All Sickness Is Homesickness
We find ourselves living in a world that seems increasingly scary
and unfamiliar. As every day we pump more and more fossil fuel pollution into
the Earth’s atmosphere, the climate responds with more violent weather like
hurricane Ian, rising sea levels, and rising sea temperatures, all threatening
lives of creatures on land, in the air, and in the sea. Apocalyptic warnings
that Russia might deploy ‘tactical nuclear weapons’ in its brutal attacks on
Ukraine threatens the whole world. And here ‘at home’ in the United States we
are increasingly a people divided: red and blue, conservative and liberal,
north and south, ultra-wealthy and the rest of us – to the point that families
and friends are divided in ways that have not been seen since the era of the Civil
War and Reconstruction. We feel we are no longer at home. We feel as if we are
in Exile, or captivity.
Much of our time and energy tends to be focused on division,
argumentation, name-calling, and finding ways to discredit, mock, and disparage
‘the other’ – and one another. This use of our time and energy drains us, only
making us feel even less and less ‘at home’ in this world anymore. We have lost
our focus on the Holy, the Divine or Spiritual dimension of life – what some call
God and God’s purposes. Out of fear of a world seemingly out of control, and of
others who are utterly unlike ‘us,’ we tend to ghettoize God, the Divine, the
Holy as our own possession, bending those purposes, the will for salvation – salvation,
or healing, or liberation, which is meant for the whole world and everyone and
everything therein – and make outrageous claims that such salvation, healing and
liberation is exclusively ‘ours.’
Along comes the prophet Jeremiah – a child prophet really,
in the mold of the young Samuel. The people Israel have been carried off to Babylon.
They are strangers in a strange land – resident aliens far away from home, and
the security of the Holy City of Jerusalem and its Temple which lies in ruins. We
try to imagine what Exile must feel like. Psalm 137 describes them being forced
to entertain their captors! We imagine it might be easy to give up, assimilate,
disappear. Or, to be constantly planning an escape, as their forebearers did
from Egypt long ago, and prepare to return to Jerusalem at a moment’s notice.
Instead, Jeremiah sends them a letter, advising them to
settle in, build, plant, multiply, to seek the welfare of Babylon, and even to
pray for its prosperity. Pray for the prosperity of their captors! Pray for the
common good, rather than demonize ‘the other.’ Remember, says Jeremiah, those
days in the wilderness where we were taught to love God and love neighbor – and
that all are neighbors, even these Babylonians. Stay true to the traditions we
have been given, even so far from home and all that home means. Make a home in
the wilderness of Exile. “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent
you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will
find your welfare.” [i]
Indeed, thanks to a generous Gentile ruler, Cyrus of Persia,
many of the exiles returned to Jerusalem several generations later, while some
remained in Babylon and flourished there. It was a revelation that when God
sent an anointed one, a messiah, it was a Gentile. Upon returning and
rebuilding Jerusalem and the Temple, liturgical texts like Psalm 66 proclaimed
a new understanding that their deliverance was ultimately for the sake of the
whole world. That God’s promises to father Abraham was that his descendants
would be a blessing to the whole world – to all peoples, to all creatures, to
the very Earth itself. [ii]
At all times, they sang, God’s welfare, God’s salvation is for all peoples,
even our captors as well as those who liberated us.
“Be Joyful in the Lord, all you lands! … Come now and see
the works of God, how wonderful he is in his doing toward all people… you let
enemies ride over our heads; we went through fire and water; but you brought us
out into a place of refreshment.” We can go home again. And we can make a
new home, even in Babylon, when we refocus our selves on the God who is our
very home!
Then there is this episode in Luke. Written after the Second
Temple had been demolished by Rome, Jesus, we are told, is in a no-man’s-land
between Galilee and Samaria. Those who were ritually impure due to a skin
disorder see him. They are in Exile. They cannot go home. Keeping their
distance, they call out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” [iii]
They know him. He simply tells them, “Go show yourselves to the priests.”
And as they go, they are made whole again. One stops, returns to Jesus, falls
to his knees and praises God with a loud voice. He recognizes the Holy, the Divine,
has restored him. And we are told that he is a foreigner, a Samaritan.
Of the ten, only this foreigner, this Samaritan, gives
thanks, and knows that it is the God of Abraham, the God of Jeremiah, the God
of Psalm 66 who has liberated him from exile. And Jesus sends him “on your
way.” Not “my way,” but on his way. Which is not the way of Jerusalem in the
south, but to Mount Gerizim in Samaria in the north. Do we hear that Jesus
says, we are to go on “our way”? That is, there is no one way. There is the way
of Babylon. There is the way of Samaria. There is the way of the Buddha. There
is the way of Lao T’zu. There is the way of Mohammed. As well as the way of Israel
and Jesus.
We can be at home wherever we are when we make our home with
the Holy, the Divine, the God of exodus, exile, and liberation. Once, like the
Samaritan, we recognize the force, the energy, the spirit that means to liberate
us from whatever exile we experience or place ourselves in, we can go home on ‘our
way.’ And like the Samaritan, we will acknowledge the source of our homecoming.
What these texts mean to help us see is expressed in this poem:
What is happiness to you and me?
Is it sitting under a shady tree?
Is it looking up at a blue sky,
Or thinking of peace which is long
past due?
Is it putting a smile on a lovely
face
By extending your hand regardless
of race?
Happiness comes to you and me
When we give of ourselves to others
for free.
-
Robert H. Chiang, 1978
When we extend our hand, regardless of race, of party or
tribal affiliation, of nationality, or economic status, or any of the many ways
we divide ourselves from one another, and even from ourselves, happiness is
ours, “When we give ourselves to others for free.” No cost. No debt. No
exile. We will find our home, our rest, in the Holy, the Divine, the source of
All. Amen.
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