Exile: As Event and as Emotion

My home church is working through a preaching series on the big themes of Scripture, and one of the slightly less common themes chosen is that of “Exile” – which I get to preach on. It’s a fascinating topic. I’m planning to talk on two kinds of exile in the Bible. The first is the historic exile from around 586-536BCE after the collapse of the Southern Kingdom of Judah and the captivity in Babylon. The second is harder to pin down, but no less real. It is a sense of being in exile, that nagging feeling that you are being excluded or that you don’t really belong or that you are separated from the things that matter most to you. Both are real, and I thought I would use this blog to fill you in on where my mind has wandered as I have thought about this topic.

If you hear someone talk about “The Exile” in the Bible the chances are that they mean the 50 year period in Babylonian exile after the destruction of the Temple and the collapse of Jerusalem in 586BCE. It was a deeply traumatic period, though not the first experience of exile in Scripture. That comes with the exile from the Garden of Eden in Gen 3 – a very early introduction to the themes of paradise lost, exclusion, and disorientation.

But let’s think about the Babylonian exile. Many of the prophets warned of it, the Psalmists lament over it (most famously in Psalm 137), some biblical heroes are forged by it (Daniel) and the aftermath and recovery is explored in Ezra and Nehemiah.

At many levels the Babylonian exile deeply undermined the Jewish sense of identity at that time. If you had asked any Jew what made them special they would have answered:

1. We are the people who God rescued out of bondage in Egypt. So many passages in the Hebrew Bible begin with a recollection of the Exodus. It was the perpetual reminder to God’s people that when they were slaves, God intervened and rescued them from bondage. But this story now sounds hollow, because the God who rescued them back then, has now sent them into exile in Babylon. How can God’s rescued people again be in captivity, and who are they, if this first block of their identity is taken away?
2. We are God’s covenant people. God has entered into a special relationship with us, to be a light to the world and a blessing to all nations (Gen 12:3). But who will believe this now that we are in captivity? Rather than being a blessed people, it appears that we are a cursed people.
3. God gave us our land – a land flowing with milk and honey – but who will believe that now? The Northern Kingdom was conquered by the Assyrians back in 722BCE, and now the remnant Southern Kingdom has gone as well. The land we were given has been taken from us.
4. We have been called in to a special relationship with Yahweh. This is the one thing that remains – even in exile. The prophecy of Habakkuk is delivered shortly before the Babylonian conquest of Judah. Much of it reflects the people’s confusion as they think about their prophesied exile. After much arguing with God, the prophecy ends on a resigned, perhaps even trusting, note. Despite all that is about to take place, God can be trusted. Hab 3:17-19 expresses it poignantly: “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s he makes me tread on high places.” Put differently, even when everything fails, the people of God are still the people of God, and that is a source for praise.

If you want to know how bad the exile was, read Ps 137 – it’s the one where the Psalmist famously praises those who will one day smash Babylonian babies on rocks (v8). It is perhaps the angriest and most despairing of all the Psalms. The journey into exile was indescribably bleak, and this Psalm captures that horrific journey.

But here’s the thing. Though exile starts with such angst and pain, after a while a settled peace descends. The people in exile are still the people of God. Because they are the people of God, they are to bless those around them – because that’s what the people of God do. The words of Jer 29:4-7 come bubbling up: ⁴ This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵ “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. ⁶ Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. ⁷ Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

This is the people of God difference… Even in exile, they seek the peace and prosperity of the city. Talk about being counter cultural. We sometimes think that Jesus was the first to teach us to love and bless our enemy, and he certainly did take it to a new level. However, he was echoing an earlier thread, that the people of God are chosen so that all the nations of the world can be blessed (Gen 12:3). Even in exile, we are blessed to bless.

There is of course an irony here. The people of God seek the blessing of the city of exile knowing that ultimately it is another city that they are seeking. Heb 13:14 puts it hauntingly “For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”

If that’s a comment about the historic exile, what about our current sense of being in exile – the feeling that we are far from home, that we don’t fully belong? It’s worth pondering C.S.Lewis’ words: “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” (Mere Christianity) It’s not that we miserably skulk our way through each day. To the contrary, life brings us much delight and joy – for assuredly God made a good world, and even our best efforts to distort it have not succeeded in destroying it. The finger prints of God remain written large over all of Creation – and be it after swimming in the ocean, climbing a mountain (OK, perhaps just a hill), or simply sitting under a tree, it is easy to praise the goodness of God. Yet even as we do we know that this is simply “a foretaste of glory divine” (to quote some of the lovely words of the old hymn Blessed Assurance). Theologians often talk of “the already and the not yet” – we already have forgiveness, the indwelling of God’s Spirit, the community of the Church, the direction of Scripture, the hope of resurrection… and yet… and yet, as Jesus said, “Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matt 6:34). We are not fully home yet. And because of this, we sometimes feel a haunting sense of exile – of not fully belonging, of being out of sorts with a world that delights in revenge, and endless competition, and material shallowness, and relationships that don’t seem to amount to much. It’s a world where we are called to march to a different tune – even though being out of step feels – well it feels like being out of step…

We sense we are in exile, because the people of God have always been invited to pray the closing words of the Bible – Maranatha – Come Lord Jesus (Rev 22:20). And as we do, the very closing words of the Bible settle on us as a benediction, “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.” (Rev 22:21).

Nice chatting…

Photo by Ahmed akacha: https://www.pexels.com/photo/young-girl-playing-air-bubbles-10629444/

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