Mark Labberton, President of Fuller Theological Seminary, recently used the word “exile” in his address to the General Assembly of the PCUSA  to describe living faithfully as “a minority in a setting where we worship a peculiar God and do peculiar things.”
In the current issue of First Things, Carl Trueman makes a case for reformed Christianity being the best place to ride out the imminent exile of cultural irrelevance. He is not writing of a geographical resettlement, and I agree with Trueman that we are not to be in isolated Amish-like communities – or “enclaves of the past” as described by Alvin Toffler in Future Shock.
I am more frequently hearing this word to describe the future of the evangelical church in America, but the exile has already begun. What if we discover an exile is exactly what we need? After all, the Bible does say God “carried” the Israelites into the Babylonian exile and did not drive them like cattle. Yes, they are conquered, but they are also saved from self-destruction.
Here’s what I’m thinking.
The exile re-invented the Israelites, even to the point of renaming them. Prior to the exile they were Hebrews or Israelites. It was the Babylonians who first used “Judaism” and “Jew” to describe them. They were the people from Judah, and they have been that ever since.
The exile established the practical sages as leaders. Without a Temple there was no place for sacrifices, and without sacrifice there was no place for the priesthood as that was their main function. Without the sacrifice the preeminent place was given to the sages and scribes.
It is during the exile that the Israelites become people of the book. The study and observance of Scripture replaced elaborate ritual, and teaching the Torah became most important. Simplicity replaced the ornate nature of the Temple and its ceremonies. It is also in this time that Ezra collects the first canon of Hebrew Scripture.
The exile established home groups as the structure of Judaism. As a minority without a central place of worship, they begin to gather in congregations (synagogues) in homes, beside rivers, and in the country to create places of reading, prayer and study. Worship is decentralized from Temple ritual.
The exile allowed for the first spread of Judaism. Free from the maintenance and focus on a fixed place of worship (Jerusalem), it became easier to carry Judaism to other places. Judaism became portable.
It is natural to respond to what’s  happening today by creating an insurgent movement and raising up a political candidate to support. But what if we adopt the attitude of Jeremiah?
Jeremiah is not telling them “to pray for the peace and prosperity of our cities.” This phrase describes our relationship to the places where we have chosen to live. Jeremiah tells them to pray for the city of the enemy to which they have been carried; pray for the welfare and prosperity of those who have conquered them…and then settle in and be a part of that place.
We are no longer the majority, and this finds us in a new place. But perhaps we are being carried – and just might become what we would never have chosen on our own.