In Exile

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We’re in a place of disruption and loss.  That is always the way God works in terms of creating something new.  The primary thing is to say to people, don’t panic about the sense of homelessness that you feel.  Don’t panic about the kind of bewilderment that you feel.  That can actually be a sign of grace.”

          Russell Moore

 

Christianity is a religion of exile, not domination.  Christianity is designed to be peculiar, not ordinary; counter-cultural, not consumerist.  “The church would be more faithful, more distinctly Christ’s people, if we actually understood that we don’t live in the promised land; we live in exile... what seems to define a great deal of the American church is fear… What if the crisis of this moment is actually a deep invitation to a new way of understanding our location? Our identity?.. Today, may we be faithful exiles.  For it’s that which will reveal the reality of the love of God who knows and sees people in exile, to restore and remake them to be the light and salt that can do as exiles what only we can do.” 

          Mark Labberton ( a friend and fellow Whitman grad and Presbyterian) quoted

          By Jonathan Rauch in Cross Purposes.

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“This land is your land, this land is my land”

It may be

But it sure doesn’t feel like it.

 

I don’t feel like I am at home

I am surrounded not by paradise, but by

Wilderness

That place of dryness and danger

And endless nothing

 

I am surrounded by ICE and by blind hate

By deception and denial

By resentment, rage, and retribution

 

I feel like an exile!

Thank God

 

For God is doing a new thing!

And no

I can’t see it

Not yet, perhaps never

 

But I know

That even though right now

Good is bad and bad is good

 

Right now as people strive for dominance

Strive to oppress and minimize others

Right now, as injustice rolls like a mighty river

And fear like a never-ending spring

 

But I know

Even as I wander in exile

No longer recognizing the place (country) in which I live

 

That God is

That God is love

That God is present,

 

And that even though I feel

Lost and bewildered

Love is present, among us and in us

And love will win, eventually

 

We are in exile

But we do our best work in the wilderness

As we participate with God

In making a way

A highway for love, and righteousness, justice, and compassion

 

We must remember we are exiles.

For only then

Can we bring newness and love

Into this world

Only then can we keep moving

Toward home