Following nearly 100 years of Syrian occupation and physical exile in Babylon for many Hebrew people, ancient Israel as a nation had a political and national rebirth. The biblical book, Ezra-Nehemiah, is an historical faith record of that national rebirth.
Ezra was a priest and scribe (one who cared for the long forgotten sacred texts) and Nehemiah was the governor of the restored Israel. Together they tell of some of the beginning nation-rebuilding moments that enabled a restored government and culture to begin…again.
One of those significant moments is described in the 6th chapter of Ezra-Nehemiah. The described event tells of a national gathering of restored citizens listening to the reading of the Law of Moses; reading the national Constitution so to speak. One standout excerpt is this:
Then they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground. So they read from the book, from the Law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense so that the people understood the reading. (8:6,7).
The rebirth of Israel as a country and society was possible after years of exile and a general forgetting or ignorance of founding documents with 1. HUMILITY 2. AN ATTITUDE OF REVERENCE and 3. AUTHORITY GIVEN TO ONE SOURCE OF INFORMATION AND ITS APPLIED MEANING FOR SUSTAINING THE SOCIAL FABRIC.
Here we are in a dangerously divided America 4,000 years later. No one would describe the various voices articulating our divisions as humble, reverent, and lifting up as authority and a guide for knitting a social fabric, A COMMON SOURCE OF INFORMATION!
While I am a person rooted in a hopeful mind and heart, I am often overcome with a sense of certainty that as a country we are headed into a prolonged period of exile – a time of captivity to oppressive people, oppressive politics, and oppressive ways of life.
One of the tragedies of our current times is that we are far from being on the same page. We are not even reading from the same authoritative book! Our interpretations of the books we read – giving the sense – are so frequently voiced with arrogance, self-righteousness, and condemnation that the resulting polarizations lead directly to wide-scale suffering and death.
The catastrophic divisions of not being guided by the same book in dealing with the ongoing Covid pandemic are lethal in result. More than 800,000 of our fellow citizens are dead. And still there are those committed to reading bogus sources “proving” that the disease is a hoax.
Our hospitals and caregivers are overwhelmed by suffering folks who cannot get their breath, and still there are those committed to debunking the vaccines.
Our social fabric is being torn, ripped apart really, by political leaders and wannabe political leaders, who lie on purpose, cheat, steal, and behave with no regard for any authority other than what appeals to their base.
Our open and free elections are challenged, without evidence, as false. Our government has been hobbled and blocked by often bigoted, caucus factions. And if that were not tragic enough, many leaders of various institutions of worship are selling their souls. They are seeking favors, a sick promise of Christian theocracy, and a renewal of Jim Crow segregations.
We are heading for a period of long exile because – regardless of pietistic babbling of worshipping the same God – we do not worship the same deity. I have absolutely no reverence for the god advertised by those who carry Jesus Saves signs while attacking the nation’s capitol. Do you worship that same god?
We do not humble ourselves before a common text, and we do not worship ANYTHING with our face to the ground. Far too many of us are proudly following narcissists who are primping before the mirror and selling MAGA ball caps!
We are heading into a long period of exile because those who lead insurrection suffer no consequence. We are headed into exile because lying, duplicitous leaders and candidates suffer no meaningful consequence. We are heading into a long period of exile and brokenness because there is no meaningful consequence for those who willfully discredit the very foundational values which hold us together.
When five of the six leading Republican candidates seeking to be elected a United States Senator from Ohio openly lie, willfully spread conspiracy nonsense, cast doubt on the integrity of elections, and seek the favor of the leader, insurrection instigator, and proudly immoral man from Mar-a-Lago, our political exile is a near certainty. When many self-described evangelical Christians support, applaud, and describe such candidates as righteous examples of true, godly nationalists, our exile is already a reality. We know the way back. But we are in for a long detour. We must be preparing for a time in exile with the courage to champion humble hearts, faithful worship, and giving authority to those living out the life described in, and reading from, the common book that clearly describes the very practical SENSE of a moral, principled, life.