Saint Peter, writing to a group of churches scattered across an area the size of California, opens his first canonized letter with three short words:
“Chosen exiles, dispersed …”
As his letter unfolds, it quickly becomes apparent that to be “chosen exiles, dispersed” is rather uncomfortable. It’s been debated over the centuries if any of the churches Peter wrote to were undergoing anything that could honestly be described as significant persecution. The consensus seems to be that though violent persecution was likely minimal, the difficult lives of political exiles within the Roman empire were made nothing if not more difficult upon encountering Jesus. They’d been upended by the gospel.
An upending with which Peter was quite familiar. An upending which Peter would symbolize in his upside-down crucifixion some short years later. The knotty tension in which the church exists as “chosen exiles, dispersed” is described best by Douglas Harink, who says, “To be exiled means to be vulnerable with the vulnerability of Christ, to live ‘out of control,’ to suffer under a foreign power, to long for the homeland.” This exilic vulnerability, Harink points out (and Peter tells us directly), is not some oversight or ecclesiological banking error. It’s the chosen plan of God.
Modeling vulnerability
Vulnerable and out of control. If this is how the church is to exist, it must be modeled clearly by her shepherds, which is sort of the point, not so much of Peter’s letters but his life.
Henri Nouwen picks up on this in his little lightning-storm of a book, In the Name of Jesus. Nouwen looks intently at the restoration of Peter toward the end of John’s Gospel account. After Jesus has finished asking Peter if he loves him he says, "In all truth I tell you when you were young you put on your belt and walked where you liked; but when you grow old you will stretch out your hands and somebody else will put a belt around you and take you where you would rather not go."
Living this way—downward, in exile, vulnerable, foreign—honestly, truly sucks. It’s counter-intuitive.
Nouwen suggests that Jesus is teaching us through the life of Peter that, “The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross.”
But here’s a little something to chew on: living this way—downward, in exile, vulnerable, foreign—honestly, truly sucks. It’s counter-intuitive.
Living in exile
My wife and I have been heading toward a ministry transition for over a year now. Since I’m a vocational pastor, we’re not just looking at trading in some work friends, or meeting new neighbors, or searching for a new place to worship. We’re trading in all of it, all at once.
Which, I realize, in the grand scheme of things, is not that big of a deal. There are people undergoing suffering in this world to a degree that I cannot even imagine. Me having to find a new job or a new city or a new coffee shop barely even registers. But my life is my life, and it’s one that I have to own and give away simultaneously. Living out of control feels out of control regardless of privilege or status.
The thing is though, I’ve been failing. Miserably.
God keeps handing me water balloons with a wink, asking if I’m ready to have some fun, and the only thing I can think to do is squeeze the water right out of them. I’ve lost sleep. I’ve blame-shifted. I’ve developed some fairly serious health problems. I’ve yelled at my wife over nothing. I’ve ignored my daughter. I’ve poured on the sticky-sweet syrup of self-pity and self-loathing. Like a crash-test-dummy, I’ve repeatedly accelerated toward the brick-wall of vulnerability, yammering on like a David Foster Wallace character just before the blackout.
In the process of trying to white-knuckle my way through to survival, I’ve completely forgotten what Robert Farrar Capon told me in Between Noon & Three, how this whole thing, church, life, death, all of it, is just one big hilarious gift. I’ve forgotten that my people don’t need a pastor who lives without struggle. I’ve forgotten that my first identity isn’t as a shepherd, but as a sheep. I’ve forgotten to . . .
"Trust him. And when you have done that, you are living the life of grace. No matter what happens to you in the course of that trusting—no matter how many waverings you may have, no matter how many suspicions that you have bought a poke with no pig in it, no matter how much heaviness and sadness your lapses, vices, indispositions, and bratty whining may cause you—you believe simply that Somebody Else, by his death and resurrection, has made it all right, and you just say thank you and shut up. The whole slop-closet full of mildewed performances (which is all you have to offer) is simply your death; it is Jesus who is your life. If he refused to condemn you because your works were rotten, he certainly isn't going to flunk you because your faith isn't so hot. You can fail utterly, therefore, and still live the life of grace. You can fold up spiritually, morally, or intellectually and still be safe. Because at the very worst, all you can be is dead—and for him who is the Resurrection and the Life, that just makes you his cup of tea."
In the few days it’s been since I started writing this, we’ve been given an end date at our current job, and we still have no idea when the next one may start, or where it will be. Every third breath I take feels like I’ve got a chest full of water.
I’m taking one step further into exile, deeper into vulnerability and out-of-control-ness. I’m inhabiting the very place Saint Peter said I would, the very place he described to the scattered churches of Asia Minor, the very place he lived and died. But you know how Peter ends his little intro to the people he describes as seeds scattered across the dirt and manure of the world?
He ends it by telling them—telling me—“Grace and peace are yours. In abundance.”
At the moment, Steve and his all female family reside in weird and wonderful Portland, Oregon. The next moment may require something different and they're learning how to be ok with that.
