An Exiled Church
Louis Johnson’s sermon on An Exiled Church from Sunday 30th August, part of our August series ‘What is Church?’
Reading: Ezekiel 11:14-20
Then the word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, your kinsfolk, your own kin, your fellow exiles, the whole house of Israel, all of them, are those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, “They have gone far from the Lord; to us this land is given for a possession.” Therefore say: Thus says the Lord God: Though I removed them far away among the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a little while in the countries where they have gone. Therefore say: Thus says the Lord God: I will gather you from the peoples, and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. When they come there, they will remove from it all its detestable things and all its abominations. I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God.
Sermon
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Don’t it always seem to go/That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”
So sang Joni Mitchell on the record ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ and, as with all great lyrics, it seems to encapsulate a universal truth so profound that it feels like some kind of ancient proverb, rather than a song from 1970. Indeed, ‘you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone’ has become a kind of truism, or cliché, an idiom woven into the fabric of our everyday conversations because it usefully expresses something of our shared experience of life. And its note of plangent regret might be felt to have particular resonance for us all after the experience of the last five or so months, a time during which many things we took for granted seem to have gone: freedoms, small and large, that we hitherto took for granted; company and companionship; employment and pastimes; a sense of normality and certainty; touch and physical connection with many of those we love; and, for many, loved ones have gone and, in some cases, so has an opportunity to say goodbye properly. Of course, regular, physically-gathered church community and public worship in shared buildings has also gone, at least, gone as we knew it, perhaps temporarily, perhaps not. And, although it is starting to emerge again, albeit in a context and with aspects that are somewhat strange and unfamiliar, this experience invites us to reflect both on what church has been for us during this time, but also to think about how this experience might shape our experience and understanding of church in the future. If, indeed, we ‘don’t know what we’ve got ‘til it’s gone’, what was it that we had as physically-gathered church, if it has gone? And has it gone? Has losing our ability to physically gather allowed us to see what we have actually got as church? Or, if something has gone, if we have suffered loss, have we also experienced gain? Perhaps, in losing something of what it was to be church as we knew it, we have gained a new perspective on what church is, on how it can be understood.
‘You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.’ I think it is fair to say that, as church communities, we do feel that something of the life we knew has gone. And maybe what we are experiencing can be understood as a kind of exile in that, being unable to physically gather as church, we have been separated from something against our will: from the buildings themselves, those shared communal, prayed-in places; from sharing in singing together; from lighting candles and engaging in other tangible, physical shared signs of the sacred; from shaking and holding hands, and hugging, when we meet or share the sign of peace; from the sense of relationship in mutual existence that comes from sharing physical space with others as, together, we worship God who shares creation with us; and, of course, from physically sharing in the Communion of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the sacrament around which the Universal Church is constituted. I have personally not received Holy Communion since Sunday 22nd March, and this has felt like a kind of exile for me, and I imagine this is an experience shared by others. Yet, crucially, this has still been a shared experience – I have not felt alone in this and, in this sharing of an experience of exile, I have still felt part of church – in not being able to physically receive communion, I have not felt ex-communicated. This has partly been due to my being fortunate enough to be able to gather remotely and experience church online, to pray, read, discuss, worship and connect with others; and it has partly been due to the opportunities I’ve had to connect with people pastorally over the phone, and through being able to continue to participate in the work of Micah foodbank – indeed, pastoral contact and social justice work are essential dimensions of being church that seem to have come to the fore generally as expressions and out-workings of faith in the absence of physically-gathered worship and Communion. Yet I think that the main reason that I have felt tangibly part of something even whilst being physically absent is because church is something bigger than my experience of it in a particular physical setting, or in a particular act of receiving Holy Communion, or even in a particular set of relationships within a community: it is the work of the Holy Spirit across space and time, holding us in relationship with all that the church has been, is, and will be, from Pentecost circa AD 33 to now, and into the future.
‘You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.’ So, some things we’re used to experiencing as church may have gone, but God hasn’t gone anywhere. God is with us, no matter that we are apart, and no matter where we are – ‘indeed, he is not far from each one of us’ (Acts 17.27); and it is God the Holy Spirit that forms us and holds us together as church, that makes us church. And this seems to be the experience of the exiled Israelites that we heard about in our reading from Ezekiel: ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: Though I removed them far away among the nations, and though I scattered them among the countries, yet I have been a sanctuary to them for a little while in the countries where they have gone.’ (Ezekiel 11.16) It is in the experience of exile that the scattered, dispersed, lost nation of Israel finds that God is not in the sanctuary of the temple, but with them in their exile, sharing their exile; it is in their exile that they experience their radical dependence on God – and in which they find sanctuary in God; and God uses the experience of exile for the purposes of transformation: ‘I will give them a new heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh’. (Ezekiel 11.19) So maybe the church is, in this season, being called into an experience of exile; the words of that ancient Marian hymn of the church ‘Hail, Holy Queen’ already speak of this life as ‘our exile’, so perhaps we have a calling as a church to embody this by dwelling in and witnessing in the pain of separation. Or perhaps the church in the relatively wealthy and comfortable west is being called to share in the exilic experience of the church in so many other parts of the world, in countries where Christians are persecuted for expressing their faith and where gathering is necessarily difficult, compromised, or even impossible. And perhaps God is using our experiences of exile to transform our perception of what church is – and through this, to transform us.
‘You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.’ Well, what have we got? It seems that we are being shown that church doesn’t necessarily mean a physically-gathered community – as experiences of online worship and even phone-in services will demonstrate; but it seems that church isn’t necessarily remotely or virtually gathered community either – it is true that where two or three are gathered in his name, Jesus is there among us (cf. Matt 18.20) – but I don’t think that this is an exclusive arrangement, that it is only when two or three are gathered that Jesus is there – because Jesus is with us in every situation, wherever we are, whether we are by ourselves or with others – in some sense, we are always gathered community, because it is the presence of God with us that makes us church, whether apart in our private devotions, or together in our collective worship. And this suggests that, whatever church is, ultimately, it isn’t something that we make or control, it is not dependant on what we do or don’t do; so perhaps it is best to understand church as a gift – a gift from God; like the Eucharist is a gift from God; like creation is a gift from God; and as a gift, church is not something that is owed to us, or that we can demand; and, seemingly like other such gifts from God, church is something that we didn’t necessarily ask for, and that we seemingly don’t fully understand – and perhaps, in this case, that is because church is an eschatological gift, a gift from the future that is calling us into the future, a gift that we are growing into, together, and through which, like the exiles of Israel, God’s grace transforms us as we grow; and if the work of church is transformation, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised if church is not a static thing, but in a permanent state of transformation itself, as we are all taken, together, from this, our exile, into freedom, into God’s Kingdom, the future we are being called into by Jesus.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.