel out of sync with everything around me. My friends think I’ve lost my mind. My faith convictions seem to clash with everything being taught in my classes. I don’t get invited to the things everyone else is doing… My campus is a warm, friendly place and I love my friends but my beliefs are creating distance between me and everyone around me. Do you have any advice?Will you pray for me?”

This sounds so much like the people Peter is writing. Here in the US, we may not yet be put to death for our faith – but many of us have we begin to see that living God’s way clashes with the values and ways of our society. The irony is that the places the world offers for a sense of belonging do not last. We may think we find it in a bar or somewhere else – but the people move away -- or don’t remember us the next day – or betray us – or move on to someone else younger and smarter or… It’s like the old song from Cheers song said, “We all want a place where everybody knows our name.” But, the sense of belonging doesn’t last.

All this takes us again to Genesis 1-2: Human beings were made to live community with God at the center. We live well when we know and honor God and live as he made us to live. But, as Isaiah the prophet wrote, “We all like sheep (and like Adam and Eve) have gone astray…” So, we are made to have a place to belong with God at the center but we’ve walked away from the God who must be at the center of our relationships. We are left to search in all sorts of places for a place of belonging.

I saw this in a different way last week as Chris, Brandon and I spent the week moving my parents to an assisted living center. After 47 years in the same town and same home, one might think that they had found a place there – a place of belonging. But the family home, where my Mom with Alzheimer’s disease seemed to feel safe – had become treacherous. The stairs could not be navigated. The neighbors no longer knew them as the neighborhood changed. My Dad felt the upkeep had become an unsustainable burden. And, their friends had died or moved. Increasingly, this world’s place of belonging felt like a foreign land. But, for both of them, the place where they feel at home is with people who love Jesus.

It’s an irony really. We were made to live well when we know God but we have walked away from God. The world’s systems try to create counterfeit places of belonging – substituting all sorts of things for our longing for God-centered community. But, they all fall short if they are put in god’s place. When we come to God through faith in Christ, we begin to really live – eternal life, life as God meant it to be. But, when we do, this puts us at odds with the world’s systems. Faith in Christ declares to people, “All you are living for won’t work! Your business won’t last. Your fame will be fleeting. Your pleasure won’t satisfy. Your home won’t last. Your bank account will erode.” And all this leads to a clash of values. This is why Christians who are fully committed to God’s ways, always will feel a bit like strangers and refugees in this world.

And that’s why, said Peter, that of all people followers of Jesus are the very ones who have the most to be envied. "How can that possibly be?", they might have asked. The answer: Just like the exiled people of God in the OT, though scattered and persecuted, your true identity is the very thing all people have been made for.

We are “chosen refugees.” We feel out of place here at times – but we have a home that can never be taken away. Your way of life is the one you were made for. You are just on a journey away from home for a while. Rulers like Nero may despise us, but we are God's elect. We may often feel out of place because we live for God in this world but we are confident of one thing, i.e., God is our Father. We know we belong to his family. And that can never be taken away.

Peter says that we should take time to look at the threefold reason that we can be so sure that we belong to this family. Just like Genesis begins by turning our attention to God – and Ephesians opens with an overture about God, so too 1 Peter. The entirety of the Godhead is involved in our remaking:

Who Fills the Longing to Belong? To God’s elect, chosen refugees of the dispersion…
1. God the Father’s eternal plan was to have us in His family. We have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God.

This phrase cannot mean that we are just the objects of God's passive ability to read the future. It’s not, “God knew what you would do so he said that it’s OK.” No, this word that Peter uses means that Christians should know that all the difficulties we may go thought are not outside God’s control. God knew where the people lived. He knew their failures, their trials, their location and he is in control. Like Jesus words to the persecuted church in Pergamum in Revelation 2, “I know where you live.”

It means more than "to know ahead of time." The word is always used to demonstrate the desires and character of the one choosing. He wants you in his family. The phrase means that the person will do all he can, if he has any power and authority at all, to make sure that what he has chosen to do will indeed transpire. And if God has done the choosing, how confident should we be that he can carry out His plan? The Bible is declaring that, although he knows our failures and weaknesses, God chooses to have us in his family. The affection that we should sense from God the Father is not just some passing whim of His fancy. Christians have been in God's mind and heart since the world was made.

