Finding Home in Exile - Part 1

"Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:  Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. ... seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare."  ~ Jeremiah 29: 4-7

For many of us, the concept of exile resonates deep in our bones.  It captures all the various experiences of feeling off-kilter with the world around us, of being rooted in place in the midst of a bustling crowd or trying to move in a world frozen in place.  It strings together those sometimes half-noticed moments when our perspective seems out of joint with those of the people around us and we begin to wonder if we're a little crazy or if we're really living in the same world as everyone else.  It affirms the sense of trying to translate something untranslatable and living alone in a place where no one else speaks the native language of our heart.  It bears the feeling of being banished from home and the impossibility of returning, of abandonment, rejection, and non-belonging.  The concept of exile gives all these experiences meaning, and weaves them into a coherent narrative with a name and vocabulary.

The language of exile has often been used to describe the experiences of minority and marginalized people of all kinds.  It naturally applies to the life of immigrants as they endeavor to make a new life for themselves in a new country, and perhaps a little less obviously but no less seriously to their children, who grow up as a part of their family's new culture but acutely attuned to the challenges and values of their parents.  Minorities, whether they be of the racial, religious, gendered, sexually oriented, or economic status sort, have also expressed their encounters of life amid a different majority in the terms of exile.  Activists, leaders, and change-agents -- people trying to reach for a world that doesn't quite yet exist and helping others learn to imagine it -- often experience the loneliness and sense of displacement of exile too.

Christians, of course, have a long history with exile, and have woven its language into our narrative, liturgy, and theology.  Perhaps the central story of our Hebrew Scriptures is of the Exodus, where God rescues the Israelite people from slavery and exile in Egypt, draws them into a new kind of in-between exile as they wander in the wilderness relinquishing their former identity, so that eventually God can establish them in a new home with a new identity as God's chosen people.  Later, when God's people stray away from, or perhaps never fully claim, that new identity, God once again sends them into exile with the exhortation of the prophet Jeremiah found at the beginning of this post.  At the very crux of the Scriptural account, God voluntarily chooses exile, setting aside the privilege of the divine life to join us in our human experience in Christ -- which ultimately leads to the extreme limit of exile, with God's own self-abandonment of Christ on the cross.  And as Christ's followers, we too are swept along in this exile-making journey.

But though in our history we see God lead us into exile time and time again, we also see that God leads us through exile to a new -- though undeniably different -- home.  The Israelites inherit the Promised Land, Christ is raised from the dead, we receive the promise of new life (as undefined as that may be).  As unsettling as exile might be, perhaps -- in some of its forms -- it may inspire the creative tension we need to receive what God has in store for us...

In what ways are you experiencing exile?
And what might this reveal about the new "home" God is preparing for you?

This is a 3-part series, continue reading for the rest of the story:
Finding Home in Exile - Part 1
Finding Home in Exile - Part 2
Finding Home in Exile - Part 3