Strange folk. A while ago, in the Nieuwe Kerk, a monumental church in Amsterdam, there was an exhibition about foreigners ¹ . Old photos of foreigners were displayed. All a bit “odd." The photos say: this is how the Dutch viewed foreigners in the past; as people who are very different, which irritates and feels threatening — as if your manner of life is not the norm. They are “oddballs." That is what they called the exhibition: “rare snuiters” or “oddballs" — foreign folk, strange folk.

But the message the exhibition had for our times was the reverse. Foreigners are different, but that is enriching. And, just as you find them strange, so do they find you! Accept each other. We are actually all oddballs, fascinating strange folk.

Photo exhibition⤒🔗

According to that photo exhibition, there are two ways in which you can approach strangers. Either you refuse to accept them because they are different, or you cherish that difference. Now the Bible also calls Christians strangers or “aliens."² In this, too, we must keep those two reactions in mind today. Many people will be irritated. They do not accept that you are different. But many other people may find it interesting: “No, I could never be like you. But interesting, nevertheless, you Christians, with your strange customs.” That first response poses the question: Do you, today, dare to be a real stranger? But the second response raises a further question: In what way are you a stranger - as the Bible speaks of it or as is appropriate in the current cultural climate?

The university open day this year is about being a stranger, about alienship (in other words, alienness). As Reformed Christians in the Netherlands, we should put more work into this, or God's salt will lose its strength. Yet it is important that we flesh out this alienship biblically, lest we forget that we are strangers with a calling.

My speech is also a sort of photo exhibition. With three panels.

The first panel gives an impression of what the Bible says. Especially from Peter's first epistle.³

The second panel shows some priorities for the practice of today. Those photographs are taken with the camera of Ethics, the subject I teach at Kampen.⁴

And the third panel shows how you can practise a life of alienship. There I used a new camera. These last years, I have also been teaching a new subject in Kampen: Spirituality.

1. Bible←⤒🔗

Let us start with the first panel: what does the Bible say? Let me give you an impression in four photographs.

Photo 1: Alienship is a privilege←↰⤒🔗

Peter characterizes our life as “your time as foreigners” (1 Peter 1:17) [NIV]. Yet alienship is never the starting point. Your identity does not lie in the fact that you must be different than others per se. That would be a negative attitude. Being a foreigner is the flip side of something positive, a privilege. I am actually no different than others — but God opened His heart to me: “Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:10). He gave me a new identity, in my connection with Christ. My old life goes under in his suffering. Through His resurrection my new life opens up (1 Peter 1:3, 10-25; 4:1-5). Around Jesus is a complete new creation, which will come down to earth someday. But it is now ready and waiting with God in heaven (1 Peter 1:3-5-). You are a stranger in the old world, because you are at home in that new world. You no longer orient yourself to what is normal here, but to the style of that heavenly kingdom. Being a stranger is therefore not something you should strive for yourself. It comes along with the God-given connection to Christ. In Peter's time, people considered Christians to be oddballs, strange folk. That was difficult sometimes. But Peter encourages them. Indeed you are strangers. But that is the flip side of a privilege. Strange folk? God's folk! (1 Peter 2:9-11)

Photo 2: Alienship is something we share together←↰⤒🔗

Alienship is not a characteristic of Christians as individuals. Peter is speaking of a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9). We are a nation of strangers/aliens, just as the Jewish people lived as dispersed people since their exile and nevertheless remain a recognizable people. Christians lived even more amidst other people, but at the same time formed a special community together. In this community the barriers that were normal for that time did not apply: Jew and Greek, man and woman, slave and free, rich and poor, strong and weak — everyone belonged equally. The new society of the future is growing, right through the old society of today. That did not suit that world then. For this reason people spoke badly of them (1 Peter 2:12): “Those Christians are against humanity. They consider themselves to be a better race.” That is alienship⁵

Photo 3: Alienship - to the glory of God←↰⤒🔗

Why does God already let the new society of the future grow in the old world? Peter says: you have been called to proclaim God's mighty deeds (1 Peter 2:9) — firstly through your life. In that new society you see something of the fact that Jesus' sufferings put an end to the old life of sin and guilt, and that Jesus' resurrection opens the horizon of a new life. The fact that you can already see something of that now is to the glory of God's work of salvation. This alienship is aimed at getting other people thinking. Others saw, for example, how Christian slaves remained true to their masters in spite of their bad treatment (1 Peter 2:18-21) and how Christian women did all they could to save their marriages with their non-believing men. (1 Peter 3:1-6). In this, you see something of Jesus himself: prepared to suffer and to reach out to the other (1 Peter 2:21). People can ask questions about this, and then you can tell them about Christ (1 Peter 3:15), and perhaps they will learn to honour God, too (1 Peter 2:12).