The image that so many have of God, as a cold objective judge always ready to denounce us and punish us when we fail, is so off‑kilter. God is a Father who wants His children home. He sent His only begotten Son to bring us home. Robert Frost once wrote, "Home is the place that, when you return there, they have to take you in." Well, our heavenly home is more than that. Our Father longs to take us in. He has chosen you and me to be in that family. Our being Christians, our being in the family of God, is no haphazard quirk of fate. It's not some unexpected mistake. God has put you into his family. He loves you. In that there is great security and a marvelous sense of belonging.

2. God the Holy Spirit sets us apart and establishes us in God's family. …through the sanctifying work of the Spirit…

This word “sanctifying" means to set apart. It clarifies what we have been talking about. The whole world has been seeking to find a way of living – of belonging – without surrendering to God. But, followers of Jesus have been set apart from that whole way of living because it doesn’t work anyway. And we are set apart to know God, to live for God even though we still are physically alive in this world.

So, the Bible is addressing the question, “Where will we who now belong to Jesus ever find a place of belonging in this world? And the answer is, “God’s Spirit sets us into God’s family.” There is no place in this world where God is not – “no God-forsaken place in this world.” No, God sent the Spirit into our hearts to make sure we are sealed, set apart, as those in the family of God. What is the Spirit doing? In the rest of the letter we will see that he is setting us apart from the world and conforming us to the image of Christ. He's making us look like family members ‑‑ bearing more and more the characteristics of our Lord. What should happen is what I see happening in my parents’ lives, i.e., that we feel more and more at home with those who love the Lord – even though they may come from very different backgrounds. And the promise is that someday, we will truly be at home when we see our Father face to face.

All this is captured in that marvelous little phrase in v.2: Our belonging to God's family is made secure by the work of the Spirit who is given to each one of us who trusts Christ. He won't leave us.

3. God the Son’s perfect life and sacrificial death is the means by which we come into the family. …because of the obedience of Jesus Christ and sprinkling by His blood.

This linking of obedience and sprinkled blood is interesting. Our translation makes it sound like God’s goal is our obedience and it comes about through Christ’s sprinkled blood. That is a truth gained from other parts of the Bible. But, I’m quite sure that the entire focus is on the work of Christ here. This is all about what God does. I’m quite sure what Peter is saying is that we can come into the family of God only because of the obedience of Christ and the sprinkling of his blood.”

The whole thing is a clear allusion to the Old Testament, to Leviticus 14.

When a person would have a skin disease like leprosy that was serious enough to exclude that person from the community, there was a ceremony established to erase any barrier to belonging to God and to His people once that person had been declared clean. So too, Christians, we are here reminded that our sin should exclude us from membership in this wonderful family. But the good news is that one who lived a perfect life and died in our place has dealt with the moral failures that had separated us from God. He allowed his blood to be sprinkled in our place.

This time, of course, the forgiveness is not based on the sacrifice of an animal on an altar. No, it comes about as the result of the sacrifice of the Son of God on the cross.

Look at the last words of 1:2: Grace and peace be yours in abundance. Even these opening words, often passed over in our reading, are not just a trite greeting for Christians. These words grace and peace, are full of the greatest significance. Grace ‑‑ God's favor is available to us not because we've earned it but simply on the basis of His loving choice of us. And peace, God's lasting shalom, is available to us even while we are strangers feeling at times that we really don't belong here.

We now will remember the “sprinkling of Jesus’ blood” as we go to communion. It is because of Jesus’ obedience “even to death” (Philippians 2), that we can belong to the family of God. It was a costly obedience. Christians who have followed this Jesus have learned how to live as “chosen refugees” in this world. As we prepare for communion, examine your own life in the light of a letter written by a Christian leader to a man named Diognetus about 1950 years ago. May the same be said of us:

Christians are no different from other people in terms of their country, language, or customs. Nowhere do they inhabit cities of their own, use their own dialects or live in isolation… They live in their own respected countries, but only as resident aliens. They participate in all things as citizens, but endure all things as foreigners. Every territory is a homeland for them, every homeland foreign territory… They share their meals but not their sexual partners. They are found in the flesh but do not live according to the flesh. They live on earth but participate in the ways of heaven. They obey the laws and even supersede them. They love everyone but are persecuted by all. They are not understood and are sometimes condemned. They are put to death but know they are made alive. They are impoverished and make those around them rich. They lack in all things and abound in everything…

Epistle to Diognetus, Second Century