Pentecost 4
29 June 2025
Vineville Baptist Church
Macon, Georgia
Gregory Pope
CAPTIVITY: LIFE IN EXILE
(From Creation to New Creation: The Biblical Story #7)
The Prophets of Exile. Lamentations. Daniel. Esther. Psalms.
Do you ever feel as if your world has changed so drastically you don’t even recognize it? The old home place is torn down. The company you gave your life’s work to is no longer around or has let you go. Your marriage and family have taken turns you never dreamed possible. Your own nation is changing almost beyond recognition. You feel like nothing is the same any more. In such a world we can feel lost, alone, and confused. Great fear and crippling despair about the future can suffocate our hearts. It is a form of exile. How do we live in such a world?
Well, the place at which we have arrived in the Biblical Story is a place that just might resonate. The northern kingdom of Israel has been carried off into exile by Assyria. The southern kingdom of Judah has been taken into captivity by Babylon. Jerusalem and the temple lie in shambles, utterly destroyed.
The prophet Ezekiel has been taken into Babylon with them. He had been called to preach repentance to the people of Judah. But Judah would not change their ways until they had fallen and their enemies had overtaken them.
To be sure, one doesn’t always land in captivity by one’s own doing. Injustice, pride, and false religion may destroy a nation from the inside, as it did with Israel, but to be hauled into physical exile takes action from the outside.
The prophet Jeremiah had warned Israel that exile was coming. Now with Israel in need of some pastoral care he speaks out against those nations who were so brutal to Israel. The prophet Obadiah speaks out against Edom for doing nothing while its neighbor Israel was being harmed. And Jonah, you can understand him not wanting to go to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, who had led Israel into captivity. He did not want to warn Nineveh of God’s judgment. He wanted to see Ninevah fall.
For Israel and Judah, there is great despair in exile. The Jewish exiles were a people who had experienced a loss of the structured, reliable world that gave them meaning and coherence. They found themselves in a place where their most treasured and trusted symbols of faith were mocked, trivialized, and dismissed. The temple and all the sacred vessels of worship were destroyed. And they cried out: How can we sing the songs of Zion in a strange land? By the waters of Babylon we sat and wept. It was a time of deep grief for Israel.
Every year since the temple and all of Jerusalem were destroyed, Israel has marked that day by reading together the book of Lamentations. The Book of Lamentations is a collection of five poems, a raw and powerful lament for those whose lives have been turned upside down. Lamentations gives a weeping voice to the people’s despair: There is no resting place, no one to help, none to comfort, no rest. They cry out to God: Why have you forgotten us? Why have you forsaken us?
Such despair can bring anger, as it did for these Jews in exile. Did the reading of today’s psalm shock you? Angela was afraid to ask anyone else to read it, so she assigned it to me! O Babylon, you devastator! Blessed shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Blessed shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rocks!
This doesn’t sound like what Jesus had in mind when he taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who harm us and bless those who curse us. Is there a place for this kind of vengeful prayer in the life of a Christian?
Well, when we find ourselves in exile of whatever form, there is often despair, and despair can turn to anger and anger can turn to hatred and hatred to vengeful violence. And we all need a place to honestly express our grief and anger and desire for revenge. We have to get these killing emotions out. The proper place for expression is not toward other people. The Psalms teach us that worship is such a place. For in offering our grief, anger, hatred, and desire for revenge in God’s presence, as the psalmist does here, God has the chance to take our wounded hearts and shape our powerful emotions in ways that heal instead of harm. Perhaps we have to pray our words of desired vengeance before we can extend our words of gracious blessing toward those who have harmed us.
The people of Israel are angry at their enemies and their God. In exile they cry out to God, “Where is your steadfast love?” If we dare to be honest, do not all our hearts, from time to time, cry out such a prayer in the wilderness of despair and exile? “God, where are you?”
When has your structured, reliable world – a world that gave you purpose and meaning, come tumbling down? When have you felt the dark absence of God? When have you experienced heartbreaking exile? Do you ever feel like you’re living in a land that’s not your home? in a culture hostile to your values? in a world on the brink of caving in on itself? How do we live in exile?
As despairing and disappointing as life in exile can be, it is still possible to remain faithful to God. You may remember Daniel and his three friends in exile – Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego. They would not bow to the statue of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. Even when threatened with death, they still refused to bow, saying, “Our God will deliver us. But even if our God does not deliver us, we will still not bow down to your idols.” And there was Esther, a Jew forced to marry a Persian king, yet she worked with great courage and helped save the lives of her people.
Where do we find the hope and courage of a Daniel or an Esther to remain faithful in dark days? How do we “sing the Lord’s song in a strange land”?
The prophet Ezekiel teaches us that in the life of the spirit there is a dying that can be a prelude to resurrection. Do you remember Ezekiel’s vision where God led him to a valley of dry bones? God tells Ezekiel to preach to them bones, to say, Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. For behold, I will cause my Spirit-Breath to enter you, and you shall live.” So Ezekiel did what he was told. And sure enough, as he preached, that valley of dry bones came to life with robust, risen bodies. And God said, Ezekiel, son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say,“Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost; we are clean cut off.” So say to them, “Thus says the Lord: I will open your graves and cause you to come out of your graves. I will put my Spirit in you and you shall live.” Those of us who may feel that our bones are dried up and that our hope is lost, God comes to us and says, “I will open your grave and bring you out. I will put my Spirit in you and you shall live.”
