Matt Mings on A Lenten Exercise: Analyzing Exile – Part 2
This Part 2 in a series of posts on a theology of exile. Part 1 is here.
A Biblical view of exile is not complete unless there is return. The remarkable fact about the Babylonian exile is that Judean people did not vanish away as did so many other nations that underwent imposed exile. Rather, the people of Judah returned from exile under the Persian king Cyprus. The condition of the people’s return is dependent on the degree to which they have learned to live as God’s people while in exile. In exile, the people cannot depend on land, or the nation, nor even religious practice for security. The shrine of later days must be laid by in deference to a total dependence on Yahweh. This dependence yields a new identity and a transforming knowledge of God for the people.
This newness is found, however, through certain responses to the exilic condition. In the Babylonian exile a succession of responses brings new life in a new community that is obedient to the covenant Yahweh has established. By responding to exile in accordance with who God is and what God wills, the previous ordering of reality for sixth-century BCE Jerusalem is obliterated and replaced with a newfound relationship with God. The shame of the exilic condition, and the remembrance of what led to exile, is essential for the people to become the people of God in a new manner that avoids the sins of their ancestors.
Walter Brueggemann suggests the spectrum of responses to exile covers the span between relinquishment and receiving. The diasporic literature is designed to help the community in exile relinquish the end of the world as they have known it thereafter receiving a new world given by God. The path from relinquishing to receiving begins with grief. Great loss has been inflicted on this people. They have lost all but their lives in the physical world; and their entire concept of who Yahweh is and how he works must now be re-ordered. Grief must be allowed to follow the realization that God can walk away. He can do this because there is mutual relationship between God and his people; this is not a one-way covenant.
The people have not determined this before. They believe his old covenant to be forever. Despite their sinfulness they claim covenant. Yet they now see that God can, and does, walk away from the covenant. This is his right because the people have broken their covenant faithfulness.
Questions of theodicy naturally follow. Has God inflicted exile on his people? Is exile simply a logical result to the actions of the people? Exile is both/and. The sin of the people becomes the foundation for God turning away and the ensuing exile. Faced with this entirely new concept, the people must relinquish their hold on false notions of the past: this brings grief.
The prophet Jeremiah utters words of doom to the people while simultaneously grieving for their coming loss. To ignore the pain of grief would be a way of assimilating into the Babylonian empire; a way of further losing their identity. Giving voice to the grief, crying out, keeps the people engaged with their God. Jeremiah paves a way for building and planting only by reaching utter hopelessness at the end of destroying, overthrowing, plucking up, and tearing down.
SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
How do you see the relationship of grief with hope?
——
Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.
Related Posts:
Category: Christianity, Theology 2 comments »
February 13th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
[...] is the third Part of an ongoing post. Part 2 is here. Part 1 is here.Grief gives way to a response of hope. The grief of the prophet Ezekiel goes so [...]
February 18th, 2008 at 9:22 am
[...] is the third Part of an ongoing post. Part 2 is here. Part 1 is [...]