Redeeming Exile
Have you ever felt like you don’t belong? Do you ever feel like you aren’t supposed to be where you are in life? Do you ever look around at work or in the world and find people who don’t seem to care about the same things as you, or feel like they don’t care about you much at all? I think we all go in and out of this feeling and experience because very few places or people can feel like home, and even the home we go back to too often isn’t quite what it is meant to be. What this tells us is that we are all in exile, separated from the place and family we were meant for.
In Peter’s first letter, he calls Christians God’s chosen exiles and he goes on to talk about how we have been reborn into a new reality, a living hope through Jesus Christ’s resurrection, how we are meant for an inheritance that never spoils, to be saved from the suffering and death in this world, even if we experience it now, and that through Jesus Christ we have seen God the Father, the one who we are meant to have the closest relationship with and yet, we still experience suffering and death, all we know now seems to spoil, and we are still not fully with God. Exile is ultimately the experience of separation from God, because of sin, whereby we are separated from the things we are meant for, the things that are best for us too.
Most biblical scholars and historians believe it is very likely that the Old Testament was compiled and found its final shape and edits in or around exile. If this is true and we trust that the Holy Spirit was guiding and breathing into the whole creation of our Scriptures, that tells us that there is something very important about this experience of exile as it relates to our faith experience with God. I think this is ultimately because we are meant to realize that in one way or another, we are all living in exile from the great family and home we have in Jesus Christ, but we also trust that he will bring us there, as Jesus says in John 14, “If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come back to take you to where I am”.
Our passages today are all from the time when Israel and Judah, were in a literal time of exile. First, Israel was conquered and its people were brought into Assyria, then Babylon became the superpower and conquered Assyria and Judah as well and brought its people into Babylon. As we hear, this would have been a really hard time for God’s faithful. How can we worship when we are so far from home and what we need? How can we live if it feels like God has abandoned us, as so many we know and love suffer or died? How can we flourish in a land that is not ours? These are all questions we could be asking too and I think are questions we have in our hearts even if we don’t say them out loud.
I can look back on my life and see many of these moments where I really experienced exile: this idea of not belonging and needing something more. Even in the good times in my life though, I can see how I might have been too busy or successful or shortsighted leading the way to really take stock of it, but even in the good times it wasn’t like I really fit in, I just had a little more purpose, a better community, or was celebrated. These didn’t blind me for long though, because soon I would experience the realization that God has meant more for me. As C.S. Lewis has said, “If we find a desire in us that nothing in this world can fill, it must mean we are meant for something beyond this world”.
The two greatest times of exile in my life were when my parents got divorced and when I was an actor in Toronto. My parents got divorced while I was taking a gap year in Australia. I was already feeling a little separate from home and from my friends traveling with me who wanted to drink and party a lot. Over the next few months, as I traveled, I felt this consistent disconnect with everything around me, as nothing seemed to care about my parent's divorce and yet all of it seemed to be judging, yet at the same moment I felt like something was trying to embrace me. I remember the strange embrace of the desert and the mountain. Even when I came home, I still felt separate, like every relationship had been rent in two.
While I was acting in Toronto, I did not fit in with my acting community. They cared about a lot of different things than I did. I kept blaming God, because rightfully I recognized that God was making me different and was showing me what was truly important, even if I didn’t know how to live into it and trust me I got a lot wrong. I will admit, I can be quite awkward at times and I don’t always know how to make friends, but this was far different than just that. For a time, I even tried to care about the same things as my classmates, and at every turn, it just felt wrong.
The hard part today is that the more and more I grow in my faith, the more I care about things of God and so as a result I care less about most video games, movies, sports, politics, drama, etc. Outside of how these things help or stand in the way of the gospel. I know I am an exile in this world and that I am meant for and waiting for something far greater.
