Home and away

Exile, or being away, was a tough experience for Old Testament Israel after the fall of Jerusalem. There they were, dispossessed and far from the land promised to Abraham (Gen 12:1; 15:18f). No wonder they found it hard to sing the Lord’s song in exile and far from the place that they regarded as home (eg Ps 137).

This language of home and exile is picked up in the New Testament. Thus Peter can address his readers as ‘elect exiles of the dispersion’ and urge them to conduct themselves with fear through the time of their exile (1 Pet 1:1; 17).

Christian believers, as much as the old heroes of the faith are strangers and exiles who seek the homeland which is the city to come (Heb 11:14-16; 13:14). Our real sense of home is to be with the Lord and away from the flesh (2 Cor 5:6-8; Phil 1:23) which is to occupy our room in the prepared place of the new creation (Jn 14:2-3).

Yet we are called to be in the world rather than to escape from it (Jn 17:15). We cannot live in a ghetto of the coming age and refuse engagement with the present.

How do we put this together?

Perhaps we can use a human comparison.

Let’s imagine a person who is living in a country other than their heartland. Their citizenship, identity and love lies elsewhere, especially if they were wrenched from the heartland. Yet they recognise that they are, for the time being, in another land. Thus they strive to make a fulfilling life in the new, live responsibly there and enjoy what life there brings. However, their sense of who they are and where they are has two dimensions. There is the adopted ‘home’ of the present and the ‘Home’ of their heartland (or, as we call it, homeland). Add to that a Christian identity and we add a third sense of ‘HOME’ as the place of the deepest Christian longing.

This sense of ‘home’, ‘Home’ and ‘HOME’ can help the exile find a working equilibrium in their inner and outer life. She is at home where she is and engages with the life that God gives. Yet he maintains an interest in, love and loyalty to the Home from which he is removed. And beyond that, a sense that all life lived in this age is a homeless exile and thus a refusal to unduly attach to home or Home, lest that tear the affections from HOME.