Anybody here in need of resurrection? some God-infused life on this side of death? When we feel like we are dying inside we often want too little. We want a familiar return to the way life used to be when God is trying to do a new thing. We want a spiritual self-improvement course when God wants radical transformation. We’re like a person dying of heart disease wanting a face-lift when God wants to transplant within us a new heart. Jeremiah spoke of a new heart and he teaches us the way of hope.
How do we live in dark times when so much around us seems hopeless? We begin with the realization that things are not hopeless. When the Jews were taken into captivity, things seemed about as bad as they could possibly get. But Jeremiah told them,“Thus says the Lord: ‘I have plans for you, plans to give you a future and a hope.”
Jeremiah acted out this hope while in prison just before the exile. His uncle had a piece of property right in the path of the approaching Babylonian army. He wanted to unload the property. So he gave his nephew Jeremiah the right of first refusal. The land was like that cartoon of a house sitting just below a dam with a huge crack going down the middle of the dam. The house had a sign in its yard: “For Sale.” Nobody but a fool would buy that land. But Jeremiah, God’s weeping hopeful fool, buys the land, pays full market value. He has the deed placed in an earthenware jar so it will keep as long as necessary. He makes the purchase to act out his prophetic message: For thus says the Lord, Houses and fields and vineyards will once again be bought and sold in this land.
We are able to live in dark times with the realization that with God things are never hopeless. And things are never hopeless because God is always at work and because the love and mercy of God are forever faithful.
Hear again these hopeful words of Jeremiah from the book of Lamentations as powerfully rendered by Eugene Peterson: God’s loyal love (will never) run out, God’s merciful love (will not) dry up. They’re created new every morning. How great (God’s) faithfulness! I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over). He’s all I’ve got left. God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits, to the woman who diligently seeks. It’s a good thing to quietly hope for help from God . . . When life is heavy and hard to take: Go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. . . Wait for hope to appear. Don’t run from trouble. Take it full-face. The “worst” is never the worst. Why? Because the Master won’t ever walk out and fail to return. If he works severely, he also works tenderly. His stockpiles of loyal love are immense.
In the hopeful light of God’s faithful love, even in the frightening land of exile, Jeremiah gets practical and gives this word from God. When the people ask: “How do we live in dark times? How do we act when we are so afraid? How do we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” Jeremiah says: Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Take spouses and have children. Give them to be married so they may multiply and not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city where you live. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
Do you hear what Jeremiah is saying? He does not say, “In frightening times, curl up in your homes and wait for the Second Coming.” He does not say, “Dream of a land far away, or pretend nothing has changed in the world around you and continue as if everything is normal.” He says, “Settle in. Make this strange place your new home. You’re going to be here a while. Stop wishing for yesterday. Don’t be making your plans to return back to the way things used to be. This will be your home for quite some time. So work for its welfare.”
It’s so easy when the big picture gets blurred or grows dark to slump into despair, to stop living in the present, to cease doing the little things that make life better, and just sit around paralyzed by fear. But true biblical hope in days of darkness gets lived out in acts of everyday faithfulness and ordinary love. Everyday faithfulness and ordinary love.
You and I can do very little about tariffs or Russia or Israel or Iran. What we can do in the name of Jesus Christ is refuse to live in fear, and instead live our lives dedicated to everyday faithfulness and ordinary love. So: Life the live God has called you to live. Do your job. Have a baby. Love your family. Be a friend. Go to church. Spread kindness. Plant flowers. Help make the lives of those around you better. Work for the well-being of our community. Speak up for the poor. Say no to the lies of distorted faith and deceitful politics. Pray to be a better human being. Live out your hope in the present.
When the big picture gets dark, take care of the little picture in acts of everyday faithfulness and ordinary love. For God is at work. God’s mercy and loving-kindness are forever faithful. Death, hatred, fear, lies, fascism and bigotry will not have the final word. Because God has plans for us, plans for a future and a hope of a better tomorrow.
Jeremiah’s vision of a future and a hope saw a new covenant, this one not written on stone, but on the fleshy tablets of our hearts. Thus says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people . . . I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sins no more.
And the New Covenant appeared in the flesh, written on our hearts, a covenant of grace, a body broken, a life poured out, in Jesus our Savior. And he has written the new way on our hearts with words of hope: A new command I give to you: Love one another as I have loved you. . . Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and Love your neighbor as yourself . . . Love your enemies . . . Do unto others as you would have them do unto you . . . As you do it unto the least of these you do it unto me . . . Come unto me, all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest . . . Your sins are forgiven, go and sin no more . . . The kingdom of God is within you . . . In this world you will have tribulation. But be of good courage. I have overcome the world.
With these life-saving, soul-making words hidden in our hearts, we can join together singing the songs of Zion even in a strange land, living lives of everyday faithfulness and ordinary love.