The Purpose of Exile (With Video)
The Purpose of Exile
Offered in worship on March 29th, 2020
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-13
Isaiah 40:1-4
John 14:1-7
Spanning 2,448 miles, The American Highway, or Route 66 was one of the original highways in the US Highway system. The road originally ran from Chicago through Missouri, Kansas, OK, TEX, NM and Arizona before ending in LA.
Maybe you’re familiar with the song “Get your kicks on Route 66,” maybe you’ve travelled the road yourself in a cross country adventure. Maybe you studied the famous highway when you read the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck or maybe you’ve seen the iconic road sign on a retail clothing brand.
There is a sense of freedom in the open road. A full tank of gas, a map and highlighted route, a packed cooler full of lunches and a great playlist. The only possible outcome is adventure.
A road trip is a hallmark of American life. It doesn’t have to be cross country or take a long time, but the freedom to get in your car and drive with the wind at your back, this is an iconic emblem in our culture. I want you to take a minute and imagine a road trip of your own. Paul and I rented a mustang convertible when we were dating and drove down the west coast of Florida together, stopping to dip our feet in the water and bask in the sunshine. As a college student, I was part of a group that made a yearly 16 hour trek to a friend's home in Hilton Head. I clearly remember that we made big poster boards and put them in our windows with the words “Christian Women looking for love.” We enjoyed the honks of those who passed by as we sang loudly to our mix tapes. Yes mix tapes.
But somehow, in this moment of our national identity, it feels as though there are roadblocks at every turn. Every open road is closed. The road to friends. The road to family. The road to vacations, to beaches, to gatherings. While we can sneak in a little respite here and there, our identity as people who can hop in the American automobile and go anywhere they want and do anything they want, this feeling is absent and our lives are greeted instead by closures and cancellations, cut backs and layoffs.
I was struck by the words of Isaiah that I have read so many times in my life,
In the wilderness make a way for the Lord, prepare a highway for God in the desert.
How on earth did the biblical writers know about highways?
the Hebrew Mesliah, highway, translates to pathway, railway, or trajectory.
And the people in the book of Isaiah were a people who had been in exile.
People who had been living apart from their own land, who had been deported, sent away, exiled.
To be an exile is to be in a state of being barred from one’s own native country and for the Israelites their season of exile lasted around seventy years. Seventy years of not feeling at home, not feeling free, not feeling the wind at their back and the sun on their shoulders. Not feeling as though they could enjoy the life that they loved with the people that they loved. For many people, seventy years is an entire lifetime.
It is in these circumstances that the prophet calls the people to prepare a highway for the Lord. To make a space for God. To clear their own route 66 through the difficulties of exile.
A space where the mountains will be brought low and the valleys will be lifted up and the rugged places will be made smooth and the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all people will see it together.
You may recognize these texts and our opening hymn as advent offerings. These Isaiah words are words that John the Baptist uses as he beckons us Prepare the Way for the Lord and these are the words that we use as we longingly wait for the Christ Child to be born, Come, Come, Thou Long expected Jesus.
Perhaps several weeks of working at home and not really ever changing out of my pajama pants has caused me to lose sight of what season we are in. Surely, you must agree that it is difficult to know which end is up, what day it is or to see any sort of order in the midst of these days.
One friend posted yesterday on social media:
For those that need it, today is the blursday the fortyteenth of Marpillay.
It’s as if someone took all of our calendars and plans and vacations and maps and lesson plans and ripped them up and threw all of the pieces up in the air.
It fills me with a mixture of dread that nothing seems routine or dependable, and yet there is also a feeling of joy, that we are somehow free from the rigid boundaries that keep us from exploring new ways of living, new ways of loving. Free from the rat race that characterizes many of our lives.
So many of my friends have shared that this is the first time that they can remember in years that they ate dinner together as a family every night for one week in a row.
Many others have shared that they are reading the books they always wanted to read, enjoying fresh air, playing board games and going for walks.
Ecclesiastes tells us there is a season to weep, a season to laugh a season to mourn and a season to dance, but it feels like we are living out all of the seasons all of the time. Our learning curve is growing exponentially as we learn to exist virtually. Our capacity to figure out this new way of living is stretched every day in every way.
We might all ask ourselves, what season are living in?
For some it may be a season of real and tangible fear and anxiety. We do not know how the spread of the Corona Virus will affect us or our loved ones. The death tolls keep rising. The disease keeps spreading. It is indeed a scary, anxiety producing time.
For some it may be a season of sabbath. Permission to step off the treadmill of too much, too busy, too chaotic.
For some it may be a season of joy. Maybe this is the first time you can remember that you talked on the phone to your mother every single day or the first time you decided to color with your toddler in a long time.
Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a season for all of these feelings, all of these emotions and that God is holding us together as our minds race erratically between guilt and hope, loneliness and cyber connectivity, between enjoying a slower place and desiring to return to normalcy.
I think many people in our traditional churches enjoy the seasons of the church calendar, as do I. We feel comfort and stability as we light the advent candles and we find a deep and abiding peace when we sing Silent Night. Similarly we experience a sense of journey in Lent, a sense that personal sacrifice brings us closer to Jesus. In Advent we long for the new birth of Jesus in our lives and in Lent we long for the new life, the promise and the hope of eternity in resurrection.
