from the message offered at First Presbyterian Church of Oakland on Sunday, May 17, 2026.

“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing in Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and should for joy when his glory is revealed. If you reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, in resting on you.” – 1 Peter 4:12-14, NRSV

Quick poll: if I invited you to go into exile with me, how many people here are interested? Probably not a big group. What if I said instead, let’s go on a pilgrimage? I bet we have more takers now. We know that good stuff is likely to come out of a pilgrimage, but we aren’t so sure about our time in exile. Exile isn’t really a choice and I think that feeling of the lack of control makes us recoil a bit; there is also the sense that it is a punishment, and even if we are prepared to admit that we did something wrong, or are behaving in a way that could use improvement, we don’t typically like that process of correction if it is forced upon us.  

So we will just start with the premise that we don’t like the idea of exile, and we are probably not voluntary signing up to be exiled. That sounds like a non-sequitur but here’s the thing: while ‘exile’ is most often used to describe an involuntary removal from your homeland, one definition is actually the “voluntary absence” from a place. Exile can be a choice we make. The question we want to ask then is, why? Why would we choose to self-exile from the places we are comfortable or familiar with? 

Now I know that many of you are thinking, yeah sure, exile is not something positive and not actually a real choice if imminent suffering is the only other option. But short of coercion, I want us to just consider for a moment the possibility of exile being more like what we imagine a pilgrim journey to be. I think the key consideration really is about control, and power, because when you head out on a pilgrimage you usually have some sort resource to support the journey, probably you have a plan, you have an intention for the experience: it is in many ways a privilege to be able to take the time to go forth with the intent of spiritual growth, and an idea about how you are going to curate getting there. 

To the extent that exile is voluntary, truly voluntary, it is a much more surrendered position. There is no plan, there is no timeline, there is simply leaving what you knew and going somewhere unknown. Perhaps not even knowing where it is you are going. It is a shedding of the comfortable, the familiar, the easy, and exchanging that for vulnerability and powerlessness. Sounds great right? Like, why aren’t tour companies selling exile experiences? 

In all seriousness though, I want us to hold that choice in exile for just a moment. That possibility that leaving in a state of vulnerability could be a choice. And perhaps it is a choice we need to be making figuratively a lot more often if we are really going to call ourselves Christians. 

The scripture lesson we read today is one of the assigned readings from the lectionary, but I think it is just a little too short and without more context leaves us missing the heart of what this lesson I think is offering us this week. Without doing a big analysis of who the writer might be, we do know that this is from period not long after Jesus’ death, we are likely still within one generation. Many of the Jesus followers have been scattered, it is still a Jewish dominant community broadly, and there is a lot of persecution going on. Around this time Nero is literally burning Jesus followers, in his circus (or garden), which fun fact is now St. Peter’s square at the Vatican, and you have a lot of tension in Jerusalem and the outlying communities both within the emerging movement itself, and externally in the places where they are functioning. In short, it’s not an easy time to be a follower of Jesus. 

I want to take just a moment to explain also why I am saying “follower of Jesus,” not just Christian: it is because initially we just had students following their Jewish teacher which was not an uncommon practice, then in the early church we had people who were “followers of the way,” which starts to sounds interesting when you remember Jesus saying to Thomas, when he asked ‘how do we go where you are going,’ ‘I am the way.’ So early on we are just people who are following the way of Jesus, the way he walked, and talked, and lived, and loved. At this stage we are still disciples who are trying to follow the path their teacher walked, there is no organized denomination or even a formal sect; it is really just a diaspora of people trying to figure out how to live the way of Jesus. Around the time of this letter the community in Antioch starts to be referred to by others as “christians” or ‘little Christs,’ which just means ‘little messiahs.’

Little messiahs. People who are acting different than the norm, different than the social construct, living in a way that is about healing, and sharing, and caring, and equality. People who are not doing what everyone else around them is doing. People who are actively trying to live in the present kingdom of God. Christians. It is nearly a hundred years later that this group becomes distinct from being a part of Judaism. 

