Chosen to be strangers
In one small paragraph Peter manages to get in a packed theology - election, salvation, sacrificial atonement, sanctification, obedient discipleship, as well as a fully Trinitarian view of God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It's an amazing way to begin a letter. Peter was writing to the small, new churches of Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. (Where, after 2000 years of chequered history, the churches are once again both new and small.) He uses vivid and contrasting pictures to describe them - scattered, strangers and chosen by God.
Maybe some of them were literally strangers, driven from home by unrest, drought or a host of other factors. However, in our mobile, fast-changing world, it is not only refugees who are scattered. Job opportunities, family commitments, even retirement, can scatter us and take us away from 'home'. But even if we have lived all our lives in one place, we can feel like strangers, no longer at home, when places and people change around us. Many of us know what it is like to feel homesick, to have lost our sense of belonging. However, Peter says that we should feel as if we do not belong, that we are 'no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation', because now that we belong to God, we are strangers in the world.
The 'Christian' cultures and traditions of our Western past probably lulled our pious forebears into a comfortable sense of being at home in a Christian world. Now that we are Christian minorities, we can feel a little beleaguered. But we are also chosen. We are in the mind and heart of God, loved from before time began, warmed and forgiven, daily built up and affirmed by him. We are chosen, not to be the kind of strangers who turn their backs on a despised culture, but to be his servants and workers in our world, our work and our homes wherever they are. And we should be so secure in his love, and his abundant grace and peace, that we can cope with a little bit of homesickness for lost homes - and for heaven.
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