Social Distancing: The Exile of our Time
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.
–1 Peter 3:9-11
Exile.
A lack of peace, a lack of feeling comfortable, a deep emptiness of the soul, an inexpressible and irrepressible loneliness. In short, it’s when we don’t feel “at home.”
Our current season under the weight of the current pandemic bears some emotional resonances with the longings associated with the various exiles described throughout the scriptures. The last few weeks have been challenging to say the least. We all been filled with fear and despair, wondering when this nightmare will end. Although it is certainly true that certain regions, demographics, and individuals have suffered more than others, everyone around the world has to face this unique season of isolation and anxiety. There’s this indescribable and invisible angst that hovers over our nation like a fog underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. I believe that, at its core, this heavy fog that pervades the whole world is a modern exile of sorts.
Even though many of us are “working from home,” “sheltering at home,” “worshiping online at home,” and “homeschooling,” our houses and apartments feel less like a home and more like indefinite prisons. I find myself enjoying taking out the trash and getting the mail for the first time in my life because it’s an excuse to get outside, making me reimagine my front and back lawns as my very own “prison yard.”
You would be surprised how regularly the people of God found themselves in exile. In fact, after listening to Chad Bird and Tim Mackey discuss this topic, I wonder how I didn’t notice this prominent theme in scripture before. It’s everywhere.
So, let’s start at the beginning. Adam and Eve are created and placed in a perfect “garden of delight” (the literal meaning of the Garden of Eden). The garden was more than merely a botanical garden and zoo; it was a state of being, a way of life, a right relationship between God, humanity, and creation (what scripture calls righteousness and peaceful harmony). Everything was just the way it was meant to be. Everything was perfect.
Until it wasn’t. In Adam, began the first rebellion of sin, the first disbelief in God’s Word, breaking not only God’s boundaries, but breaking all of creation as well (Romans 8). Therefore, humanity began its first exile, “East of Eden.” Humanity not only continued to progress further and further into the pit of sin and depravity (Adam’s son Cain was a murder and Cain’s descendent Lamech was a serial killer), humanity also kept moving further and further east, until they created the Tower of Babel (in the city that would eventually be known as Babylon; Genesis 11). God exiles everyone to the edges of the earth, but selects Abraham to go west towards the promised land (Genesis 12; Hebrews 11). Yet, God’s people never fully settle in the promised land and eventually settle in captivity in Egypt. God delivers His people through Moses, but only after Moses goes on an exile of his own, becoming “an exile in the land of Midian” (Acts 7). Israel eventually crosses not just the Red Sea, but also the Jordan River on dry ground, symbolizing their entry into the promised land. But Israel forsakes God, so God sends them into exile (the Hebrew word for “forsake” is the same one used for “exile” as well; 2 Chronicles 12:1, 5 & Jeremiah 12:7). God’s greatest wrath is giving us over to our wicked desires, giving us what we think we want (Romans 1). The Norther Kingdom of Israel is conquered by Assyria and the Southern Kingdom of Judah is eventually conquered by Babylon.
So, God’s people are exiled to the east, to Babylon, again. Although Ezra, Nehemiah, and others would eventually lead their people to their homeland, the land was never truly their home. Even the relative freedom enjoyed after the Maccabean Revolt was short-lived. Rome would eventually conquer Israel and oppress God’s people.
Then Jesus enters the story. Jesus comes to end every kind of exile described in the Old Testament, to become our peace and bridge back to God. Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Jesus is the way back home. Matthew points to how Jesus is not only the second Adam (Romans 5), but also the true Israel, the faithful Son God was searching for: “out of Egypt I called my Son” (Matthew 2:15; Hosea 11:1). Jesus reenters the promised land on our behalf in His baptism in the Jordan to “fulfill all righteousness,” to restore our relationship to our heavenly Father. Jesus enters Jerusalem from the east, from the Mount of Olives on Palm Sunday (palms by the way were a symbol of Israeli freedom from oppressors during the Maccabean Revolt, akin to our Boston Tea Party). Jesus rides a donkey through the city gates like David’s son Solomon before Him (1 Kings 1:33; John 12:15; Zachariah 9:9). Yet, Jesus came not simply to end Israel’s political exile; instead, He came to end the biggest exile of them all, our exile into death that began in the beginning with Adam.
Which brings us to one of the most misunderstood phrases of the bible, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Again, the Hebrew word for “forsake” also means “exile.” Jesus is quoting the opening line of Psalm 22, imploring us to examine how this psalm is fulfilled on Good Friday (see Chad Bird’s excellent work on this topic and this Hebrew word, Azab, here).
Jesus endures the ultimate exile of death so that we never have to. Jesus also shows us that any exile we might feel today, any homesickness we struggle with in this life will one day be done away with (Hebrews 11:13-16). One day we will find our home, that heavenly city, the New Jerusalem at the center of the New Heaven and New Earth. God will again dwell and walk with His people like He did in the beginning. We will eat from the Tree of Life and cry no more tears. We will finally be at home, exiled no more.
So, what do we do now? What do we do until Jesus returns and delivers on His promise that He was preparing rooms for each of us to dwell with Him forever (John 14:1-2). First, Jesus does not leave us “as orphans,” but sends us His Spirit which reminds us whose we are by regularly crying out “Abba, Father” (John 14:18; Romans 8:15). Second, we are called to lean into the reality that we are “sojourners and exiles” and that we are not meant to be stained by the fleshly passions of this world (1 Peter 2:11). Third, we are meant to love those who are marginalized and lonely, those who feel keenly that they are exiles too (Leviticus 19:33-34; Matthew 25:35; Hebrews 13:2). Fourth, we are meant to mean it when we pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” meaning we seek to give others a glimpse of what their true home looks like, where their true citizenship lies (Ephesians 2:19; Philippians 3:20). In short, we learn to live in the “way of the exile” (for more on this topic see the excellent videos and related podcasts done by The Bible Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzWpa0gcPyo & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSua9_WhQFE & https://bibleproject.com/podcast/series/exile-series/).