Photo 4: Alienship is coming close and keeping distance at the same time.←↰⤒🔗

The Bible does not teach that we must keep our distance from people who are not Christians. We tend to do that, especially when under duress, but Peter teaches us the reverse (1 Peter 2:12-17). Apply yourself to helping your non-Christian fellow man. Do good to him . Do not grumble at the unbelieving society, but look for ways to serve it. And respect the applicable structures where possible. Then people will discover that Christians do not hate others, nor do they consider themselves to be a better race. Come as close as you can, but keep your distance from sin — meaning, in the first place, your own sinful heart. Abstain from sinful desires, says Peter (1 Peter 2:11): specifically, visiting the temples of idols with friends and colleagues. taking part there in debauchery, drunkenness, aggression, and indulgence in extreme behaviour. Did not Jesus' suffering put an end to your old life? If you revert to it, then this erodes your new identity in Him. In short, alienship means coming close, and yet keeping a distance. We know from the first centuries that it was this combination in the lives of Christians that intrigued other people the most. Strange folk!

2. Ethics←⤒🔗

We now find ourselves standing before panel 2 of the photo exhibition: alienship in the practice of today. There we see the same photos, but with the focus of the camera of Ethics.

Photo 1: Alienship as flip side of a privilege.←↰⤒🔗

Especially in our times, you get stuck if you only place the emphasis on being different. That is a never-ending story, because our society is pluriform. I want to be different from the liberal, for example, in dealing with unborn life. But in that I am no different than the orthodox Muslim. And I want to be different from the Muslim with regard to the position of women in society. But then I come close to the liberal. On some points you must not aspire to be different. In spite of a growing hardness, the West still has a tradition of taking care of what is vulnerable. That is a fruit of the age-long Christian influence. This you only need to confirm. And when Peter calls on us to “abstain," he consciously uses a term that many non-Christians appreciated, too.⁶

Jesus teaches us Christians to do more than the normal (Matthew 5:47): not only greeting your brothers, but your enemies, too. Yet that does not mean that you can skip the normal: only greeting your enemies and not your brothers! In the normal you should actually be no different than others.

You provide yourself and others with unnecessary feelings of guilt if you only aspire to being different, in itself, the attitude: “We as Christians have to be very different, but, well, how?...and in what, then?”

And do not forget that being different is quite popular nowadays. Think of that exhibition in the Nieuwe Kerk Postmodern philosophers are even using the biblical theme “alienship.”⁷ People of today are being called aliens. They do not want to be tied down; they always break up and go on to the next thing. They have no fixed identity; they want to distinguish themselves infinitely. They are on the go from nowhere to nothing, and do what their hand finds to do and enjoy themselves wherever possible, staying free, without commitment. If they apply themselves to something, then they prefer a short-term project, in which they are not tied up for too long. If they engage in a steady relationship, it lasts only as long as your own need for freedom allows it. If Christians in such an environment only also try to be different, their message would not even come across. In the chaotic journey of the postmodern foreign legion we then would also just march back and forth, in our own manner. Giving shape to your alienship today should entail that you express with joy and certainty that your identity is fixed in Christ, that you do bind yourself 100%, to him, and in this way to your fellow man, your relations, and your task—not with reserve but with commitment. And your alienship should demonstrate that you are completely at home somewhere.

Photo 2: Alienship as something we share together←↰⤒🔗

Today’s ethics teaches us once more that no Christian manages to form a lifestyle by himself, not even if you give him God's commandments and equip him with a good understanding. Each of us is gradually formed in a certain lifestyle, by our parents, our contemporaries, tradition, the people we associate with, by TV and other media—in short, by our context. Now Western Christians have for centuries got used to the context of a more or less Christian society. The society supported the Christian life, sometimes even in government legislation. In a very short space of time, that has changed completely, but we were so used to that context, that the door was also wide open to the new, no-longer-Christian shaping. I don't believe we ourselves are so much worse today than we used to be, but we were not prepared for that shift in our society. For this reason secularization was able to strike.

