We Gather Together

One of the stories from scripture that I have always been intrigued by is the period of “exile” ofIsrael that you can find referred to in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Ezra, Nehemiah and others. In short, after Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 587 BCE, it was their policy of imperialism to deport citizens of that country into foreign lands. By so doing, Babylon felt that their occupied countries would be more manageable and less susceptible to uprising or insurrection. The incredible pain that this deportation and displacement caused, has led many scholars to stand amazed that the religion of Judaism and the worship of Yahweh even survived this long exile! When Persiaeventually conquers Babylon, the people of Israel in some places of exile are permitted to return to their land.

I have long felt that there is much for us to learn from this time of exile in our own contemporary church. We have so many people and people-groups who are so cut off and estranged from God, that the case could be made that millions are living in exile today. To witness European countries such as Great Britain and France who have roughly 7% of their nation in church is astounding. InAmerica, estimates range from 28-33%. I believe that people are living in exile here in our own country and community… cut off from the Lord of Life, and wrapped up and consumed in a world of issues, circumstances and catastrophes. Sadly, they have no faith basis nor hope from which to make any sense of it all. It is no wonder that anxiety, depression, stress, grief and suicidal despair are at all time highs.

In exile, Lamentations cries out, “Gone is my glory, and all that I had hoped for from the Lord” (Lam. 3:18). The world as we have known it seems to have disappeared. As one scholar observes, “all the conventional, homegrown props of established society are now largely gone.Old institutions scarcely perform their tasks anymore, and that reality of loss generates enormous anxiety among us.” That reality leads this scholar to assert that the Church has now become “God’s agent for gathering exiles.”[1]

The end of Isaiah depicts a real clash in this ministry moment when exilic Jews return fromBabylon to Jerusalem and encounter communities formed by those “left behind.” One scholar notes that the prevailing issue suddenly becomes “who is in and who must be excluded?”Compounding things was the existence of what historians refer to as “urban elites” among the body who “monopolized power… and thereby had the capacity to define the community and its constituents.” Into this quagmire, the LORD speaks: “Thus says the Lord God, who gathersthe outcasts… I will gather others to them besides those already gathered” (Is. 56:8). The great Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, states that this verse depicts a “God who gathers.” It depicts that “some are already gathered home that some are not yet gathered home; and that all will, by the mercy of God, be gathered home.”

One need simply listen to Jesus teaching the religious leaders of his day in the 15^th chapter of Luke, saying that God is like a restless shepherd unable to sleep at night because he must go and pursue the one sheep out of the hundred that has strayed off… that God is like an agitated woman who combs through all the house for the one lost coin… that God is like a heartbroken father scanning the horizon yearning for the son who has run off, to come home. God is truly a God who “gathers!”

At the end of August through the end of October, we are launching a media campaign for “exiles.” You will see advertisements on TV that satires the perception of a church that asks that terrible exilic question, “Who gets in and who is excluded?” Our message is that GarfieldMemorial Church is a place of grace that does not exclude, but seeks to join in God’s work of gathering. There will be a trailer highlighting our Odyssey service as Cleveland needs to visually see that this new offering exists in a local church. These ads will depict a body of believers who graciously and lovingly receive “exiles,” as we know that on any given day, we ourselves are exiles.

Walter Brueggemann, Mandate to Difference: An Invitation to the Contemporary Church (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2007), 51 {Later references to Brueggemann in this article, are also found here}.