The Old South Church in Boston
In Exile, Joy?
Sermon by Jennifer Mills-Knutsen
October 10, 2004
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 2 Timothy 2:8-13
This weekend marks the four hundred and twelfth anniversary of Columbus’ landing in the Caribbean. Debate continues about how to mark the occasion—with celebrations of discovery and the promise of the Americas, or mourning over the displacement, disease and death of millions of indigenous peoples. But whether you see Columbus himself as hero or villain or, probably most accurately, somewhere in between, we must surely agree that his voyage holds place as both the historic and the symbolic catalyst for massive migrations impacting four continents. With this intercontinental interaction in mind, you might even describe Columbus’s encounter with the peoples of the Caribbean as an ancestor of “globalization.”
So it seemed appropriate to seize this occasion as an opportunity to worship with songs and prayers from our brothers and sisters around the world. These words and images remind us of our connection with Christians across the globe, perhaps reminding us of our own heritage, whatever that might be. But these global prayers and songs also act in another way upon us—they serve to make the familiar, unfamiliar; to make the routine seem strange. The Lord’s Prayer, when spoken in the words of the Maori tribes, the indigenous peoples of New Zealand, retains echoes of the comfortable images we know and love, yet it also seems startlingly foreign, even alien. It seemed appropriate to me to evoke in us that feeling of strangeness, of foreignness, to begin our reflections on today’s scripture. Because our topic for today, swirling about in the readings from the New Testament and Old, in the reminders of Columbus and indigenous peoples and global Christianity, our topic for today is exile. And exile is not an idea or a concept or a metaphor—exile is an experience.
Think of the native peoples of this hemisphere. After Columbus, the indigenous peoples of the Americas found their homes overtaken by new settlers and explorers and treasure hunters, and they were forced to move. From the time of Columbus on, there was a domino effect across North America, as the movements of one tribe sent them tumbling into the territory of another, forcing wave after wave of migration. By the end of the 18th century not one North American tribe remained in its familiar territory. While the Native Americans may have held on to their families, they lost familiar ways of life, and were forever removed from their homelands. And their connection to God, the Great Spirit, was also jeopardized, for the Great Spirit was known to them in the earth and the sky, the land and the animals. When forced out of the land, the alienation extended to their connection with the Divine.
This is strikingly similar to the experience of the Jewish community in today’s scripture. Five hundred and eighty-seven years before the birth of Christ, the Babylonian Empire overtook Jerusalem, and as part of a plan to quell uprisings and cripple revolt, the conquerors first destroyed the Temple, the heart of Judaism and the home of God, then they expelled from Jerusalem all the leaders of the Jewish people—religious leaders, political and social leaders, artisans and business leaders. The Jewish people were forcibly separated, one from another, cast out from their homeland. They lost the olive groves and the vineyards that had been tended by their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. Worse yet, they lost the Promised Land that God had delivered to them after the exodus from Egypt. They were forced to live right in the heart of the city of their enemies. The community was alienated from home, separated from family and friends, distanced from all that is familiar. In the Holy City of Jerusalem, they had built the Temple for God’s residence, and everyone knew where to go to hear God and be heard by God. But now they were in exile, and God seemed to have vanished with the Temple, another casualty of the displacement. Exile is more than simply the disruptive journey of refugees from one land to another, exile is the loss of home, the loss of one’s place in the world, the loss of one’s dreams and promises for the future, and the loss of God’s presence.
That’s why it is such a powerful metaphor in the scriptures. Who among us has not at some time or another experienced alienation from God, or the loss of a dream, or the estrangement from our home? It is part of the fabric of human living that we repeatedly experience loss. We grow up and lose our innocence. We age and lose our abilities. We mature and no longer fit in our place in the world. We love, and death steals from us our beloved. We change and lose our intimacy with God.
Frederick Buechner describes listening to a sermon about the brokenness of sin and need for repentance, and his yearning for the preacher to instead speak to the brokenness and loss of exile. He writes, “Why not ask us if there is any one of us who does not feel the sadness and loneliness and lostness of being separated from where we know we truly belong, even if we don't know how to get there. As if there is anyone who does not yearn more than anything else to be able to find home.” All of us have been strangers at some time or another. All of us know the trauma of exile, the grief of loss, the heartbreak of separation from family, from home, from God. As Walter Brueggemann writes, “Exile is more than geographical. Exile is when old securities are gone and that is where we are all living these days.”
The words of scripture today are Jeremiah’s message to the exiles. This is wisdom for those whose lives have been shattered, even if there are no broken pieces to gather together. What do you say to people who have lost everything? There is no end in sight for the exile—how can he sustain them far from home? What words of insight can Jeremiah offer that might speak to the agony of separation? “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. Take [husbands and] wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.”