But as we are estranged from our own lives, exiled from our normal, unable to hop in the car and visit with friends and family and unable to feel free in our comings and goings, we have a great opportunity to live in to our longing for Jesus.
Because we are a people of Exile. This is our story. Not just in these contemporary days of illness and death but from the beginning of time.
Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden. Noah spent 40 days separated from his community and his country as God led the people to a new beginning. Abraham was called to pack up his belongings and leave his homeland. Moses spent years exiled and wandering and looking for the promised land. And once in the promised land, the Israelites were sent into Babylon, far from home.
But here’s the thing, people of God…
We can be in exile even when we are not on a grand journey in a far away land. Because exile is that feeling, that disconcerting feeling that we carry. It is the longing for home that lives deep within us. It is the reminder that this world that we inhabit will never be our true home and it will never provide us with true happiness and it will never, ever lead us to eternal life. It will always leave us wanting.
So as we wait for the days when toilet paper is available by the 64 pack and movie theaters are sold out and proms and playdates and parties are once again the norm, let us remember that it is here in the wilderness, here in the desert that God calls us to build that highway. To carve out the pathway in our lives that will keep us on track, that will guide us to Jesus, that will point our lives toward our one true savior.
Because the purpose of exile is not to return to the way things were. The purpose of exile is to return to Jesus.
I remember years ago thinking that it would be wonderful if I had a GPS that would give me directions from God. A guiding and navigating system that would give me in real time, a little animatronic yell when I was off course. Something that would say, make a U turn as quickly as possible. Something that would remind me that it was time to recalculate. Something that would save me from driving head on toward an accident.
If we had such a device, would we listen?
These are real days of waiting for Jesus. These are advent days. These are lent days. These are exile days. These are the real days when we must be on our knees begging our God to save lives from disease and despair and destruction. These are the days when we must intercede on behalf of the poor and the sick. These are the days when we must recognize that working from home is a privilege that is not afforded to all, that hand sanitizer or even soap and water, are not afforded to all, even having a home to stay in is not a possibility for many of our most vulnerable.
In these days of exile from our normalcy we must use our time and resources to pray fervently, but also to lift up those in the valleys. Just last week, the local band The Homestead Collective hosted a fundraiser for hourly workers at a local restaurant who had been laid off and many of our members got busy making masks for medical personnel, but there are many suffering in our own community, many for whom this valley could be so difficult to navigate The Breathing Room, a cancer relief agency, had to cancel it’s biggest fundraiser, and millions of teachers in America have to figure out how to teach a class of thirty students with their own children underfoot. The valleys and the mountains are real for us and they are real for those in our communities, but Isaiah calls us and directs us to make a pathway, a highway, a trajectory for Jesus right in the middle of all of this.
A pathway, a highway, a trajectory that humbles the high and lifts up the low.
So what is it that the prophet is saying to you. What door is Jesus knocking on? What has changed in this forced sabbath that is actually a blessing to you?
In the wilderness, in the exile we can take a deep breath and take account of what the still small voice is saying to us now that we are finally paying attention.
Two years ago at the Grace Women’s Retreat we studied flourishing. We focused on times in our lives when we felt God’s presence and when we felt alive.
I wrote in my journal that I missed doing art projects with my children. I used to do crafts and games for every holiday and sometimes for no reason at all and in my busyness I had lost this meaningful connection, but yesterday we painted an entire sliding glass door to look like a stained glass window (with washable paint!). The window has a large cross in the middle for the sun to shine through clearly. And as I sat with them while they painted, I whispered, I miss you guys.
God is calling us in this mixed up, upside down season to set our lives on a different trajectory, to clear out the brush that has been creeping in on the highway that leads to Jesus.
I am always amazed by engineers. And I know we have quite a few here. But when I witness a new highway being built, especially one with multiple onramps and off ramps, I am amazed at all of the planning and care and detail that was taken to give those on the journey the route to their destination.
God is crafting a new highway in your heart in this very moment, my friends. But here’s the thing. Some things need to be torn down in order to make space for what God is doing in your life. Some things need to be cleared away. Some roads need to be discontinued and some new things need to be put in place.
This time away from our normal, this time in our wilderness will seem as though it is lasting forever. We will find ourselves asking like young children, are we there yet?
But the truth is, that if we arrive before we’ve learned the lessons of wilderness of exile, we won’t be able to fully enjoy the joy that awaits us in the promised land beyond.
There is a wisdom we will need for our journey that we can only learn right here. There is a strength and a skill that we will need in the future that we can develop right now. Allow yourself to be open to what God is teaching you and do not discard it when the season changes ( McClaren).
Because Jesus came to earth to walk in this exile with us, with you and he has shown us the way, his way, so us his way, a way of of love, of salvation, of eternity.
Who knows how long this will take? It will take exactly how long it needs to. But I charge you and I challenge you to listen to God’s leading so that the highway in your heart might be made clear, because the path of exile does not lead you back to where you came from , life will not look as though it did three weeks ago, but hopefully, prayerfully, your journey will take a new course, it will have a new map, a new mixtape and a new sense that indeed the wind, the breath, the presence of the comforter of the Holy Spirit, will be at your back, not for the sake of freedom on the road, but for the sake of the freedom of your soul.
Amen.
McClaren, Brian. We Make the Road by Walking
Comments
Post a Comment