that's not exile

Exile invites me to humbly bless my adopted home through a life established in courageous and irresistible love.

Today I visit my previous home church for the first time in 3 and a half years, and the pastor speaks about exile.

Oh the irony.

I love being able to connect with some old friends, but it is also hard.

Hard to be in the place associated with a deeply challenging season in my life.  A season where I dug in and refused to distance myself from the people I love, and as I did so there was a quiet and gradual distancing from the leadership of the church.

I may have it wrong, but I suspect my love for my gay son caused some reluctance for the church leaders to acknowledge my ministry among the church family at the time.

An exile, of sorts.  

As the pastor steps into the pulpit, an opportunity arises to be invited into the experience of God's people -- but it feels more like a mechanism to present the man's interpretation of culture wars.  Isaiah's warning of the threat of a neighbouring military power becomes a modern-day metaphor for the moral decline of Australia.

The assertion being that our 'nation is in a spiritual exile' due to their 'lack of acknowledgment of the God of the Bible - where the natural design for living is being ignored'.  Issues like abortion and transgender rights are mentioned in reference to the moral decline of society.

The warning is further extended to the church being 'at risk of exile if we continue to allow the surrounding culture to shape us'.

As I'm listening - sitting in the midst of my own version of exile - I'm wondering how to interpret the reasoning presented.  If exile is a direct result of God's punishment for ignoring his ways, then what have I done that warrants my experience of isolation?

To be honest,  I just think that exile is more nuanced than that.

Here's a couple of examples:

1. The Babylonian exile of God's people, while being attributed to the influence and judgement of God by the prophetic writers, was the Babylonian exile.  The people were displaced from their homeland by a foreign power.  This was a violent abuse of power upon the Hebrew people.
2. It might be that the exile was a consequence of the failure for the people to live in God's ways, but it is also true that this failure extends beyond personal morality - the people of God were charged to reveal God to their neighbours, and their own misuse of power toward people on their margins was a large part of their failing.

A truer understanding of exile in the Bible is that it’s the consequence for the misuse of power by those representing God to the nations.  The people had forgotten and neglected the ways of God.  Where power is stewarded to benefit the outsider.  Where the stranger is welcomed, and the poor are prioritized.

As they are carried into exile, the people who carry God's name are on the other side of power being misused - the oppressors have become the oppressed.  Something that cannot be justified, but also a form of justice in light of their own oppressive practices.

So, the exile was both a consequence of the people's failure, and it was a horrible experience of abuse toward their humanity.

A simple 'God's punishment for moral decline' rationale just doesn't seem cut it when I think of exile.

And I wonder if a more accurate cultural interpretation of our times is that the Australian church is already in exile. The position of influence the church once held in culture has been eroded due to the mistreatment of the vulnerable.

The most significant recent historical marker for the church in Australia being the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.  It is little wonder we do not hold the power we were once accustomed to.

Pronouncements of 'Australia being in a spiritual exile' continue to be nothing short of tone deaf.  

It's time to cease our judgement on Australian society for its 'moral bankruptcy', and our corresponding guilt-laden cajoling of people in the pews to 'not be infected by the surrounding culture'.

The church is already in exile - perhaps at the hands of unjust rulers, but equally because of our failure to protect the vulnerable.

And rather than bellyache about how morally insufficient this adopted land is, we need to take a leaf out of Jeremiah's book and:

“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.”

‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭29‬:‭5‬ ‭NIV‬‬

The reason I feel like an exile is because that is what I am.  That is what we all are.  And the message of Jesus is one of welcoming home rather than the threat of abandonment.

So as I sit in the place where I feel like a foreigner, I heal from my experiences of trauma.   And as I heal, I pick up my hammer and my trowel, and I get busy blessing the city I'm in.  Because it is in this disorientation, that Jesus welcomes me.  And in my response to his welcome, it might be he welcomes others as well.

Exile invites me to humbly bless my adopted home through a life established in courageous and irresistible love.