And our society, in particular, needs the biblical alienness more than ever. As individual Christians we are no longer holding our own as well as in the past in today’s context. We must make haste at working in another context that shapes our lifestyle and that of generations to come: not the old society of the present, but the new society of the future. Christian life starts in the congregation. Formation of a Christian life demands its own style in the congregation. To this end we must grow. That should be on the agendas of synods, of congregation meetings and smaller cell meetings. Christian ethics in a no-longer-Christian society has to be congregation-ethics⁸For this reason we can see the diabolic strategy in the outcome of our Reformed church history, that there is such massive break-up of communion among, and within, our churches. The first expression of the new life in the New Testament is brotherly love. And that mutual love in the church reproduces itself in the love for all fellow men (with 1 Peter 3:8-11; 1 Thessalonians 3:12; 1 John 3:14). Today, more than ever, it is about that “strange folk”!

Photo 3: Displaying Christ - to God's glory←↰⤒🔗

Christ wishes to display himself through the congregation, especially. Not so much by massive conversion results, but, in the first place, because it is there that people really become humble before God. Our world does not know how to deal with guilt. We look for scapegoats or we explain the guilt away. Alienship is showing that you fully recognize your guilt before God, and that God really and truly does dispose of it. And therefore, in the church, people who would never look each other up outside the church learn to accept each other and love each other in Christ. We hear of bloody ethnic conflicts. Men and women battle out a subtle power fight, even in commercials. Heteros assault gays and gays shout their identity from the rooftops. Privileged and underprivileged have less and less to do with one another. Only in Christ do all those different people find a new identity, which puts their individuality in second place. If the congregation of aliens lives out that example, you will see that there is hope for the world⁹Think, too, of characteristics and deeds in which you recognize something of Christ. Why are you touched when you see how an impetuous brother offers an apology and asks for — and is given — forgiveness? Why does it affect us when a church leader answers injustice with love, letting a case rest so as not to give the evil more chance? What fascinates me in that converted junk now stubbornly ladling out soup to the homeless, who are not likely to change in the near future, as far as we can see? What does the faithfulness of that anonymous sister tell us, who visited a lonely elderly person year after year, even when all communication became impossible? What is so special about that group of youngsters who open up to a less attractive fellow teenager who is always being left out? What moves me in that Muslim woman who came to faith and spoke about the influence of that Christian family from her youth: while being teased and tormented in an Islamic neighbourhood, they remained friendly and helpful? It is strange. It is different. It brings glory to God. And why? Because… you recognize something of Christ.

Photo 4: Coming close and keeping a distance at the same time←↰⤒🔗

As alien, you take the road of Jesus' cross and thus of Jesus' resurrection. That cross comes to stand between you and everything else. Your whole life opens up before you, but always through cross and resurrection. Many people live as if you have to get as much out of life as you can, as if you must be happy now. If that dominates society, that shapes you. But everything comes to us through Jesus' cross and resurrection. What you experience and can do now, is a foretaste. It teaches you to use the world with thankfulness and humility. You can, if need be, also depart from it. A new world is coming where you have an eternity of time to enjoy all God's wonderful gifts. That way you learn to set priorities. What is important to everyone else, does not get under your skin. If everyone says that you must have this or that, or experience this or that, you know you can also do without. Your first attention is to the coming of the kingdom, the growth of the congregation, the service to society. And your stance in life is to take what you can use for that purpose and, at the same time, to leave behind what diverts you from that purpose. You do not stand in the world as a realist, looking at facts in a down to earth way, but also not as an idealist, pursuing illusions. Why not? Because you know the power of the new life and know that it manifests itself via the way of the cross (cf. Philippians 3:8-11). The cross teaches you to keep your distance from the sin that is so normal for everyone around you. Would Peter's application on that point not be just as valid today? How many Christians today do not feel the sucking power of idols: living for yourself and your own development, submerging yourself in the sub-cultures of sports and amusement, busy with all your material belongings, your holidays and relaxation, in search of experiences of happiness? How many young people's hearts are blocked to the conquest of Christ through an immoderate consummation of alcohol and pleasure, and a doubtful style of partying and going out? How many Christians today lose the struggle against the always ongoing bombardment with sex by the media and get accustomed to loose sexual relations, so that their identity in Christ is under pressure? We are justly afraid of moralization. But that does not have to mean that we brush away such points. These were already in the New Testament the core points to keep your distance from as a Christian in your environment: idolatry, sexuality outside of God's framework, and immoderation¹⁰Only when maintaining that distance can you come closer.

