There’s a hymn that goes “I’m but a stranger here, heaven is my home,” written by a guy named Thomas Taylor. It was eerily published a year after he went to his home, heaven, at the age of 28 after an illness. Throughout the hymn, Thomas Taylor compares the ills of the world with the glories of heaven. When you read the lyrics, you’re struck with a weird way that they seem antiquated..in a way beyond the fact that it was written in the 1800’s. 
It seems odd because the theme of exile, being a stranger away from home, isn’t really one that we’re used to. Popular Christianity seems to have been recently obsessed with the “now,” as in, “your best life now.” It makes sense. Our culture is also obsessed with the immanent. “On demand,” is sometimes a frightening qualifier in many cultural artifacts but it is especially frightening in theology.
Our Easter sermon series will follow the Epistle readings from Peter’s first apostolic letter. One of the big themes of Peter’s letter is exile. And for once, exile makes a little more cultural sense to us. Some of us are exiled from our families, some of us are exiled from our friends, some of us are exiled from our work, almost all of us feel the exile from our churches. We suddenly “get” exile.
Exile isn’t fun, but it also is not lacking in God’s grace. In spite of exile, God is with us. God continues to point us beyond our exile into the day when we shall rejoice, the homecoming, the end of exile. In the meantime, He calls us to live in exile. He calls us to remember His promises, to work for the good of the city that He has placed us in, and to know that our exiles will end.