Sunday, October 13,
2019
It doesn’t feel like
exile, this life I am living. Do you
feel like you live in exile?
Some might. In our community and our church family, we
have brothers and sisters who are far from home and cannot go back. Life here may be wonderful, but it’s a life
they been forced into, not one they chose.
How the heck would I know what exile
feels like? I’ve lived in this country
my entire life. “American” is all I
know. I feel safe here. Some here have lived in Chapel Hill or Carrboro
all your life. What could be more like
home than this? Yet, here, even if we
love it here, we’re far from the home God has for us.
The
flesh is the part of each of us prone to sin and reject God’s goodness. Sin lurks and sooner or later we give
in. All human beings do. The fallen state of the world is the outcome
of generations of humans sinning. Look
at the horrors happening to immigrants at the U.S.-Mexican border. Look at the evils of the Jim Crowe
south. Look at the ways addiction wrecks
people’s lives. These are but a few
examples of the effects of sin. Wherever
on earth “here” is, when we feel at home here, that’s the flesh at work. In addition to leading us into the sin, the
flesh also prevents us from seeing the good God has for us.
God did not intend for us – we who
are made in his image – to live with cancer, opioids, mass incarceration,
divorce, aborted pregnancies, corruption from our leaders, war, and
hunger. These little hells are
manifestations of the fallen state of the world; God never meant for it to be
this way. Yet, it is this way, and we,
the church of Jesus Christ, live in the world as it is. God has placed us in the midst of the
misery. Why?
Jeremiah prophesied for 40 years in
Judah: 40 years of ominous forecasts for the nation. He warned of coming calamity, punishment for
Judah’s rebellion God. This rebellion
was seen in Judah’s willingness to worship false gods. It was evident in the way Judah’s elite class
abused and took advantage of the poorest, most vulnerable people in
society. Judah trampled those at the
margins, so God, sent Judah into exile in Babylon. The wealthy and educated of Judah, the
governing class, became people on the margins in exile. The Lord declares “I have sent [them] into
exile from Jerusalem to Babylon” (Jeremiah 29:4).
History
says the Babylonians defeated Judah and destroyed Solomon’s temple. Babylon overwhelmed many ancient peoples,
Judah being just one. That’s the ‘objective’
historian’s assessment. By faith we know
the Babylonians who appeared to be so mighty were nothing more than tools God
used to get the attention of His people.
A century later those same Babylonians were be routed by Persia. Unwittingly, they served God’s purpose.
How
long would God’s people have to stay 1000’s of miles from home, in exile among
godless heathens? In the letter he sent,
Jeremiah told the people not to listen to the prophets who promised exile would
be short and they’d be home quickly.
Jeremiah was no second Moses telling the foreign king to “Let my people
go.” His message was very different.
“Build
houses and live them.” How long does it
take to build a house? “Plant gardens
and eat what they produce.” Ok, we’ll be
here at least an entire growing cycle.
What edible crops come to harvest the quickest? “Take wives and have sons and
daughters.” Whoa! That’s a minimum of 9 months. Well maybe the growing of the crops and the
building of the house and the gestation period can all overlap.
“Take
wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your
daughters in marriage that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there and
do not decrease” (Jer. 29:6). This exile
will last until you become grandparents.
Grandparents are not mentioned much in the Bible. Lifespans weren’t what they are now. People often died before they ever became
grandparents. How long with the exile
last? Your entire life.
God
did not create Israel or Judah for the purpose of rejecting Him. God did not set up Babylon to be an imperial
power that ravaged and enslaved her enemies.
God doesn’t cause human beings to be evil to each other. God gives us free will. Wonder why evil has run amuck in the
world? Remember, God allows humans being
to choose his way or their own way. When,
in the flesh, they choose to reject Him, God allows the consequences to play
out.
However,
God also works in the brokenness of the world to save it; to save all of
us. God didn’t create the evil
conditions, but God doesn’t abandon us to evil either. God uses exile as the moment He begins
creating something new.
We
exist to live in relationships of love with God and each other. We don’t have what God intends for us right
now, in the world as it is, fallen in sin, and certainly people who don’t know
Jesus are not living the life God intends for them. So, God places us – his church - in the midst
of the world’s pain as his agents pointing hurting, lost people to His
light. Our purpose is to go to before
God on behalf of our city, and to go to our city as agents of God’s
goodness. God has set us here for
everyone’s benefit.
The
entire story arc in the Old Testament flows from God leading Abraham to the
Land to flight from the Land during famine to Moses leading the people out of
Egypt back to the Land. It appears that
the land is at the center of the story, but that’s not the case. The holiest of moments come when Moses
receives God’s word for His people while they landlessly wander in the wilderness. The pinnacle of life with God in the Bible
story comes in the wilds of Sinai when all the people have is their complete
dependence on God. The Land is just a
fulfillment of God’s promise. God will
always make His word good, in any land, anywhere on earth.
