OUT OF EXILE

The Old Testament social prophets were often mystic types and mystics sometimes had visions.  This passage from Ezekiel is a vision that came to him at a time when the Israelites were living in a state of exile in Babylon. Ezekiel lived among them.  In 587 BCE, the Babylonian army attacked and destroyed Jerusalem, the capital, and also destroyed their religious center, the temple.  Many of the inhabitants were deported to Babylon, especially the ruling classes and religious hierarchy – the crème de la crème.  Exile was a strategy employed by a conqueror to disempower an adversary, the goal being not merely military victory, but to dilute the adversaries’ culture and religion by absorbing them into their own culture

It was a time of great despair, and the Israelites were longing, yearning and aching for their homeland.  We hear their hopelessness put into words by Ezekiel,  "Our bones are dried up; our hope is lost; we are cut off completely";  certainly words of anguish and misery. 

Exile is a state of being alienated from one’s life-giving center; from that which is purposeful, nurturing and gives a sense of identity. That was their situation.

Ezekiel’s vision likens the Israelite’s situation to a great death valley covered with dried out, brittle old bones.  In his vision, the Lord charged Ezekiel to preach to that great bone-covered valley. So he did, and in his vision, he was an effective and astounding preacher.  As he preached, bones started snapping together like tinker toys, and the process continued until the bones got to the point where they came together as re-assembled skeletons, and they were over-laid with muscles and tendons, skin and features, and they looked like real people.  I remember we used to sing a song about this story in Sunday School as children.  It was a favorite song, and we wanted to sing it every week.  It was called “Dry Bones”  and it went:

Ezekiel cried, "You dry bones!"
Ezekiel cried, "You dry bones!"
Ezekiel cried, "You dry bones!"
“Oh, hear the word of the Lord.”

(and we spoke the next part with a clap, starting slow and increasing in speed)

The foot bone connects to the leg bone,
 leg bone connects to the knee bone,
 knee bone connects to the thigh bone,
thigh bone connects to the back bone,
back bone connects to the neck bone,
neck bone connects to the head b-o-n-e;
Oh, hear the word of the Lord!

Dem bones, dem bones , gonna, walk around
Dem bones, dem bones , gonna, walk around
Dem bones, dem bones , gonna, walk around
“Oh, hear the word of the Lord.”

What great fun we had as kids singing that song based on Ezekiel’s vision!

Notice in Ezekiel’s vision that the bodily forms looked real, but they lacked one critical ingredient. They lacked “breath” – the vital essence of life.  So Ezekiel called for the “breath”, and arriving on the “four winds,” the “breath” filled those lifeless forms, and he says they “stood on their feet, a vast multitude.” 

The word for “breath” in Hebrew, ruach, has multiple meanings.  It means breath, wind and spirit – all three.   It’s a word that connects us to numerous other significant biblical images.  

·        In Genesis 1, the ruach (wind) moved over the waters and creative energy was unleashed.  

·        In Genesis 2,  the image is of the Lord “breathing” (ruach) into the nostrils of the form of a man, and he became a living being.   

·        In John’s gospel, Jesus appears to the disciples where they were hiding out after the resurrection and “breathes” on them, bestowing on them the gift of his vital essence, that is, his life they were called to embody and live in the world. For the early Christian community, “breath” signified more than merely air and oxygen.  It signified the vital essence of Jesus’ life that he gave to his disciples.
 

The biblical point is, whenever and wherever ruach appeared, so did authentic life, purpose and love. 

Ezekiel’s vision was a powerful metaphor that delivered a good news message to the exiled Israelites.  The message was that their exile was going to end in two ways.  First, they would return home, and  they did.  In 539 BCE, Cyrus and his Persian army defeated the Babylonian army.  Cyrus, being relatively tolerant and enlightened, issued an edict that permitted the Israelites to repatriate to their homeland. 

The second way Ezekiel promised their exile would end was far more subtle.  Ezekiel declared that just as the “breath” filled the bodies and gave them new life in his vision, God would put the Divine Spirit within the people and lead them into a new quality of life. (not only return home, but return to live a new kind of life)   We get a clue about this new quality of life in the chapter immediately before this, in chapter 36.  Ezekiel, speaking for the Divine, says “A new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a new heart of flesh.”  “Heart of flesh” is a Hebrew idiom for an open and compassionate heart.  So, the Israelites were about to return home with a heart and spirit (attitude and lifestyle) transplant.

Ezekiel, and other prophets of the time, said that when they got home they could not return to the status quo; to business as usual; retreat into old ways of community life that were often characterized by social injustice where the wealthy and powerful elites exploited and dominated the poor masses.  Ezekiel said they would receive the gift of a new heart, a heart open and receptive to the ways of God; a heart compassionate to each other’s needs and the ways of economic justice; to ways in which they would learn to care for one another: the strong for the weak, the rich for the poor, the privileged in-crowd for the excluded.   

That is some of what Ezekiel’s vision meant for the exiled Israelites, but what might his vision mean for us today?  Like it did for the Israelites, we too can exist in a state of exile when we feel and become disconnected from our life-giving center.

