Exile
May 25, 2005
I just got off of the phone with Kevin Sinclair. He was talking about what he's going to do with the Royal Lane youth on Wednesday nights, and I was talking about the sermon first draft I had just written. It was an energetic conversation, as those with Kevin always are. Part of the fun is how much Kevin is now a colleague with whom I can dialogue. He's not just the one asking questions anymore.
I mentioned how I was using a suggestion from Brueggemann to read the Noah story through the lense of the Exile, particularly the references to the Flood narrative from Isaiah 54. Kevin said that he thought it was interesting to use the exile motif with a congregation of gays and lesbians because of its liberation emphasis. I said that that was exactly why I was using it and that I had regularly over the last month found myself gravitating to exile literature or using the concept of exile as an interpretive lens. Kevin and I then got into a discussion about how probably all of the Old Testament should be read through the lens of the Exile experience because much of the literature was written, compiled, or edited during or after the period of the Exile. What do you think?
Thank you Scott. It means a lot to hear that from you. What was exciting to me to first discover this Exile Lense Theory was that it made sense of the Law material. The long (And I mean LONG!) lists of obscure, archaic laws are an itemized indictment against the Hebrews. In Leviticus 26, all the law material is summed up as saying "You won't do it so I will do this..." but for every judgment of God there is a restoration! If we don't have the end of the story (Exile and the Postexilic restoration) how can we make sense of the law material, or at large the entire Old Testament?
Posted by: Kevin Sinclair | May 26, 2005 at 01:40 PM