In Lonely Exile Here

Three kinds of exile in a world awaiting Christmas

When I was in seminary, I worked as a Starbucks barista. Wanting my evenings for people and study, I requested the morning shift. With three other baristas and a supervisor, I would shuffle into the dark cafe at 5am for our 5:30am opening.

Pulling into the parking lot a few minutes late one morning, I found my fellow latte schleppers standing outside. The supervisor had the keys, but the supervisor wasn’t there.

5:10am came. Then 5:20.

We tried calling. No answer.

As customers pulled into the parking lot and the drive-through, we could only apologize, explaining that we were locked out, essentially powerless to change things.

I’m sure you know the feeling. Being locked out.

Maybe you’ve forgotten your house key.

Or left a car key in the ignition.

Maybe you’ve been at the constant mercy of someone to open something for you.

Some have been exiled from a relationship or network, isolated, estranged, lonely.

Powerless and helpless.

Knowing where you need to be and want to be, yet having no way to get inside can undo your pretensions of total power and absolute agency.

Being locked out, being exiled, knowing where you want to be, where you should be, feels lonely and desperate.

The Advent season captures this feeling of being locked out or exiled.

“O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here…”

The Bible tells the story of exile from early to late in the plotline. From Joseph in Egypt, to Israel in Babylon, and into the gospel era of the chosen exiles of the church (1 Pet. 1:1).

The Bible tells the story of exile in poetry and prose, in propehcy and epistle, in history and theology. And in genealogy.

We might expect the New Testament, the epic finale of the whole Bible to hook us with something big. Instead, we find this: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1).

More than a blockbuster whoa Matthew establishes the legal inheritance of the who: Jesus is the legal heir of the promises to David and Abraham. Then in the rest of the family line, Matthew shows us that Jesus is the legal heir of the throne and the land of Israel, who gathers his people in from their exile.

Among genealogies it’s remarkable, because a genealogy usually takes its name from the eldest, first on the list. This is the ancient practice of primogeniture, where the firstborn had primacy. But not with Jesus’ genealogy. Every previous generation takes its cue from him. He defines them, rather than the other way around.

Jesus’ Genealogy (The Eras Tour)

We see three eras in Jesus’ genealogy (call it “the eras tour” if you want to).

The Era of Promise (Abraham) (Matt. 1:2-6).
The Era of Power (David) (Matt. 1:7-11).
The Era of Exile (name missing—we’ll get back to this) (Matt. 1:12-16).

Exile echoes through the story of the Bible. In the era of promise, Abraham was an exile. He was given the land, but remained a foreigner his whole life. “And Abraham lived as a foreigner/sojourned in the land of the Philistines for many days” (Gen. 21:34). Stephen the martyr tells us that “Yet God gave Abraham no inheritance in the land, not even a foot’s length, but promised to give it to him as a possession and to his offspring after him, though he had no child” (Acts 7:5).

In the era of power, David was an exile. He lived outside the family circle before he was anointed king at a young age.

After Jesse presented seven of his sons to him, Samuel told Jesse, “The Lord hasn’t chosen any of these.” Samuel asked him, “Are these all the sons you have?” “There is still the youngest,” he answered, “but right now he’s tending the sheep.” Samuel told Jesse, “Send for him. We won’t sit down to eat until he gets here” (1 Sam. 16:10–11).

Then again, David lived in exile as he fled for years from Saul. He lived in caves, wandering around the wilderness. “Now David and his men were in the wilderness…” (1 Sam. 23:24). He even had a season where his own son drove him out of the capital city, and he was exiled from his own palace after years on the throne:

David said to all the servants with him in Jerusalem, “Get up. We have to flee, or we will not escape from Absalom! Leave quickly, or he will overtake us quickly, heap disaster on us, and strike the city with the edge of the sword” (2 Sam. 15:14).

And in the third era, exile is unending. Matthew summarizes the genealogy of Jesus this way: “So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations” (Matt. 1:17).

14 + 14 + 14. As I said in a poem I wrote years ago, “Fourteen generations times three and he came, all bloody and weak and wholly divine.”

But count the names, and something doesn’t add up. A name is missing.

The era of promise: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Perez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David. Fourteen.

The era of power: Solomon, Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joram, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon, Josiah, Jechoniah. Fourteen.

The era of exile: Shealtiel, Zerubbabel, Abiud, Eliakim, Azor, Zadok, Achim, Eliud, Eleazer, Matthan, Jacob, Joseph, Jesus. Thirteen.

Where is the missing generation? Students have puzzled over this point for thousands of years, but I think the best explanation is that the “missing generation” is the deportation to Babylon. And this exile still exists at the time Matthew is writing. Scholar Nicholas G. Piotrowski calls it “the unending exile when there is no Davidic king.”

Into this blank space called “exile,” Matthew tells us to overwrite the name of Jesus. Because Jesus ends the exile. Emmanuel ransoms captive Israel who mourns in lonely exile.

This is good news for us, as our own stories are also stories of exile. In at least three ways.

