Faith
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Thinking the Faith, Praying the Faith, Living the Faith is written by the PC(USA) Office of Theology and Worship.
Thinking, praying, and living the faith is at the core of ministry in the Office of Theology and Worship. In the following videos, learn more about what thinking, praying, and living the faith means to the leadership of the Office of Theology and Worship. Discover why it matters and what difference it makes in our lives, work, and worship.
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Exile Revisited
Several weeks ago I posted a couple of blogs that posed the question whether the PCUSA is a church in exile. There was some good discussion, including whether or not “exile” was the appropriate metaphor for our current situation. This past week my friend Scott Black Johnston preached at a gathering of some 350 Presbyterians who had come together to consider the future of the PC (USA). Scott’s sermon (at just over an hour into the opening worship) agrees with me, so of course I think it to be sheer brilliance (seriously, it was brilliant whether I agree with him or not).
Blogging in response to the conference, and in particular in an appreciative critique of Scott’s metaphor of exile, John Vest again raises the question as to whether this is a helpful image for our contemporary conversation. Specifically John challenges any hoped-for restoration the exile metaphor might evoke, if such hope focuses on a return to the status quo (in this case, the church of Christendom). John writes,
“the biblical archetype of exile moves us toward … restoration…. A return to Christendom is not the answer for the 21st century church.”
I could not agree more. Indeed, taking nothing away from John’s case that Jesus’ announcement of the Kingdom of God as a “still more excellent way” to think about our current situation, I think the precise lesson to be learned from exilic imagery is that there was nothing remotely like a return to the status quo. Virtually nothing was the same in the Judah of the restoration.
Indeed, it was the context of exile that led the deported people of God to begin to hope for a completely new kind of king… an anointed one of God radically different from the parade of petty, faithless—and in many instances downright evil—leaders whose fickle priorities and cultural captivity had brought on God’s judgment in the first place.
To cut to the chase, it was in the hard soil of the exile that the seeds of messianic hope really began to germinate. To say it another way, the ultimate (eschatological) fruit of the Babylonian captivity was nothing less than the one we now confess to be our Lord and Savior: Jesus Christ.
May God use our current season of exile to kindle in us a renewed longing for God’s anointed leadership, and a new manifestation of God’s emerging kingdom.
- Posted at 1:27 a.m.
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