Yet, in all of these experiences, the church has always been a place where I can experience a taste of that home that I long for. Whether I was in Australia, Toronto, or Saskatoon, I could step into a church and feel, at least for a few hours, at home with God in prayer, in worship, in conversation, and more. The funny thing is that this experience of true home happened despite the brokenness of the church. God’s goodness still shines through. When in Australia, I experienced plenty of broken ungodliness, but God still shined through. When my parents got divorced, the church, somewhat, turned against them. As an actor, church leadership didn’t often know what to do with me. Even in seminary, I often experience pushes and pulls from people in the church. Yet, despite all of this God’s home was far greater than all of the brokenness and I think the same is true for all of us and can be true for everyone outside of the church too, if one can just look beyond it and open our hearts to God.
There are a lot of people that feel exiled right now. You might be one of them. We as a church are a place where people experience and know the home with God that they are meant for, and somehow we can become even more of a Godly home. This place is a little taste of heaven and I want all of you to think about someone you know who might need to experience it and I encourage you to dig into this community and experience it even more too. God can already redeem that separation and exile you feel, right here, right now.
Did you notice something strange in our first reading from Jeremiah 33? In one sentence, between verses 5 and 6, God makes this abrupt switch between the awfulness that will lead to death and exile, and then suddenly moves to the healing and restoration that will lead to prosperity and security. Every time I read it, it feels jarring. My mind struggles with the correlation. How are death and restoration, prosperity and exile connected? Why would God and the writers not have some sort of sentence in between to help the transition? These moments of disconnect in Scripture are meant to slow us down and force us to look closer.
There are three things that God is trying to show us in this strange transition. First that God wants to save us from the negative consequences of our actions. Exile and death are a natural result of the evil Israel has lived out, but God doesn’t want that to be the end of their story. He has an immense hope for them. Second, God is going to use that exile as a way for them to experience restoration. The truth from the earliest image in this chapter is that it seems like Israel is already living in exile and death, even while they are at “home”. God wants to bring them to fullness. So through this full exile, he is going to bring them back into a new home, even if it is the same place, where relationships and bounty are restored. Third, I think God is pointing us toward the true redemption of our exile. Remember it was through exile, suffering, and death, that we were saved. Jesus was removed from the city, hung on a cross, and died, so that we might be brought back to a full relationship with God.
We experience exile for many natural reasons related to sin. We have all, throughout our daily lives, let things, people, and choices, pull us away from God, we become rebels against God and so we experience exile, because we are meant for something more, but God wants to save, restore and lead us to a bountiful relationship with Him. God uses this time right now, to bring us back to Him. He uses our exile to show us the community, family, and home we are meant for. He uses the suffering to show us the peace, security, and bounty we are meant for. He uses death to show us the consequence of sin and what really living should look like. They are all meant to point us to the need for a relationship with God and His church. Through all of this, Jesus Christ goes ahead of us so that he might accompany us through exile, suffering, and death, but ultimately so He can lead us home to a full and abundant life with God.
So, that leaves us with “What do we do now?” We know that we are in a world where we don’t belong. We know that we are in some ways distant from the one and place that is most important. We know God’s kingdom longs to be filled with his Children and that even the earth is in labor pains waiting for that day. So, what is left for us now? Well, we are meant to create a home right here, just as the exiles in Babylon were told in our final reading. We are supposed to turn this place into God’s kingdom and bring with us a heavenly reality. As we bless it, as we share God’s abundance, we will see God’s abundance in our midst. We are meant to bring Godly worship and Godly lives into a place to make it a Godly place. We are meant to build, fill and bring life so that God’s heavenly Kingdom is in our midst. The more and more we live into God’s redemptive and restorative work, realized through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, the more and more we will realize that this life doesn’t have to be an exile, this can be the place we were meant for, this can be the promised land. The world might not feel like the garden or the promised land or home, but as God shows us heaven descending to earth at the end of the book of Revelation, and so as Jesus became incarnate and as the Holy Spirit descended and lives in us, we realize that if we live out our faith this earthly life can be that heavenly home and it will be. AMEN
