Me and my youngest brother, Joe, in Sri Lanka, circa 1981
Anyone who has traveled can tell you that there are certain realities to being a tourist. When you step outside your normal sphere of existence, whether it be into another city, another state or another country your perceptions and sensibilities change and things you do not normally think about push their way to the front of your mind.
First, you notice that you are an outsider, strange, a stranger.
A few months ago I sat on a Kenya Airways flight en route to Nairobi when a unfamiliar sound came over the intercom. For me, that is almost always the first moment I realize I am an outsider, when I start to hear people speaking in another language. There is something about language that lets you know your place.
There are other things that clue you in to the fact that you are an outsider: the food, the clothes, the housing, the smells, the way everyone seems to know where they are going except you. It is one of the most clear, precise, unnerving, exhilarating feelings in the world to be a stranger in a strange land. It is an interesting tension between excitement and terror.
I remember the first time my parents to me and my three brothers [ages 4 to 11] to Greece. We got off the train in Athens and my dad told me to not let go of my youngest brother Joe. “They steal little blonde-haired, blue-eyed boys like him in this place,” he said with a look in his eye that told me he wasn’t joking.
I grabbed him tightly, scared. I remember thinking “What kind of place is it where people steal little boys? This isn’t like home.”
Of course, the longer you stay in a place the less frightened, less strange you feel. About a week later I think instead of holding on to Joe I would push him out a few feet in front of me. I put a sign around his neck: “Free Kid. Annoying, but doesn’t bite too much.”
I like it that Peter starts his first letter to the churches by calling them strangers in the world (1:1). In other places he calls them aliens (2:11). I think he wants them to remember that they are tourists in a foreign land. I think he had to remind them because it is an easy fact to forget. It is easy to get used to your surroundings, to fit in, for a place that is not your home to become your home.
I think that Peter does not want them to forget who they are, where they come from, their real home. Have you ever been around someone who goes to a new place a suddenly picks up an accent? Like a girl from the South going to England and all of a sudden she sounds like the Queen?
That’s annoying. You’re from the south. You like grits. And it’s pronounced “Y’all.”
Secondly, being a tourist means that you are on a mission.
I do not know of anyone who left home on a trip except that there was some reason or purpose behind it. [Note: Actually I do know one person who is on that kind of trip, but for him I think it is more of a philosophical statement which is itself a reason for traveling. Can a non-reason be a reason? I digress.] Everyone has a reason for going: it may have been something as simple as wanting to see the World’s Largest Ball of String or as profound as visiting the grave of a parent.
The sense of mission, a goal, a target is very strong when you travel. We have a place to go, something to see, a destination to reach. And I think the goal is different. For my father that first trip was about going around the world. For my mother it was making it home alive and with the same number of boys with which she left. Mission accomplished.
I am not saying that people at home do not have goals or a mission or even a vision for their life. I just know that on the road, as a tourist, the sense of destination is much more acute in my experience. Nothing like a road trip to awaken the sense within you that you are going somewhere.
Peter reminds his readers that they are going somewhere too. “In (God’s) great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never spoil perish or fade–kept in heaven for you.” (1:3-4, emphasis added).
Two destinations for these travelers: a living hope born out of Jesus’ victory over death and an inheritance in heaven. Eternal hope and life. An inheritance that will never end. Two tickets, please.
Third, I think that being a tourist makes you more aware of how tough life is. Things come more easily at home. We know where the grocery store is, the bank, the gas station. We can read the traffic signs, we know the shortcuts. We know the best restaurants and the one to avoid. We know the culture, we know how things work.
But when you are on the road, in a foreign country things somehow just become a lot harder. More than once I can remember driving around late at night just trying to din a place to sleep. One time in the south of France, my brother TIm and I literally almost drove our car off a cliff trying to find a youth hostel. We made it safely, but our car was broken into that night and we lost most of our stuff.
Peter writes, “Now for a little while, you may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.These have come so that your faith…may be proved genuine.” (1:7). And that’s what every tourist finds out later. It was the hard stuff that kind of makes it worth it. You tell stories about the hard times, the time you almost drove your car off a cliff, the time you got robbed. The pain is kind of what makes it worth it, the trials become what you cherish and what you remember.
Finally, I think that as a tourist our curiosity is heightened. We try things we would not normally try. We ask questions, visit places, inquire about things in a way that we do not when we are in familiar surroundings. I couldn’t even begin to count the number of times my dad would engage people and ask them about some place we were on our way to visit, where should we go, what should we do, what should we see, what was the best way to get there.
I don’t know why Peter includes the little details about the prophets and angels being curious, longing to look into the things of Christ. They were intrigued by it, they searched carefully and and with great intent. Maybe he didn’t want them to take the journey for granted. Curiosity helps us to appreciate things, to look at them more carefully.
I have always loved traveling. I have always loved being on the road in spite of the strangeness of it. I love the challenge of going new places, discovering new things, regardless of the difficulties and struggles it entails. I hope that I always stay curious, that I stay eager to learn. And I love that our journey is a spiritual and our destination is both with and to God Himself.
[1 Peter 1:1-12]
