July 16, 2006
(Sixth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 10)

Amos 7:7-15  •  Psalm 85 or 85:7-13  •  Ephesians 1:1-14  •  Mark 6: 7-13
(From The Lectionary Page)

Preparing for Exile

by Whitney Rice

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I’ve been thinking a lot about journeys lately. A year ago I made the journey from Kansas City to New Haven to begin my first year of seminary at Yale Divinity School. Then this summer I made the journey back home again to do a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education as a student chaplain at St. Luke’s Hospital. I began my journey toward ordination right here in this congregation, and I am so grateful to be here with you today as we journey together through a sermon given by someone not yet trained as a preacher.

We often hear the life of faith described as a journey, and that is borne out in our scriptures today. When I look at the great patterns of faith we inherit from the Hebrew Bible, I see that journeys of all types are about the experience of being exiled. The prophet Amos tells us today that “Jereboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.” Exile means leaving the land, leaving home. Everyone must face the grief and loss of exile at some point. Children leave for college, families move for job changes, retirement, birth, death, marriage—all of these life changes, both joyful and painful, carry some of the air of exile.

What does exile mean for Jesus? Jesus uses exile as a tool to guide his disciples into a deeper understanding of what it means to love and serve. Our gospel today says that “He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.”

I don’t know about you, but when I’m setting off on a journey, I like to be prepared. I need a map, a full tank of gas, snacks and drinks, some good music to listen to, a cell phone for when I am sure to get lost, etc. Jesus sends his disciples out deliberately unprepared. This is scary, but it is good news for us. Do you ever feel unprepared to meet the challenges and exiles of life? Because Jesus is saying here that it’s okay to be unprepared. It’s okay to be overwhelmed and confused and not sure you have what it takes to be a Christian.

So, we’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing worse than exile is exile without any preparation. But the truth is, as we go about our daily lives, we are not preparing for exile. We’re thinking about what to put on the table for dinner, or an important meeting the next day, or how the car has been making that funny noise again. Nowhere has that been made more clear to me than at the hospital this summer. When I am on-call, I am paged for all of the traumas that come into the ER to contact the families, get them to the hospital, and be with them as the situation unfolds.

The very first trauma that I was called in for was a 47-year-old woman who stopped breathing and was brought in by ambulance. Soon the small conference room outside the ER was swarming with the patient’s three sisters, one brother, mother, various aunts, uncles and cousins. I came back with the doctor as he delivered the news that all of their attempts to resuscitate the patient had failed and she had died. There was an immediate explosion of grief. The patient’s brother tried to rip the phone off the wall, and one of her sisters pulled off her shoes, ran out of the ER, and tried to run out into oncoming traffic. The chaos built as the reality of death crashed over this family.

After they had calmed somewhat, it was time for me to take them back to view her body. I had been too scared and overwhelmed by this family’s loud, violent grief to have much empathy for their pain. But all of that changed when the patient’s 18-year-old son approached her body. He had not said a word through his family’s storm of emotion. Still completely silent, he knelt down on the floor next to his mother and, wrapping his arms around her head, he leaned his forehead on her forehead and said very quietly, “Mama, I need you to wake up.”

I felt my heart break then. I finally understood in the depths of my soul that there was nothing I could do to fix this, nothing I could do to help these suffering people. I realized that you cannot go into exile for anyone, you can only go with them. So I stayed with them until they asked to be alone with her, and then I went down the hall to the bathroom, went inside a stall, and sat down and cried. Life would never be the same for that family. Almost all of us here today have faced the moment of realization that a loved one is gone and there is a long journey of grief ahead of us.

I know another story about a boy and his mother. Jesus’ mother Mary was there with the other women at the foot of the cross, and she watched her son die in agony. She saw him taken down from the cross and carried away to the tomb. I cannot imagine what she suffered there. But the moment that I feel closest to her is after all of that public tragedy, when Jesus has been taken away, and she is alone. He is dead and she has to go home and put dinner on the table. I picture her going into a dark and quiet house by herself and I wonder who cared for her then. Her son was dead, and it did her no good to be the mother of the messiah now. How could life go on when her world had ended?

And yet, three days later, her world was remade anew. The light burst forth in her soul as her son returned to her. He was home again. But she only had a few short days with him before he ascended to the Father, and her exile began again. And so the pattern of exile cycles through our lives time and time again as each struggle or tragedy forces us into a strange and desolate land until we stumble onto our homes in a new place.

Jesus loves us too much to let us just stay at home in comfort and self-satisfaction. He sent his disciples out on a journey proclaiming repentance and healing, and he sends us out as well. Our true home is in the heart of God, and we find that home in the very midst of our exile journeys.

I have many homes. I have my cozy little apartment and my friends at seminary. I have my family home here in town. I have my home in the heart of God. But one of my favorite homes is this congregation. And it seems to me that Jesus is sending Grace and Holy Trinity out on a pilgrim journey. We have been through hard times of exile together before. We have been through anger and pain and joy and expectation as our leadership has changed and been renewed. We have weathered the storms of controversy in the national church and international communion. And now we face a new journey as our beloved Deacon Yeager’s path takes her away from us in person even as she remains with us in heart and spirit. As I read our psalm for today, I thought it must surely have been written to describe the road our parish family has walked together and our hopes for the new path unfolding before us:

“Lord, you were favorable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
You forgave the iniquity of your people, you pardoned all their sin.
You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot anger.
Restore us again, O God of our salvation.
Will you not revive us again, so that your people may rejoice in you?
Show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation.
Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts.
Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land.
Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.
Faithfulness with spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.
The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.
Righteousness will go before him, and will make a path for his steps.”

We do not know what lies ahead on the journey before us, and so we go out as disciples with no bread, no bag, and no money in our belts. Jesus said that we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God, and this psalm is the word with which we set out. We have been promised that when we turn to God in our hearts, his word of peace will come to us and his glory will dwell in our land. Linda has been our companion in the way for many exiles and homecomings. Now we have the opportunity to walk with her in grace and pray as our psalmist does that righteousness will go before her and peace will make a path for her steps.

Exile is a frightening fracture of our lives that leads to a jubilant healing. When Jesus cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?,” he was drowning in the maelstrom of humanity’s sin and grief and pain. Nothing could have hurt him more than being exiled from the presence of his loving Father, the Spirit’s breath of life that he had never been without until that moment. And it was too much. He died in that exile.

But after three days, he came home to a new place. He journeyed back into resurrected life, his heart beating with the shining love that made the disciples follow him to begin with. And so we need have no fear of our own exile. When Jesus sends us out and tells us to “take nothing for the journey…no bread, no bag, no money in our belts,” we will see as the road unfolds before us what the psalmist sees: “Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky.”

And so I invite us as a congregation to join together as we go forward on the pilgrim’s way. In a few moments we will share the peace of the Lord. Before we do that, look within your heart and find the gift that you offer this parish family—steadfast love, faithfulness, righteousness, hope. Pledge to offer that gift to our common journey as you share the peace with a handshake, a smile, a hug or a kiss. Then watch as during the peace together we fulfill our psalm, the holy Word God has given us: “Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.” Amen.