Exile

Mark 8:31-38

31Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God

Habakkuk 1:2-13

2O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save? 

3Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. 

4So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous— therefore judgement comes forth perverted. 

5Look at the nations, and see! Be astonished! Be astounded! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told. 

6For I am rousing the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own. 

7Dread and fearsome are they; their justice and dignity proceed from themselves. 

8Their horses are swifter than leopards more menacing than wolves at dusk; their horses charge; Their horsemen come from far away; they fly like an eagle swift to devour.

9They all come for violence, with faces pressing forward; they gather captives like sand. 

10At kings they scoff, and of rulers they make sport. They laugh at every fortress, and heap up earth to take it. 

11Then they sweep by like the wind; they transgress and become guilty; their own might is their god! 

12Are you not from of old, O Lord my God, my Holy One? You shall not die. O Lord, you have marked them for judgement; and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment. 

13Your eyes are too pure to behold evil, and you cannot look on wrongdoing; why do you look on the treacherous, and are silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they? 

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God.

I am leading this congregation into exile.

That statement sends a chill up my spine, I imagine it’s got some of y’all shifting uncomfortably in the pews as well. I am leading this congregation into exile.

I’m going to go ahead and warn you, it’s going to be terribly uncomfortable, because we’re going to join the people of Judah and Jerusalem who were carried off into exile by the Babylonian empire.

This happens long after Solomon’s death, and the stack of sins piled up by the kings who followed him permeates the culture of those who live in and around Jerusalem. God will not let the prophet Habakkuk look away. “Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble?” writes the troubled prophet. 

We don’t read much Habakkuk, it’s a short book toward the end of the Old Testament with a hard to pronounce name, so it’s unfamiliar to most of us. “Habakkuk is a book about the providence of God; that is, it is primarily concerned with how God is keeping his promises to his chosen people Israel, and through them, to humankind.” So when the prophet Habakkuk looks around and sees the evidence of sin that surrounds him, he cries out to God “Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous - therefore judgment comes forth perverted.” 

God answers, “Look at the nations and see! Be astonished! Be astounded! For I am rousing the Chaldeans.” In other words, God is sending a foreign army to punish Jerusalem for their sins. As God continues to speak, Habakkuk’s frustration turns to dread as the LORD paints a picture of an unstoppable, menacing army coming to tear down Jerusalem’s walls, upend its social order, and carry the people off into exile.

Habakkuk has seen violence, wrongdoing, trouble and injustice, but what is coming is disaster. The people who have come to trust the comforts of home will have to find something new to trust. Those who rely on institutions for justice and dignity will have to rely on something else. Folks whose faith is in their own might will have to place their faith in something different, because the dread and fearsome armies are on the way. Perhaps, in exile, the people will learn to trust God. Perhaps they will rely on God. Perhaps they will learn faith in God.

After all, Jesus taught his disciples that “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed…” When Peter tries to talk him out of it, Jesus rebukes him saying, “you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” When our faith is in our own might, when we rely on institutions for justice and dignity, when we trust the comforts of home, our minds are on human things, not on divine, and we are at best, Peter, and at worst, Babylon. Jesus teaches us to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow him.

I’ve grown accustomed to this pulpit over the years. I know that’s the LORD’s table, and that this is the church’s worship space, but this is my pulpit. It feels like home to me, standing here proclaiming the Word of God, wrestling with scripture, before the community God has given me to love and to lead.

But I am leading this congregation into exile, and that means I’m leaving home as well.

Reset at music stand

I am leading this congregation into exile, but we’re going there together, and we go knowing that exile always comes to an end.

Habakkuk is provisional. He asks how long wickedness will be tolerated, God answers that judgment is already on its was in the form of the Chaldean armies, but that justice also has an expiration date. The Babylonian empire is already marked for judgment. Those whom God is using to punish his people will themselves be punished, And we who have read to the end of the story know that the people will be returned home again. Just as when Christ is crucified he will be taken down from the cross. We know that when he is laid in the tomb that he will come out of it again, and the tomb will be empty.

But when the Judeans return from exile, they are forever changed by the disaster and the exile they experienced. When the disciples reach the empty tomb, they have been transformed by what they have seen. When the Church is steps out of our worship spaces we will have been reformed by the Word of the LORD.

But for tonight, I am leading this congregation into exile, and we will leave this place marked for our captivity, and remembering that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. The ashes we impose on our foreheads remind us that all of us are in the world, but do not belong to the world. We are headed into exile, but we are doing so with the faith that we will also be led home again, returning to the dust from whence we came, but transformed by renewed faith in God.