EXILE AS A METAPHOR FOR THE 21ST C CHURCH

South Parade April 21st 2013

Experience of church today... is an experience of ministry in a culture of change

Often confusion and bewilderment arises

Biblical stories of transformation and transition .... Stories that teach us about living between the times

Exile is :

• When one time is over and another hasn’t begun

• When the place that was familiar, where you belonged and knew the rules is no longer possible ... But you have not yet found a new way to make home

• Where we are forced to learn to live with a whole new reality that we didn’t necessarily choose but have to adjust to

• Where how we identified and understood ourselves no longer works and we are forced to reinvent ourselves

• Where we recognise that our own resources and abilities to control the situation have reached their limits and we are forced to rely on the radical freedom of God’s Spirit

• Where the people of God were reformed, recreated and where faith and theology took whole new directions

Exile is NOT something you fix

It is a whole NEW experience of life.

Break out of denial!

A place for lament

Babylonian Exile created a profound theological crisis for the people of God

An opportunity to develop new theological understandings

An exile is surely a crisis?

Danger of Acclimatising

Lose the ability to imagine that things could be different

Prophets’ task was to reactivate the imagination of the people that other futures were possible

Leaders turned people to the ancient stories – to find their core identity and to find hope

We have to start out when it is still dark

Take the duvet off our heads!

Looking out to see what God might be calling us to

Radical Hospitality?

An experience of the Spiritual?

Authentic existence ?