September 4, 2011 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Living in the Midst of Exile

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 66:1–12
Jeremiah 29:1–14

O God, full of compassion, I commit and commend myself to you, in whom I am, and live, and know. Be the goal of my pilgrimage and my rest by the way. Let my soul take refuge, from the crowding turmoil of worldly thought, beneath the shadow of your wings. Let my heart, this sea of restless waves, find peace in you, O God. Amen.

Augustine of Hippo
(354−430)

On most days, I don’t spend much time thinking about it. That’s because I’ve become accustomed to how things are. I’m no longer as surprised by the news of natural disasters as I once was. The news of those disasters comes so frequently now. My expectations for the financial news, hopes for economic recovery, have been lowered. On this Labor Day, when unemployment hovers just under 10 percent, I know on one hand how many people are suffering—the unemployed and the working poor. But on the other hand, my ears have become accustomed to hearing 10 percent. Like so many of you, I’ve been disappointed by what I’ve observed of our political process in recent months, too. But even that doesn’t hurt as badly as it once did.

When I stop long enough to take stock of our nation’s climate and the problems throughout the world, I know that many days of the last several years have been brokenhearted days for so many of us. When I think of the pictures I’ve seen on the news of people who have lost everything because of a flood or a hurricane or an earthquake or when I talk to a recent college graduate with mounds of loans and yet still no chance of securing a job or when I realize again that our country is still involved in two wars, I know these have been brokenhearted days.

Next week, we will mark ten years since 9/11. It hardly seems possible. But the other day, as the pastors and our music director here gathered to help think through some of the details of next Sunday evening’s interfaith service, a service of remembrance, to be held in this sanctuary, I was surprised by the feeling of sadness that came to the surface for me and by the feeling in my gut—a feeling that always tells me there is emotion that has surfaced beyond what I’m able to express. My nervous stomach that afternoon was telling me that somehow my body had recorded the anxiety and horror that came from that day almost ten years ago. There has been a fair amount of brokenheartedness for all of us over the last ten years.

The recipients of Jeremiah’s letter were brokenhearted people also. In Eugene Peterson’s commentary called Run with the Horses, Peterson says, “Israel was taken into exile in 587 BC. The people were uprooted from the place in which they were born. The land, in which their identity as a people of God had been formed, was gone. In the new land, Babylon, customs were strange, the language incomprehensible, and the landscape oddly flat and featureless. All the familiar landmarks were gone.”

The prophet Jeremiah sent a letter to the elders and the priests and the prophets and all the people taken into exile by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. The letter was addressed to folks who had been forced from their homes, who had been uprooted and moved, who had witnessed the destruction and desecration and looting of their beloved temple, the place they believed was God’s home. They were captive in Babylon, exiled, and wondering when, if ever, they’d be able to go back home. They were wondering when, if ever, life would be normal once again. Isn’t that what you’re wondering? Or if you have stopped wondering that—when will things be normal again—then isn’t that the question you once asked, before you got used to it all?

The essential meaning of exile is that we have found ourselves in places we wouldn’t have chosen for ourselves; we are where we don’t want to be. We’d like to push the rewind button and get back to a different time. A more peaceful existence, a better economy, the glory days of the United States. But that’s not where we are, and as much as we’d like to be there, we can’t be, because we’ve been exiled from that place. The landmarks are different. Everything feels strange.

The beauty of this ancient text we call the Holy Bible is that it gives us a connection with our ancestors of faith, tells us their story, and reminds us that our exile isn’t the first. The beauty of this book is that it helps us cling to the hope of what God has done in the past. We can read of times past and exiles of other eras and be reminded that an exile has the potential to be the matrix in which the hope of God is most powerfully and characteristically at work, where God’s faithful promises work a profound newness.

God powerfully at work? God’s faithful promises working a profound newness? Could it be so for us? Could it be so for us—in this exile? “For surely I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord, “plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

Jeremiah’s words were intended to give counsel to the exiles, to help them find ways to live faithfully and hopefully in the midst of exile. Jeremiah’s words are intended also for us today, 2,600 years later. They are intended to help us find ways to live faithfully and hopefully no matter what state of exile we experience, whether it’s the sudden fear that our country is no longer safe and liberty is threatened; whether it is loss of job or loved one; whether it’s the new news of an illness or the unfamiliar territory of caring for an aging parent or a special needs child; whether it’s the isolation and loneliness of advocating for a marginalized group; or whether it’s just the uneasy uncertainty of the future. Exile is being where we don’t want to be.