3. Spirituality←⤒🔗

In conclusion, panel 3 of the photo exhibition: how do you learn this alienship? For this I used the camera of Spirituality. That is the practice in the relationship with God. We now only look at the first two photographs, focussing on the deeper perspective.

Photo 1: Alienship as flip side of a privilege←↰⤒🔗

Living as a stranger does not happen by itself. It grows if you grow deeper into that privilege. Rooted in that hidden reality: the mercy of God, that unity with Christ, being at home in his new world. Renewal of our alienship demands spiritual reorientation. No ethics without spirituality!

We already learned that from Calvin J¹¹  His ethics are centred around alienship. But as an engine for living in alienship, he mentions reflection on the life to come. He says that to be able to work for Christ with a peaceful heart, we must make ourselves get used to often thinking about the celestial joy¹² Sometimes Calvin speaks too negatively about this life¹³ And that reflection on the life to come is not always easy to pick up¹⁴But that connection in itself is biblical. Peter starts his letter to the “strangers/aliens” with enthusiasm about the inheritance which is ready for them in heaven. He says: rejoice in this (Petrus 1:3-9). Apply yourself to that coming life in such a way that you become joyful and start longing intensely for it. The more you become familiar with it, the better you can give shape to your alienship here. Peter also writes, you love Christ without being able to see him. There is a bond of love with Christ in heaven, and he will give you an inexpressible and glorious joy (1 Peter 1:8). That is the secret: often being with Christ in heaven with your thoughts and your hearts, letting your love for him nourish you, and practising your joy in him. The more you do that, the more your true identity will emerge here on earth.

Calvin calls it “reflection," meditation¹⁵That is: associating with the words of the Bible and the faith in such a way that they take you to the reality behind it¹⁶All those words are about a reality, about a living Christ and an inheritance that really exists. It is also praying in such a way that you, in faith, are truly drawn into God's celestial throne room (Hebrews 10:19-22). See yourself with the eyes of your faith, kneeling before God's throne, see Christ there present at your prayer, discover the entourage of a new world which is ready and waiting. The Bible says that we have gone with Christ to heaven (Ephesians 2:6). You can practise that reality in faith. Set your hearts on things above, says Paul (Colossians 3:1).

We are often hasty to go to ethics, when we read Colossians 3:1, thinking that the “things above” concern your lifestyle. Yes, indeed, but to arrive at that new lifestyle, however, you must  look upward. Don't get to work right away. First give thought to what is above: reflect on that quietly, in faith; let it penetrate into your heart. We need that spiritual exercise to be shaped in our alienship. For me, a word of Paul's from 2 Corinthians 5:6 became an important mirror¹⁷He writes that as long we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord in a strange land. Paul is aware of his calling here. He knows that this is God's good creation. Yet, he feels himself on earth as in a foreign country, in a strange land. Such a feeling says something about the intensity of your connection with Christ and the degree in which you orient yourself on the new life. I do not always feel like I am  in a strange country here. And perhaps that reflection on the life to come should also be far more important to you, too.

Photo 2: Alienship as something shared together←↰⤒🔗

But look at photograph 2 once more, in this light. Reflection on that life to come is also something shared. Perhaps one of the problems is that we often view such practice in piety so individualistically. And, in doing so, we also make it a little elitist. Peter speaks in the plural. He is speaking of a joy in Christ and a future which will be shared together. You can learn together to reflect on the reality behind the bible words, for instance, by entering the celestial throne room, praying together. Together, the hearts elevated to Christ in heaven, at the Lord's Supper¹⁸Together, enthusiastically speaking of the new life. You can give words to this in the church service, at bible study, in cell groups and prayer groups, in conversations. Surrounding this secret of alienship I specifically see a community, a people: strange folk!