In my 35 years of pastoral ministry, I have engaged many people living in a variety of exiled states – including myself.  Like with the Israelites of old, exile for us can be very much a place of feeling and being alienated from a life-giving center.  When I think of the many expressions and conditions of exile that I have encountered, I put them in three general categories for the sake of presentation.

The first are exiled states we are cast into through no fault of our own but due to unfortunate life circumstance.  At the top of that list I would put profound loss and ensuing grief.  If you have lost a parent, spouse, child, dear friend, loved one of any kind you know grief can be experienced as exile.  Someone said to me this week, “When my mother died I felt like I was in exile.  She was the source of unconditional love in my life and when she died that relationship was cut off.  Sometimes I would reach for the phone to call her, to hear her voice, to experience her love – and then I would remember she was gone.”

Grief of any kind can very much feel like being cast into exile against one’s will.  It can be a lonely place of alienation from a life-giving source.  The grief that comes with a relocation, job termination, an empty nest, illness or disability, divorce, or being exiled inside a dysfunctional relationship that is not life-giving but life-taking are all varieties of exiled states due mostly to unfortunate life circumstance.  

Imagine how the millions upon millions of refugees that exist in the world today due to war, political oppression or natural disaster must feel being uprooted from their homes and homelands  in order to survive.  Their physical, emotional and spiritual state of exile is deep and traumatic. Far too often the world stands by in relative indifference taking little meaningful and empowering action.

The second are exiled states into which we cast ourselves.  This has a lot to do with the ego.  Let’s face it, we all contend with our own egos.  The ego desires to put itself and its agenda at the center of life, and everything and everybody else on the periphery.  The ego desires to control and manipulate others and life circumstance.  The ego protects itself at all costs, even to entrench in negativity and destructive patterns and resist positive change in order to stay in control. 

Great contemporary spiritual teachers like Thomas Keating, Eckhart Tolle and Richard Rohr have devoted a great deal of their lives to understanding the power of the ego, how it can exile, and the relationship between the ego and spirituality.  They conclude, each in his own unique way, that being set free from ego-exile is a path to transformation, purpose and a fuller humanity. 

Richard Rohr says something in one of his books that absolutely grips me.  He says, “When people can seek true good and the common good, even when it is of no ego advantage to them, you have a morally converted person.” (and I would add, “you have a person transformed in the likeness of Jesus”)   As people who claim our centering in Jesus, what we experience in him is a person who was free from the exiled state of ego.   He lived his life fully and completely in giving himself away for the sake of others, even when there was no ego advantage in it for himself.  This is the path; this is the way he invites his followers upon.  This is a great deal of what I perceive he meant when he said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.”   

The third are exiled states into which we cast others.  As a child I had a severe stutter.  It was like living in bondage and exile at the same time.  I felt in bondage to my stutter, but to make matters far worse, I was also exiled by my many of my peers.  Why?  How?  Because they put labels on me.  Some called me dumb, others called me stupid, and others poked cruel fun at me with belittling names like  “tangled tongue.”   Much of time, I felt terribly inadequate and a social outcast.   As a result of their rejection, I was cast into a very real childhood exile – a lonely and despairing place, and I grew to be an angry young adult – anger I had to deal with later in life.  

The ego, that I mentioned moments ago has no qualms about enlarging itself at the expense of others.  It does this by labeling, judging, condemning, belittling, complaining about, excluding and categorizing others.  One of its main tools is fear.  I hear it regularly in the everyday conversations of ordinary people from the grocery line to the Rec Center locker room to radio talk shows.  There is a virtual smorgasbord of items from which the ego can choose: ethnicity, religion, race, economic status, social standing, citizenship status, sexual orientation, gender, personality traits, disabilities and many more.   The moment we place a label on someone we are creating the negative energy that can exile – and if enough people get on the band wagon whole groups of people can be cast into exile.  We see that trend in certain communities around the country in negative and fear-based attitudes toward mainline Muslim communities. 

The Israelites had Ezekiel to remind them in vivid ways that their spiritual center was a Divine Presence that  sought to lead them out of their varieties of exile, whether it be the one imposed by powerful Babylon, or the expressions of exile they imposed upon one another. 

In our various states of exile, the good news is that we can look beyond Ezekiel’s vision to that which is our life-giving center – the Divine Presence experienced in the person of Jesus.  When we engage the life of Jesus as it unfolds in the gospels, we see that he freely, intentionally and willingly crossed the boundaries drawn and established by the egos of power and religion, as well as life circumstance.  At great risk, he embraced those living in various forms of exile to bring them home to God’s astounding love - a love embodied in his life – a love that empowered the exiles he touched and gave them dignity, hope and purpose.  Exiled persons were everywhere in his time, and the gospels show they eagerly sought him out.  His life and ministry was dedicated to bringing them home to God’s love:  the poor, women, Gentiles, children, the religiously unclean, enemies of Israel, the sick and infirmed, tax collectors and sinners and outcasts of all kinds.   

As our life-giving center, Jesus enters our exiled states to bring us home to God’s love, and also to empower us to advocate for others who have been cast into exile by the egos of power and prejudice.  It is our call – it is our mission - through Jesus who brings the exiles home to Divine Love.   Amen.