How do we live faithfully and hopefully no matter what our exile, no matter where we are?

Through Jeremiah’s letter, God gives instruction. The first is this: Live fully in the present and get on with life.

False prophets had been making their living by telling the people of the exile that they’d be home soon. And as long as they held onto that false dream and romanticized about returning to what once was, they had no motivation to invest in the present. Jeremiah says, “Build houses, live in them. Plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry. Have children. Invest in relationships.”

According to Eugene Peterson, Jeremiah’s letter is a rebuke and a challenge. Jeremiah may as well be saying, “Quit sitting around feeling sorry for yourselves.” “The aim of the person of faith is not to be as comfortable as possible, but to live as deeply and thoroughly as possible—to deal with the reality of life, to discover truth, to create beauty, to act out of love” (Run with the Horses, p. 152). Comfort and safety in our surroundings is not necessarily part of the deal.

The only place we have in which to be human is where we are right now. The only opportunity we have to live by faith is in the circumstances we are provided this very day: the houses we live in, the families we find ourselves in, the jobs we’ve been given, the churches we’re a part of, the communities in which we live, or the people in our lives when jobs or houses or health elude us. Live fully in the present and get on with the lives you’ve been given.

I remember a woman I once met at Rush Hospital in the Bowman Center, the place reserved for older adults. She was in a wheelchair; her legs had been amputated. My job was to facilitate a worship service that Sunday morning on that floor and others. I asked her the question, “How are your spirits?” I have never forgotten her reply. She opened her eyes and a huge smile came across her face. “I am just thankful God opened my eyes this morning so I could be here.” A double amputee, in a wheelchair, in the Bowman Center for the Elderly. “I’m just thankful God opened my eyes this morning so I could be here.” Live fully in the present and get on with the lives you’ve been given.

God’s second instruction in Jeremiah’s letter is this: “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.” The exiles, having relied on false promises delivered by false prophets, had been given no motivation to move beyond their insular, cultic, nationalistic ways. God tells them, get to know your new surroundings. Pray for the welfare of those who have exiled you, who have caused the changes in your life. For your welfare depends on their welfare.

In today’s context, what would that mean, to pray for the welfare of those who have exiled us or you personally? I suppose the first task would be for us to determine who or what has caused our exile, caused us to be living in a land that seems foreign to what we expected. God’s instruction to the exiled is to “get to know those who exile you.” Endeavor to at least see what it is that is causing someone on the other side of where you are to think the way they do. The command to the exiles, virtually trapped in Babylon, was startling. Instead of focusing on the temple, instead of focusing on what had been lost and destroyed, instead of focusing on getting back to Jerusalem, to the past, to the way things had been, Jeremiah says look around, pray for those in your midst, pray for the welfare of Babylon, for the people with whom you disagree. Seek shalom. Seek peace.

Live fully in the present and get on with your lives. Pray for the welfare of those who have exiled you. “For surely I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord,” plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

Finally Jeremiah says, Look for God everywhere. The Lord said, “Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me: if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord.”

Look for God everywhere. I am reminded, after those horrible days that followed 9/11, of the photos that made their way into the media—one in particular, an image of the cross fashioned of steel beams left standing in the rubble of Ground Zero. It was an image of hope that emerged in a very dark period—steel beams rising out of the mass of rubble, beams that formed the shape of a cross with nothing else around it. A sign of hope that God was everywhere. Seek and search and God will let you find him.

Look for God everywhere. In scripture. In the eyes of a friend. In the people with whom you disagree. In the child who drives you crazy or the aging parent who tries your patience. Look for God in your struggles and in your horrific challenges. Look for God everywhere, because God wants to be found.

Live fully in the present and get on with your lives. Pray for the welfare of those who exile you, because in their welfare is your welfare. Look for God everywhere. “For surely I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

The God who has given us these instructions so long ago from the mouth of the prophet is also the God we know in Jesus Christ. It is the God who enters this world, the one who engages with our lives, as foreign as they may be from the life God would choose for us. It is the God who came despite all of our failings or missteps or cluelessness and taught and healed—taught and healed in the midst of opposition and threat, loved and included and invited despite what was normal, and lived and prayed and loved on behalf of humanity, beyond cultural boundaries and beyond differences in sexual orientation and despite political leanings and national identity. These instructions are the instructions that have come from a God who, even when exiled on the cross, continued to pray for those who caused his exile. Live fully in the present, today, in the best way you know how. Pray for the welfare of those who exile you, because in their welfare is your welfare. Look for God everywhere. For surely I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. Alleluia. Amen.