Congregations Demo - Fall 2008 - (Page 9) Perhaps in these days of immense cultural change, where the once sure foundation of pseudo-Christendom that shaped Western culture slowly (and at times not so slowly) crumbles, exile is an appropriate motif for the church to understand itself. Several scholars, notably Walter Brueggeman and Michael Frost, have affirmed as much, pointing out that the experience of exile goes beyond simple physical dislocation. It is a cultural and spiritual condition where one feels at odds with the dominant values of the prevailing cultural ethos. Put simply, people can feel as if they are in exile without ever being “cast out of the land.” It many ways the biblical people of God are, by nature, exilic people. Has there ever been a time when the people who worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have not been a threatened minority, struggling to preserve their particular identity and beliefs? From the nomadic journeys of the patriarchs, to slavery in Egypt, to the constant threats of enemies throughout the period of the monarchy, to the drastic events of being conquered by Babylon (597–587 B.C.), and their subsequent existence under Persian, Greek, and Roman rule, the people of Israel have never lived as a super power. In the New Testament, Peter describes his audience as exiles (1:1, 2:11). Perhaps this should be the experience of Christians within any given culture. Exile is, in its very essence, living away from home. This is at the heart of the Christian faith as we live away from our ultimate eschatological home, called to live in and see the world in a different way from the dominant culture. If the paradigm of exile can help the church understand itself more faithfully in this current age, are there any resources that ancient Israel can offer to the contemporary church from their exilic experience? As the people of Israel responded to Babylonian and Persian exile, there are at least three contours of exilic life that connect with the 21st-century exile of the church in North America. At one time, not so long ago, the church stood at or near the center of cultural life. This is increasingly less true. Learning the Language of Exile The first priority for exilic living is identifying where we are and how we got here. In order to orient the church to its changing place on the cultural landscape, it will take honest reflection on our experience. Further, that experience must be given a voice if it is to become formative and ultimately redemptive in the life of the church. For ancient Israel, it was through the language of prayer that they named their experience and began to shape it in hopeful directions. It is in the bold prayers of lament, penitence, and hope that the experience of exile was described and understood. Just as these acts of speech formed the core of a spirituality that sustained the ancient community, so too can they inform modern communities in exile. In particular, the book of Lamentations and the exilic Psalms (44, 74, 79, 89, and 137) provide a canonical foundation for giving expression to the experience of exile. While lament is not a practice widely utilized in many sectors of today’s church, it is the language that gives voice to a sense of loss and allows for the voice of protest to find its generative expression. In congregations throughout North America there is a sense of loss and sorrow that must be given voice. It comes out in church board meetings, informal conversations, and seminary classrooms. The sorrow is found in the cultural realities that remind us that the Christian faith holds less and less influence over the culture. Old certainties are not so certain, old institutions are eroding and carry less attraction to new generations; social fabrics seem to be fraying and are replaced with confusion, frustration, and sometimes anger. There is a lack of clarity about truth, authority, ethics, and what is “right.” The church itself struggles (sometimes unsuccessfully) to hold its membership, and finances are an ongoing struggle. These are sorrow-producing realities that are lamentable. To properly appropriate the resources of exilic spirituality, the congregation should find ways to lament these changes. There must be a refusal to decorate our marginalization with platitudes or empty complaint. In giving voice to our sadness the church will gain a voice that is honest and realistic, just as the voice of the poet was in Babylon. He has cut down in fierce anger All the might of Israel; He has withdrawn his right hand from them. He has bent his bow like an enemy With his right hand set like a foe; He has killed all in whom we took pride In the tent of daughter Zion. The Lord has become like an enemy; He has destroyed Israel. (Lamentations 2:3-5) Helping give voice to the sorrow of loss is a crucial pastoral task in the postChristendom church. Further, prayers of lament allow us to speak a word of protest toward our host culture by expressing our sorrow at its idolatry and our refusal to be co-opted by it. Just as the gods of Babylon may have seemed powerful to Israel (after all, they “won”) and the opulence of the city may have been alluring, the faithful used lament as a voice to speak ill against both. Thus lament was subversive speech, rejecting both the idols and their seductive Fall 2008 • congregations 7
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