"A Home For Exiles"
Luke 17:11-19; Jer 29:1, 4-7
Emily Martin
Seminary Intern
October 14, 2007
The Jeremiah text begins by making it clear who this letter is for. It says four times, it’s for the exiles. So my first question is, who are the exiles?
Jeremiah says they are the Jews that were carried off to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar when he invaded Judah in the sixth century B.C.— they included priests and prophets, King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the court officials, the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, and the artisans and the smiths. It sounds like the King tried to round up the cream of the crop: the royalty, the leading citizens, the skilled workers.
It would be kind of like if, at this church, all the elders and deacons, all the committee members, all the Sunday School teachers and staff, and anyone who plays handbells or sings in the choir at Government Street, were suddenly whisked away and forced to live in exile in an Islamic state.
Anne Ferrell told me that she remembers the subject of the first sermon Rev. Donaho preached at this church – It was Psalm 137:
“By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept
when we remembered Zion. On the willows there
we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked us for mirth, saying,
‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?”
It’s the song of the exiles. A song of bitter sadness, of anger and frustration. It’s also a song of deep longing. It’s a song I’ve been hearing all week.
I heard it Monday morning during the Bible study we’ve started with homeless who come to Coffee Club. We introduced ourselves, said the Lord’s prayer together, and then read the Jeremiah text. The first question they asked me was, “Why are they in exile?”
Why ARE they in exile? Jeremiah gives us two very different explanations. The first is that they’re in exile because King Nebuchadnezzar invaded their country and forced them to move. They didn’t have a choice. But then in verse 4, God says, “to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile.” Monday morning, I gave them the first explanation, but later, one of the men piped up and said, “God sent them into exile because they were worshipping idols and false gods, and he wasn’t going to let them come home until they had changed their ways.” So which one is it? Were the people in exile because of bad choices that they’d made or because of something beyond their control? Sometimes it’s hard to say. Sometimes there’s truth in both explanations.
On a hunch, I asked the homeless men and women at the Coffee Club Bible study if any of them knew what it was like to be in exile? To be forced to leave your home? To find yourself living in a strange place? There was a pause, and then one man called out, “Yeah, I feel like an exile.” Another man said, “This isn’t New Orleans, that’s for sure.” Even if they had grown up in Mobile, there is a way in which our society treats all the homeless as exiles. They are either eyed suspiciously and stared at or they are avoided and ignored. Most keep their distance, like the lepers in Luke, because when they don’t, they’re liable to be arrested.
Lepers in Jesus’ time were essentially exiles in their community. They were unclean, and they knew to keep their distance, even when approaching Jesus for healing. Being sick or unclean was in the same ambiguous moral territory as being in exile. It wasn’t entirely clear whether people were suffering the consequences of sin or merely victims of something outside their control. Better just to keep them at arm’s length. I was thinking it was too bad they lived in such an ignorant time, without all the benefits of science and modern medicine. I mean, surely we wouldn’t treat anyone like that today. Especially not anyone who was just sick.
But then I came across this article about a middle aged woman who moved back to Alabama to take care of her aging parents. She was HIV+, but she didn’t think much about it. After all, it was 2001, and she too thought that the days of stigma and fear were past.
But when she moved down here, she found that people were afraid to touch, hug or even sit near her because she was HIV positive. “They didn't want to say the word, let alone be around someone with the disease. It was like how people used to treat lepers,” she said. This summer, right here in South Alabama—a toddler was banned from the pool and common areas at an RV resort in Silverhill because he was HIV+. It just goes to show—we are not that different from the folks in Jesus’ time—exiling those we fear or disapprove of or don’t understand.
But it’s not just the poor and homeless or the HIV+ who can feel like exiles. That feeling of being in a strange place, of missing home, of being isolated—that can happen to anyone. I could ask you the same question I asked the homeless on Monday morning—how many of you know what it feels like to be out of place and vulnerable, to miss your family and home. I bet a number of us could raise our hands. I know I could.
One of my hardest years was the year I spent in New Hampshire doing volunteer work through an AmeriCorps program called City Year. I started the program right after I got back from a year in South Africa, studying the Church’s response to AIDS. In South Africa, I set my own schedule and made my own contacts, so even if it was a bit lonely at times, I could watch for the movement of the Spirit and do what was life-giving, at my own pace. They let me preach and teach and care for sick people, attend conferences and work with youth.
When I started working for City Year, I found myself without much choice at all about who I worked with or how I spent my time. In addition, I was still far from home, without much of a support system, feeling overworked and undervalued, and I wasn’t the only one. Although we were supposed to be doing good in the community, the program seemed to bring out the worst in us all.