In our New Revised Standard Version text the letter opens by offering greetings to the “exiles;” in the First Nations Version it reads to the “Creator’s chosen who have been scattered like seeds.” I like the poetry and the symbolism of the First Nations language because I think it is going to help us understand that when we find ourselves in exile, when we choose exile, it is to be a place of growth and change. When you are in exile, you are not going back to where you were, you can’t go back to where you were before, because you are not the same person that left. If we are seeds scattered we will either dry up and die, or we will grow into something new that can produce seeds, but can never go back to being a seed itself. 

Just after the verses we read today, the writer addresses the audience by saying, “yet if any of you suffer as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear his name.” So this is the bookending that unfortunately the lectionary leaves out: the greeting and the call to personal accountability for who we profess to be; it is the context we need to understand the practical application of this letter, and the words we are reading, in understanding the opportunity for choice in exile, and the necessity for growth if we want to live as little Christs. 

I do not have to tell anyone in this room that for over a thousand years now Christianity has been the dominant religion in the western world. It has cost us nothing to be called Christians. That is not to say that what we have been calling Christianity is a true reflection of being a Christian, but to be a Christian for over a thousand years has not put you at risk in the western world. That is remarkable. At the point at which this letter was written, to claim being a Christian meant that you could be burned, you could be stoned, you could be starved, or you could be crucified. Just like Jesus. To follow Jesus was not to join the popular club; to follow Jesus was to walk into an exile from the life going on all around you, the system of the Roman world, and to risk your very life. 

Why would anyone do this? Could we do this today? Would we do this today? Hold those questions for a moment. 

It is never easy to be the people who are following God, at least not on a superficial level. But the people who follow God are in some ways, all people who have chosen exile: Abraham chose an exile from his people when he choose to answer God’s call and say “here I am.” Moses chose an exile from the life he grew up in when he met God in that burning bush and said, “here I am.” The Israelites in Egypt chose to leave an impossible situation but were tested for two generations as they wandered in a kind of exilic state of change from the world they had known. The people of Judah who were forcibly removed to Babylon and again spent two generations remembering how they were supposed to be in relationship to God before they could return, as new people, to do something new in an old place. Jesus was exiled into death before he could return, familiar but changed, to show his followers that the way was not easy but led to unimaginable goodness. 

The fact is, our Christianity is easy. And I am not encouraging you to go out and make it performatively difficult. Maybe it is a little harder in the anti-religion Bay Area than it would be in other parts of the country, but I think that the words in today’s scripture lesson are asking us to think about how we sit in the structures of our lives, and if that position is consistent with what it means to be a little Christ, a Christian. Are we prepared to be among the exiles, the scattered seeds that are turning into something new in the world, that are growing into a kingdom of God for the people we encounter. 

We are not being burned, but does it feel uncomfortable when we question the norms of a ‘never enough’ culture? If we are not uncomfortable is it because we are not questioning that culture? Are we, in this room, willing to profess our Christianity in the face of judgment and scorn from an Imperial history, and atheistic superiority? We get to choose our exile from a society that mocks faith in many ways, and a culture that says the material world is the most important thing we can strive for. We get to choose to leave that, with no answer for where we are going, no promise of what it will look like when we arrive, but with the blessing of the Spirit of God resting on us. 

My friends we do not have to go wander in a literal desert, be tested in the fire, or climb up on a cross, that was done for us, to show us that we can move into a world that at times makes no logical sense, but that assuredly will change us, grow us into the little Christs that this world so desperately needs, and that God wants us to become. 

Maybe the words pilgrimage and exile are a little more alike than they are different; maybe the choice we get is to orient ourselves as pilgrims, knowing that we are intentionally wandering, but trusting that to be part a part of God’s kingdom we have to remember to live as exiles from the kingdom of the world.