Today the week begins with Exile and being a recalcitrant people - from "An Unsettling God" - by Walter Brueggemann
In the end, the exile is a theological datum concerning Israel's life with YHWH. While one may quibble about how extensive the deportation was and what percentage of Israelites were removed from the land, such issues do not matter with exile as a theological datum. In its relation to YHWH, Israel is nullified, and the displacement seemed destined to last in perpetuity. In sovereign righteousness, YHWH acts in self-regard and is capable of sloughing off this partner who refuses partnership. Thus it belongs to the fundamental marking of Israel that as a people summoned in love by YHWH and addressed by YHWH's command, Israel is a community scattered by none other than YHWH, the God of sovereign fidelity and faithful sovereignty, to the null point. Israel can imagine YHWH's complete negation of Israel. Israel has no guarantee of life in the world beyond the inclination of YHWH, and that inclination has now been exhausted. Israel must, in perpetuity, ponder its scatteredness, out beyond the well-being intended by YHWH.
What do you do with a partner who refuses partnership? In my faithful imagination, even as we read of Israel's travails at the hand of Babylonians and their exile, there is this God whose love is ceaseless and yet must - let them go the way they have chosen. The chosen people have chosen to abide within the world of other gods. That, unfortunately, is where they are taken - if not physically, their hearts and souls. But then I turn to myself as a follower of Jesus and the many ways I refuse partnership - or the many ways the church refuses partnership. Oh, we claim the name and demand some kind of goodies to go with that - but our partnerships tend to be with the powers of the day and the shape of the world as it is. Not an easy thing to say to oneself.
Connection: Faithfulness calls for deliberate action and thoughtful responses to the world around us. Too often, I know that I can be a scattered person who does not remain alongside the call to follow. It can be too damn easy to step in other ways.
O God, who watches how we turn away and follow other powers, abide with us even as we find it so easy to turn from your love. Amen.
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