1. Spiritual Exile

First, most profoundly, we experience exile in an eternal, existential sense. We have been expelled from the favorable presence of God because of our rebellion. The ancient tale is the true tale of the world: the man ate the fruit and suffered the curse. We all eat the forbidden fruit of sin and self, our ways instead of God’s ways. We live in lives and we live in a world cursed because of sin. Far from home. Mourning in lonely exile here.

But God doesn’t leave us in exile. He sent his Son out into the wastelands. Jesus himself experienced exile. As an infant:

“After they were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Get up! Take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. For Herod is about to search for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night, and escaped to Egypt. He stayed there until Herod’s death, so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled: Out of Egypt I called my Son” (Matthew 2:13–15).

Like Jacob leading his family away from the promised land into Egypt to escape the famine, Joseph leads his family to safety away from the promised land. And like God called his people out of Egypt, Jesus comes out of Egypt, out of exile, back into the land.

Then Jesus experiences exile as an adult. After Jesus is baptized and publicly affirmed by his Father, “This my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased” (Matt. 3:17), he is “led up by the Spirit into the wilderness” (Matt. 4:1). Jesus experienced exile away from the land of promise as an infant and as a man.

But most profoundly, Jesus experienced exile on the cross. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Elí, Elí, lemá sabachtháni?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matthew 27:46).

Jesus was sent as the heir of the promise to Abraham and the heir to the throne of David to bring us out of our exile. And he did this by entering—rather, exiting into exile himself. We suffer a self-deserved and God-ordained exile. Israel flirted with other so-called gods and fell into their arms. God warned them and warned them—then he expelled them. We aren’t better than they were.

Jesus experienced the human reality of exile from the presence of God, because we mourned in lonely exile away from the presence of God. When Jesus died, he bore the wrath of God against sin, and in his human nature he experienced exile from the favor of God. When he cried, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” he called out the abandonment that was our eternal destiny—had he not joined us there.

Jesus washed up on the dirty shore of the wastelands. He pushed his hands into the wet sand and lifted his head. Pulling his knees beneath him, he leaned back and caught his balance. Slowly, he stood and he walked into the desert place, the dead place, and called as many who had ears to hear, “Come, follow me! I’m not staying here long, just for the weekend, and I want you to come back with me.”

“We were dead in our trespasses and sins…but God being rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with him…” (Eph. 2:1, 4).

Jesus opened his eyes, and he stood in his burial rags. Yet he didn’t open his eyes or stand up alone. All those united to him through repentance and faith in him were there, too. All who have turned away from sin and self and trusted in Christ find that their eternal destiny has been stitched into the side of Jesus. The Messiah, son of Abraham, son of David.

2. Social exile

Second, we experience exile as citizens of a kingdom that doesn’t fly a flag at the United Nations. This kingdom stands under a cross upon a hill outside Jerusalem. We are “chosen exiles,” as we belong to a different kingdom. At times this exile puts us at odds with the world. We have different values and goals, and we pledge allegiance to a far Country, a City that is yet to come. Those in Christ feel this displacement and homelessness in the world.

We see the scandal of the skin and blood and bone that Jesus brought into the world. Jesus the Messiah has some surprising skeletons in his genealogical closet. Matthew includes four women, plus Jesus’ mother, Mary. Look at the women whose blood runs in Jesus’ veins. Tamar (Matt. 1:3) impersonated a prostitute to get her father-in-law to sleep with her and get her pregnant. Rahab (1:5) was a prostitute and a Gentile. Ruth (1: 5) was an Moabite refugee. And David took advantage of Bathsheba, “the wife of Uriah” (1:6), who was very likely a Gentile like her husband. Jesus’ own mother was accused of immorality, because who really would believe that she was pregnant by a miracle of God?

So Jesus was born into the world with the blood of kings and whores and immigrants running through his body. When Jesus bled his blood for the nations, he bled the blood of the nations.

So it’s surprising, but actually not that surprising when we experience disconnection in our relationships and communities. Some experience exile because of physical or cultural features. Skin color or accent. Age or income. Some experience exile because of family strain and tensions. Dislocated relationships. Kids or parents or friends or neighbors who don’t text back anymore.

Jesus understood this exile, and he can bridge these unbridgeable gaps, too.

3. Situational exile

Third, we experience seasons of wandering and wondering and waiting. Micro-exiles, when we see a disjunction between where we want to be and where we are. Seasons of fatherly discipline, and/or of wondering where God might be.

Seasons where we feel like God has given us the desires of our hearts and snatched them away again.

Seasons in Babylon.

Death and grief. Loss and lament. Deferred dreams and hopes hanging too high to reach.

The genealogy of Jesus teaches us two things. First, exile is real. Second, exile is temporary. The promises of God might take fourteen generations times three, but Messiah is coming. Though he be bloody and weak, he is wholly Divine.

He has come, and he will come, again.

We live between First Christmas and Second Christmas. Advent has yielded to Christmas once before, and it will yield again.

So we wait, and we walk on.
So we believe, and we hope.
So we love, and we long.

So we rejoice, rejoice, because Emmanuel will come to thee, O Israel.