Advent II December 6, 2009

Advent II
December 6, 2009

One of the great themes of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, is Exile.
It was a massive historical trauma they could not forget, a nightmare they couldn’t shake.
I’ve described before how in the sixth century BC, the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem.They tore down the precious temple, the great symbol of the presence of God among them.
Then they carried off hostages into exile in Babylon, splitting up families, taking the best and the brightest away into another land.
“Displaced people”—that’s what many of the Hebrew people became.
We hear the lament of those exiles in the poignant lament that is Psalm 137:
By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept,
When we remembered you, O Zion.
Those who led us away captive asked us for a song,
And our oppressors called for mirth:
[But] How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land.

There are so many people in exile in this world of ours!
Literally millions of people displaced by war or so-called “ethnic cleansing.” At the height of the Iraq war, the number of external and internal (ethnic cleansing) exiles was estimated at close to two million men, women, and children. Exiles from Palestine, the Balkans, Congo, Nigeria—try googling the word ‘exile’ sometime. All those millions of people forced to sing their native songs in a foreign land.
Then there are economic exiles, people impelled by conomic conditions in their home countries (including many “illegals” in the US right now) where a father or mother leaves home and children to find work in more affluent countries. Gail’s work with sailors who spend months in exile on the high seas under often harsh conditions—pirates, dangerous weather==in order to support children at home whom they rarely see. They show her dogeared photos—“my child—last year, when I saw him last.”
Last week was World AIDS Day. In some places in the world, HIV positive people are driven out of towns and villages to live apart like lepers.
There are so many reasons for exile. But whatever the reasons, people like these plumb the depths of homesickness and heartache,

Those of us who’ve been around this earth for a while know that exile is not just a geographical fact. We humans can experience spiritual exile as well.
What is spiritual exile?
The symptoms of what I mean by spiritual exile are these: distance from God or a blank spot where once God was, a feeling of being lost or abandoned, a sense that nothing I do means anything, that life is just something to be slogged through.
How do we wind up in spiritual exile? What drags us away from home into an unknown, hostile place?
Terrible suffering can do it, chronic pain or the sudden or dragged out loss of a loved one. A marriage or deep friendship torn apart without warning.
Addiction and sin can drag us into exile. When that happens, Babylon, this new and pleasurable land, looks like the place to be.
For a while the place of giving into the delicious pleasures of out-of-control drink or drugs, or “unfaithful” sex (doesn’t that sound old fashioned?!), or accumulating stuff, stuff, stuff and forgetting about people, people, people—for a while it doesn’t feel like exile at all. It feels like a much-improved homeland.
Remember the old Disney movie Pinocchio? As a child the most scary part was when Pinocchio skips school and winds up with other children in an amusement park. The scary part for me was how fun it all looked, how much I bought into it myself—like Pinocchio I’d love to have lived there forever, and then how mindless and selfish and, yes, sick, it became until Pinocchio and all the other children turned into donkeys. I still feel a little nauseous when I remember that scene.
Addiction and sin can drag us into exile and for a while Babylon looks like the place to be.

But just as geographical exiles keep in their hearts a compass arrow pointing toward their place of origin, so when we’re in spiritual exile something in us keeps on calling us home, assuring us it doesn’t matter how far away we’ve wandered, how lost we are in the distorting and perverted funhouse of sin—God calls us home.
During Advent especially we’re invited out of exile. Advent readings and hymns are filled with images of homecoming.
Today especially: In the first lesson Baruch, a prophet in exile in Babylon, writes home to Jerusalem, “For they went out from you on foot, led away by their enemies; but God will bring them back to you. . . .“ The Gospel quotes the prophet Isaiah, telling the exiles that the journey home will be easy!: “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

Why Advent? Jesus will come in a few weeks—how?
God’s son, “exiled” from heaven, a tiny baby born to a couple forced away by politics from their hometown. Jesus was born in exile.
And we can look ahead in Jesus’ story and see that Jesus’ entire ministry amounted to leading people out of exile: He healed lepers who had by law to live outside the city gates—Jesus’ healing meant they could come inside go home.
A woman who’d been hemorrhaging for twelve years. By law because of her illness she couldn’t live with her husband as man and wife—Jesus’ healing meant she could go home.
The tax collector who’d been shunned as a sinner and a traitor because of his job—Jesus said to him, “Come, follow me,” and then Jesus invited himself to the tax collector’s home.

The prophet of Advent, John the Baptist, had one and only one message: “Repent.”
We often interpret that word as beating our breasts, crawling with guilt.
But that’s wrong: in the most basic way all that that saving, Advent word means is this: “Come home.”