These words seem so simple and wise, yet still strange and unbelievable. There is nothing magical in Jeremiah’s prescription. He holds out no promise of God’s vindication of our suffering, announcement of God’s triumphant return in flame or wind. This is not the exodus, when God delivers dramatic freedom and liberation. This is the exile, and God says, “If your home has been taken away from you, build a new home. If your land has been seized, claim new land by planting and tending new gardens. If your family has been sundered, grow a new family and community right where you are.”
I find myself asking, “where do you find the strength?” If all has been lost, it’s not as though we can just pick up and start all over again—how do you gather the resolve to believe that there can again be life after the exile? Where does the hope come from? It lies in the last line of Jeremiah’s instructions: “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.” This seems like the most incomprehensible instruction of all—to pursue the welfare of our enemies’ cities, to pour our energies into the strength and well-being of an alien land and strange people. But these words contain the most important message of all—pray. Pray for the welfare of the city. And on that word, “pray,” the entirety of their hope hinges. For if God is calling them to pray from the land of the exile, it means that God can hear their prayers even from the exile. If God hears, they are not alone.
God is not tied to the Temple in Jerusalem, but God can go with the people, even into exile. God does not reside solely in one place, so that those who are lost must stumble about to find their way—but God hears our prayers from wherever we may find ourselves. God is free to do whatever God chooses, and that means God is not constrained by location.
This is the same understanding captured in Paul’s letter to Timothy, where he reports on the harsh sufferings and persecutions he has faced, but says, “The word of God is not chained.” “The word of God is not chained.” “If we are faithless, God remains faithful—for God cannot deny Godself.” Our hope in the exile rests on God’s freedom, the freedom to pursue us, the freedom to hear our prayers, the freedom to break every chain that would keep us from intimacy with God’s own self. We may not know where God resides, and while in exile we may not feel God’s presence among us, but we have been assured that God will dwell where God will dwell, and even our farthest exile will not remove us from the Holy Presence. And if God’s presence has not abandoned us, there is something we can build upon. If God dwells with us, there is always hope for the future, even in the exile. If God hears our prayers, then the images from Jeremiah that imagine a future with community, land, gardens and homes just might be a possibility.
Does this still seem too distant? Is this just another trite preacher’s call to pray and trust in God? Don’t take it from me—I confess writing this particular sermon I felt in exile from God a good bit of the time. But hear the witness of another exiled community, one much closer to us in time and place.
One of the most brutal experiences of exile in history is the legacy of enslaved Africans. These African slaves were forcibly ripped from their homes and brought to the Americas in chains. They endured the most wretched, violent and despairing conditions imaginable in the Middle Passage, shackled in the belly of ships for months on end, death, disease, starvation all around. Those who survived the passage only faced additional hardship, as they were bought and sold at auction. Slaves watched their families torn apart forever. Their own language was stolen from them, when they were separated from kindred and spoke no English or Spanish. A continent away from home, chained together, forced to work in a foreign land—this is exile at its worst. Who would have the strength to stay alive, much less to thrive? How can one ever recover hope is such a place?
And yet, and yet. While bodies can be beaten and shackled, the word of God could not be chained. The slave communities heard the message of the Christian God even through the poisoned words of the slaveowners, and found there the promise that God heard their prayers. Hear these words from the narrative of Octavia Rogers Albert: “when old marster used to be so hard on me it seemed I'd have to give up sometimes and die. But then the Spirit of God would come to me and fill my heart with joy. It seemed the more trials I had the more I could pray.” It seems beyond our understanding how one could discover hope in such circumstances, much less joy. But we hear it again and again in the songs of the black community, from slavery onward: “Over my head, I hear music in the air, there must be a God somewhere.” “By and by, when the morning comes, when the saints of God are gathered home, we’ll tell the story how we’ve overcome; for we’ll understand it better by and by.” And my favorite: “Deep in my heart, I DO believe, we shall overcome someday.”
The word of God cannot be chained. The God of Israel is not bound by the borders of any nation or the walls of any temple. There is no prison that can shut it out, no exile that can escape from God’s realm. And if God is there, God is free to break every yoke. If God is there, we can again find our way home. If God is there, hope is not lost. So with that small seed of hope, let us plant gardens. Let us build homes for ourselves and for the other exiles we meet. Let us unite in families and communities. Can there be joy in exile? If God is there, anything is possible.
The Old South Church in Boston
645 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02116
(617) 536-1970