Who are you?

When you meet someone new, how do you identify yourself?

Maybe it's nationality, or places you've lived, or job, or relationships.....

If you are an expat, the question of identity becomes particularly important.

In every new place, you have to start again, build an identity, struggle for significance in a new situation.

So it really struck me, reading how Peter begins his first letter, that he chose to name his hearers as 'exiles'. That was their reality- they were expats, forced to flee their homeland by religious persecution, and now scattered all over the Mediterranean.

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia...

1 Peter 1: 1

The whole way through his letter, Peter is aware of the way these people are seen by the world they live in...and maybe also how they feel about themselves.

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles.....

1 Peter 2:11

It's tempting to "spiritualize" theses passages, and expect them to just refer to the fact that christians are citizens of heaven. But they can also speak to us about our social, political and cultural realities. There are all sorts of reasons for being an alien or exile. Living in a country where the main language is not your own ....... not having the same legal rights as others around you........ being discriminated against......feeling on the outside.......not sure where you belong. One of the consequences of a highly mobile, ever shifting urban population is loneliness. People are cut off from the ties of family or community, and proud individualism becomes lonely isolation.

What does Peter have to say? First, he cuts short any tendency to self pity by holding up the example of Jesus. He tells us that we don't follow a Christ who was popular, who belonged, who fitted in. Instead, he was

the stone that the builders rejected

1 Peter 2:7

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.

1 Peter 2: 21

Then, he talks about a new identity.

These exiles he is writing to may have been rejected and forced to flee their homes, but they are people

who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood.

1 Peter 1: 2

This is the truth of who they are- however the world around them might label them, and however they feel about themselves.

To make sure they- and we- hear this truth, Peter repeats it again, piling picture upon picture until we get the message.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people.

1 Peter 2: 9

Our physical reality may feel shaky at times. Our identity can feel threatened if we move, lose our job, become a parent for the first time, experience discrimination, ignorance, unkindness...

But hear the truth which Peter tells-

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people.