Longing for Home

The theme of exile is the theme of the entire Bible. From the opening pages of scriptures until its final chapters, exile dominates the Holy Spirit's dictation. In Genesis we are sent into exile. In Revelation we are returned to the new heavens and new earth made possible by our glorious Lord Jesus. If we understand this scripture takes on significant meaning. If we fail to grasp this, we are left with bits of pieces of text that we somehow try to arrange into a road map for living that has no true destination.

We are exiles. Make no mistake about it. The word means to be absent from one's home our country. When I say exile, I do not mean we are absent from heaven, our true home. Scripture never assigns the place we call heaven as our true abode. Our "citizenship is in heaven" as the Apostle Paul says to the Philippians, but it was not from heaven that we were sent packing when the whole problem of sin emerged. We are exiles from a Garden and that Garden was on earth.

Exile involves more than just a geographic place however. While it is true we were created to live in the Garden of Eden, located somewhere in the Mid-East, we were created for a certain kind of life as well: the Garden life. We were created for life lived in the presence of God in the midst of a good creation of which we were to steward for our Creator. Rebellion sent us packing from this place and cherubim keep us from returning at the moment. Exile not only means absence from a physical Garden but also from a way of life known most fully by the conditions within that Garden.

The conditions that define our exile are described best in the Hebrew concept of chaos. Within a short time of being exiled from the Garden, a brother kills his brother, weird relations emerge between the sexes, hearts become increasingly evil, a flood wipes out the earth, a tower is built to reach into the heavens, and so on. Chaos is the term used to describe life in exile. Its counterpart, shalom, is Hebrew term used to describe life as we imagined it in the Garden or life as it was meant to be within God's blessings.

The theme of exile is graphically portrayed in God's Story involving Israel. Israel existed under a system of chaos known as Egypt where life was hard, tyranny reigned, and slavery was the way of life. From this place of chaos God promised to bring his people into the land promised to Abraham, a land of plenty, a land of milk and honey. These are terms used to evoke the idea of shalom. Their training in the wilderness was for the purpose of preparing them to live in the land enjoying shalom. Their lives were to be ordered by the Law of Moses, a reflection of the original Creator's divine nature. The existing chaos of the land represented by the pagan nations and their practices was to be destroyed and everything that represented life outside of God was to be removed. Chaos was to be set aside and shalom was to be the rule. It was a picture of God returning his people from exile into a land and a calling resembling the original Garden we were made for.

Most of the history of the Old Testament centered on Israel's failure to remove vestiges of the pagan world of chaos. They did not drive out the pagan nations, they did not remove the pagan idols of human rebellion, they did not live according to the laws of God that framed a life resembling the original homestead. Life in the Promised Land became no different than life in exile. Despite a new geographic residence, the exiled lifestyle of chaos held dominion. It held dominion until God had enough and sent them packing into exile once again to the pagan nations that they were meant to influence. If they were to live the exiled lifestyle, they could live it in a place of exile. Chaos ruled!

Various shades of that exile existed for Israel until the day that Jesus was baptized and declared that the Kingdom of God was at hand. In that day Rome served as the host of chaotic life in exile. While Israel lived in the land that they were promised, they did so under the heavy hand of Roman rule and in the midst of pagan idolatry at its most developed state. Every genuine Hebrew longed for the promised visitation of their God to end their exile and restore them to their rightful place of prominence in their land of promise. (Read Psalm 126 for a sense of this longing.) It is to this cry that Jesus devotes most of his teaching and applies most of his miracles. He was the One who would restore shalom and end chaos. He was the One who would bring God's people back to the Garden and end the exile for good.

That is the message of the cross and glory of the resurrection. Jesus has secured shalom on our behalf. He has brought an end to chaos. We catch glimpses of the Garden here and there when we pray, or when we worship, or when we read, or when we gather, or when we break the bread and drink the cup. In Christ we are offered a life of shalom and freedom from the bondage of chaos. When the scriptures tell us we are free or have freedom, it is in this sense that it is referring. Someday we will experience the full view of what the small glimpse we now have teases us with. Until then we are called to live within the reality of shalom while exising in the chaotic world in which we find ourselves.

If you are like me, you long for the fullness of shalom in the new heavens and new earth. It is what we were created for. Like the people of God who have gone before us who were strangers and pilgrims in our world, we long for a city whose maker and builder is God. Every time I pray, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" I sense a stirring for life as it was meant to be. I fear that many who belong to God however, think that life in exile is actually pretty good. The ethos of chaos is somehow strangely mixed with the promise of shalom into a strange blend of lukewarm faith in a faux land of promise. Like the Israelites who adapted to the pagan lands that took them captive and became pagan themselves, many mistake the American Dream for shalom and end up serving some sort of money, sex, or power instead of the risen Messiah.

When life becomes comfortable in exile, we are in a bad place. When the daily desire to see, even if only a glimpse, a chaos-free world for everyone is missing, we know that we have sold out. When we are not wrestling with how to live within the scope of shalom to our neighbors, spiritual communities, places of employment, and families we betray the cross to which all of this chaos ultimately must answer in humble submission. When we are not troubled, stirred, awakened, and moved to action in dealing with the chaos we find in our own lives through the spiritual disciplines, we are shirking our calling to be light and salt to the chaos around us. Whatever the case, we must recognize that we are exiles in a pagan world called to live as though we are in a Garden that we can only see in bits and pieces. Shalom!