Into the Marvelous Light

Into the Marvelous Light--January 24, 2018

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.  Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul." [1 Peter 2:9-11]

"Every heart," says Leonard Cohen, "every heart to love will come... but like a refugee."

That lyric from the haunting Cohen classic, "Anthem," gets it right.  And, even more to the point for the followers of Jesus, that means acknowledging that we are the refugees.

The whole of the Christian story, according to the New Testament letter/sermon/treatise/mission-statement that we call 1 Peter, is the story of God in Christ calling and claiming a band of refugees and welcoming them into this Christ's country, making them his own people.  To be a Christian, 1 Peter would tell us, is to be a refugee and to be honest enough to say it out loud.  We are refugees, aliens, and exiles, people without a home in the world around us, who have been given a new identity and belonging in Christ.  Almost like a whole new creation story, 1 Peter says we had been called "out of darkness" and into God's "marvelous light." 

We were "not a people," he says.  That doesn't just mean individually we were regarded as "nobodies," (although that may be true, and it certainly does seem that the God of the Scriptures has a particular concern and love for the people treated as "nobodies" by the world), but it means also that we weren't a people--we had nothing on our own to bind us together to give us identity, belonging, or a place of home.  I remember two years ago, during the last summer Olympics, when there were athletes who competed but who were forced to flee from their home countries as refugees and who competed together as a team representing a "refugee nation." They had a flag--designed in orange and black as a symbolic callback to the life-jackets many had to wear in escaping war zones or disaster areas in boats, and even a "Refugee National Anthem" that a composer had written.  It was this real-life picture of the longing we all feel to be "a people," to belong somewhere, and to know that we are not alone.  Well, 1 Peter says that is our story--all of us.  Aliens in the world, exiles, strangers--trusting the promise that we will be brought to Love, but knowing that it will, as Cohen sings it, "like refugees."

"But now," says the old apostle... but now we are no less and none other than God's people.  We have been made citizens, granted a welcome, graced with permanent belonging, within the Kingdom, the Reign, of the living God.  That is not something you achieve--it is something you are given.  It is a matter of what the Ruling Authority of the Realm in question says about you.  And of course, that's just it--the Ruler of the Realm has the authority simply to declare that you belong, by calling you a citizen, a member, a part of the realm.  That is easy to do--it is simply a question of whether a Ruler does, or does not, have the will to do so.

But so that we are perfectly on this, 1 Peter says that every Christian--every last sister and brother who name the name of Jesus--is in fact simply a refugee, an alien, whom Christ has claimed and called to belong to his realm, his kingdom.  Jesus' word is enough to make us belong.  That is because Christ is a good and decent Ruler--his is the kind of Reign that not only makes room for strangers and aliens like us, but actively seeks us and calls us his own, even though we all come from varied places, languages, backgrounds, nations, and abilities. The Jesus Administration has a clear policy of welcoming refugees and making them permanent citizens, you could say--there's nobody in Christ's Kingdom who isn't one!

It's important for us--no, vital--to understand that this is how the Bible itself describes us, because otherwise we end up thinking that the Jesus' call is reserved for just some--some nationalities, some languages, some skill-sets, some income-levels, or some skin colors.  We end up thinking that "Christian" is a synonym for "people who look and dress and shop and think like I do... because, after all, I am a Christian, so they all must be like me."  But that's not how 1 Peter sees it.  These verses remind us that "once we were not a people"--that is to say, we are not Christians because we share one language or music style or hair color or facial complexion or culture.  Rather, we who have been gathered from all over creation, who were never really at home, have been given a new kind of belonging and a new identity in Christ.

That's precisely how the early church saw itself, mind you.  In the second century, a letter now known simply as "The Letter to Diognetes" was written as a sort of self-description of the growing Christian movement. And here is how the anonymous author describes us, we followers of Jesus:

"Christians are indistinguishable from other people either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of humans. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.... And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country.”

We have a way of confusing "Christian" with "American" or "middle-class" or "people who also buy their jeans at Wal-mart like I do," and then assuming that Jesus is only interested in calling people who are like that to belong on his team.  We have a way of assuming that churches are only supposed to grow by bringing in more of the same kind of people "like me"--as though "Christian" were a nationality or an ethnicity, rather than being a radical in-gathering of aliens and exiles declared to be citizens of the Reign of God. But the call is always wider and bigger than we want to make it.  It takes us, from our varied locations, lifestyles, loves, likes, lands, and languages, and makes us belong in a new kind of realm, a new kind of citizenship altogether.  

Jesus isn't just looking for people like me.  He calls all of us from wherever we have been and he draws us into the Reign of his love.  Like being called from a war-zone into a safe new country--and told you can call it "home" now, forever.  Maybe even like being called out of darkness, and into a marvelous light... and marvelous Love.

And indeed, like the song says, every heart... every heart, to such Love will come... but like a refugee.

Lord Jesus, remind us again of just how big your Kingdom is... and just how varied and beautiful the people are within it, we whom you have called together to make into a people.