Landholding
is rebellion against God, claiming for ourselves what God has given as a gift
of grace out of His generosity. Clinging
to the past or holding tight to the life we know and control – that’s idolatry. We think that past, known life is so great
that we forget to trust that God’s tomorrow is infinitely better than our
cherished yesterday. We put more faith
in what we know than in what God promises.
So,
God lets us fall into exile. God leads
us into the valley because God wants us to meet Him there. When we thought life was so good, or at least
understandable and manageable, we didn’t see God. We forgot we needed Him.
Land-loss
is whatever it is that you or I lose when we decide we will not look back to
the past or try to make our way to a past life.
What your life used to be;
what the church’s life used to be;
what the community used to be; we don’t
look back. Moving forward from the past and from the life we had, good or bad,
is an act of faith. Walter Brueggemann
writes, “Exile is the way to new life in new land. One can scarcely imagine a more radical, less
likely understanding of history. In New
Testament categories, death is the way to new life” (Luke 9:23-27; Romans
6:1-11).[i]
Last
week we took comfort in Lamentations 3 and the promise that God’s mercies are
new every morning. Even with new
mercies, we’re in exile, and that’s no accident. The only way for the people of God is the way
forward from right where we are. There’s
no going back, and when we truly understand what God has done in nailing our
sins to the cross and giving us new life in Christ, we won’t want to go
back. Made new in Christ, we embrace the
call to exile. We’re made for the Kingdom.
As we live our lives answering the exile call, God prepares us for our
eternal home, the one we’re missing so much right now, even if we don’t fully
understand it.
So,
if the world is broken and we’re called to live in the middle of the mess, what
do we do? Conveniently for us, Jeremiah
answers that question directly. Build
houses. Plant gardens. Get married.
Have families. Be rooted in the
world. Expand, do not decrease. Don’t sink into holy huddles praying for the
end of time. Live! We are active participants in the life of
Carrboro and Chapel Hill, Hillsboro and Pittsboro,Durham and Raleigh. We are God-worshiping Jesus followers who
live to draw others to Jesus.
But,
building, planting, and living daily life is just the beginning of how we
answer the call to exile. What else does
Jeremiah instruct? “Seek the welfare of
the city where I have sent you, and pray to the Lord on its behalf.”
HillSong
church, soon to be Hillside Church, seeks the welfare of the city. Physical disability makes life hard in ways
God did not intend. Jesus associated
physical pain and sickness with evil from Satan. Earlier this year, we built a ramp on
someone’s home. We plan to do similar
projects in the future. It was a
collaborative effort that resulted in a wheel-chair bound individual having an
easier time. We believe this contributes to our city’s wellbeing and our part
in story is an expression of our obedience to the God who is at work in exile.
More
recently, we opened a food pantry in our church because we believe hunger is
evil. No one in our city should have to
deal with food insecurity. Here in
exile, we want to show our neighbors that God cares about them. God wants all bellies to be filled. By hosting the food pantry, we join God where
God is at work.
Through
hospitality we seek the city’s welfare, whether hosting the food pantry, the
scout troop, the preschool, another church’s funeral service, or other groups
that come in. We welcome them with
friendliness as we share the message that we care.
In
addition to building, planting, and living, and seeking the wellbeing of the
city by joining God where God is at work in the city, Jeremiah says, “Pray to
the Lord on the city’s behalf.” Jeremiah
told the exiles to work for and pray for the very enemies who had dragged them
into exile. Jesus says the same
thing. “Love your enemies and pray for
those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).
The Jews in exile may have feared that the Babylonian God had defeated
Yahweh. Jeremiah exploded that reasoning. You’re
not in exile because God lost. You’re in
exile because God sent you there. God is
God in exile. God is God everywhere.
That
neighbor you cannot stand? Pray for
him. You’re both exiles. The president who makes your skin crawl,
either the current one, the previous one, or the next one? Pray for him (or her). Jeremiah’s call to prayer called on God’s
exiled people to care deeply about the “other” even though that other was also
“enemy.” Jesus extends that call to us. To meet God in exile, we have to plant
ourselves in exile, work for the good of the city, and pray for those around
us.
In
a couple of months, we become Hillside Church, a community that follows Jesus,
loves others, and shares hope. God has
given us a mission to bring people in our town to Him that they might know him,
turn to him in faith, and join us in the journey out of exile and to our true
home in his Kingdom. We’re planting our
church in exile as a step of faith, trusting we will meet God here and He will
lead us to where we need to be.
AMEN
[i]
Walter Brueggemann (1977),
The Land,
Fortress Press (Philadelphia), p.122.