By Thanksgiving, I had had enough. I was ready to quit. I’ll live at home and volunteer in the community or get a minimum wage job before I’ll stay here and be miserable, I thought. Actually, a minimum wage job would have paid more.
I gave God an ultimatum. It wasn’t something I’d ever done before or even thought was a good idea, but I was at the end of my rope. You’ve got three weeks, I told God. If by the time I go home for Christmas, you haven’t convinced me that there’s some reason I’m supposed to be here—well, I’m going home. It’s a risky business, demanding things from God. What I really wanted to do was go home, to be in a familiar place, with people who loved me, doing something that wasn’t quite so…well, hard.
But I asked God to get involved, and wouldn’t you know, the last week before Christmas, I met three people—three reasons to stay. God said, I’ve got plans for you. I’ve got some people I want you to meet, I’ve got some things I want you to learn. Here, in this place, with these people.
That message must have been even harder for the Israelites to hear. Even if City Year was not what I expected, nobody forced me to go there, and I always had the option of quitting. The Israelites didn’t have that choice. They hated their captors, they hated the strange city, and so they welcomed prophesies that predicted the downfall of King Nebuchadnezzar and the destruction of Babylon; prophesies that said they would be home in two years’ time.
But God said, no. I sent you here, said God. Unpack your bags because you’re going to be here a while. I’ve got plans for you, and for now they are here, in this place, with these people. Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Get married and have children. And your children, they should get married too; multiply here, do not decrease. 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 Israelites had placed their hope in going back to what was familiar, but God said, your hope is here. In this place. When the Lord called Jeremiah, He told him that he was appointing him over nations and over kingdoms, “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” The Israelites had been plucked up, their king had been overthrown, their homes destroyed…and now was the time to build and to plant. Only not in their homeland, but in Babylon.
Jeremiah uses the language of Genesis 1—be fruitful and multiply. God’s intent is still for his people, not just to survive, but to flourish. To have homes and gardens and families. But in order to do that, they must invest where they are. They must invest in the people and in the community around them. They must pray for the city, not for its destruction as some of the prophets were doing, but for its welfare.
On Monday night, I met with my supervised ministry team, and they told me stories about Government Street’s history. They told me about a time a few years ago when this church had to leave its home for a while. Apparently, in order to renovate this church, you had to go down the street and use the facilities at Government Street Methodist Church, at the time a small elderly congregation. They told me that it was a difficult time at first. Their building was old and in poor shape, and to top it all off your minister left halfway through. I imagine that many of you might have been sympathizing with the exiles, longing for the familiar, your old building, your old pastor.
But an amazing thing happened. You invested in your temporary home, remodeling the kitchen, repainting rooms. You spent money on another denomination’s church, and from what the committee told me, you not only helped revitalize that congregation, you gained a deeper understanding of who you were. You discovered that Government Street Presbyterian Church is not this beautiful building, or even a great pastor, this church is its people, listening for and moving with the Holy Spirit.
Over and over again, the people on my supervised ministry team testified to the way the people in this congregation have loved them whole. Don Bryan told me, I could live anywhere in this country, but I can’t leave this family. And I think I’m starting to understand why.
This church knows what it means to pray for the city, to seek its good. This church knows that its welfare is tied up in the city’s welfare. I think this church knows what it feels like to be in exile. I also think that this church wants to be the kind of church that exiles can call home.
Why else feed 80-120 homeless men and women breakfast every morning and give them flu shots? Why else provide 500 meals a week to the homebound? Why else drive down to Mobile County Training School with a trunk full of supplies and say, what else can we do to help? Why else open the church up four times a year for homeless families to sleep? Why else sleep in a cardboard box out in the cold to raise money for Family Promise? Why else have a special offering to help build a chapel for the Metro City Jail?
But what happens when you open your doors to exiles? What happens when you work for their healing, when you invite them to rejoin the community?
Bo Perry told me that this Church used to have an AIDS care team. One man who they cared for joined the church. As his condition worsened, he eventually decided to go home to be with his family in Texas for his final months. Only once he was home, a miraculous thing happened. He got some of his strength back. He got a little better, and do you know what he did? He started an AIDS Care Team at his church in Texas.
Sometimes the former exiles give the best kind of praise.
Charge & Blessing:
Go forth into the world,
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Continue to seek the welfare of the city where God has sent you,
and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare
you will find your welfare.
And may this church be the kind of church,
where exiles find a home.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the love of God,
and the communion of the Holy Spirit
be with you all.
Alleluia! Amen.