Untitled - St.Francis Magazine

St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 2 | April 2012 observes, this causes a forward moving momentum. It happens, he says, as one’s faith “puts one in vital contact with and impels one irresistibly forward towards the unseen realities of the heavenly world.” 116 Talk about movement! 5.1 In I Peter. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen (I Peter 1:1) Peter describes the election of God as an essential prerequisite for being part of his chosen people. In so doing he is repeating an OT theme which describes Israel’s departure from Egypt as the mighty act of God who “brought out his people with rejoicing” and by means of Hebrew poetic parallelism; “his chosen ones with shouts of joy” (Ps. 105:43). In both cases the loving choice of God (cf. Deut 14:2), the deliverance out of bondage (cf. I Peter 2:9-­‐10) and a resultant status as “pilgrims and strangers” with the status of a prized possession is assumed. Reinhard Feldmeier wastes no words in describing the essential identity of the church in the diaspora addressed by Peter’s letter: “The Christians are strangers in this society—and this is precisely their vocation; that is what they are supposed to be.” 117 They have left “the empty way of life handed down” to them from their “forefathers” (I Pe 1:18) when they were redeemed. Their values and desires have become ‘alien’ to their old ones and to those of the surrounding society. Thus he tells them, “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage 116 Geerhardus Vos, “Sermon on Hebrews 12:1-­‐3” Kerux-The Journal of the North Western Theological Seminary 1:1 (May 1986), pp. 4-­‐15 On-­‐line www.kerux.com/documents/KeruxV01N1A1.asp (Accessed 2011/11/8) 117 Reinhard Feldmeier, “The ‘Nation’ of Stranger: Social Contempt and its Theological Interpretation in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity,” in M.G. Brett ed. Ethnicity and the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1966), p. 256. 252