As most of you know, my stepdad died right before Thanksgiving this year and I’m just returning from being with my family for the funeral. The time together was hard, but also very enriching. Lots of good conversations and stories.

I don’t need to tell those of you who are familiar with major loss or crisis of some kind that the time “after” sort of feels like being in exile. Of course, there can be singing, joy, and laughter amidst the tears, but the biggest truth that cannot be avoided is the life that came before is gone. The way life worked before is over. And for the ones closest to the loss or crisis, even the way groceries are bought or the way you go to bed or get up in the morning has changed forever.

So, even if you are walking around in the same neighborhood, wearing the same clothes, after a death or a major life disruption, you can feel like a stranger in a strange land. It’s an exile.

Sadly enough, there is a time, sometimes a long time, before something like a new life can emerge. We can have faith that a new normal, a new way of living with some sense of wholeness will come again. But we can’t rush through this time of disorientation. A new creation in our life takes time.

In the Jeremiah text today, we hear God’s promises of wholeness, inclusion, and restoration for a people shattered and scattered in exile. There is a new life being created for the people. It is emerging, but it has yet to come into fruition.

This promise is the same promise of death and resurrection in our lives. The promise is that death will always be followed by the creation of new life. A new life for us, for our loved ones, for our communities, and the world. Creation is always happening anew and is happening through Christ. So, Jeremiah is encouraging us to continue to praise God amid our devastation, to have faith that indeed new life and a new creation is on its way for all of us and for all parts of us; all of us, including the weak and vulnerable are being brought into new life.

When we speak of the newness of life at the turn of the calendar year, it sort of begs the question of New Year’s resolutions. What new life might you be planning for yourself? I don’t know if you’re thinking about New Year’s resolutions. I personally don’t have a ton of “resolution” energy flowing in me right now, so I don’t. So, if you’re like me and not feeling fired up about new gym memberships or whatever, here’s another question for your New Year that might feel more generative for you. (It’s not a particularly fun questions, so I’ll apologize in advance.)

Here’s the question: How are you feeling in exile in your life? How are you outside of wholeness? Outside of what would feel like safety or community? Perhaps there’s just a part of your life that’s out of whack? Or is the whole thing off? Where do you see unresolved pain in your family? Community? World? And what aspects of exile that you named might you want to attend to?

Sometimes how we are in exile is obvious. After all, the world is full of people who are refugees due to war, natural disasters, or economic crises. We see this reality at our southern border, but also around the world. We also see people living in these kinds of exiles in our midst – those in weekly motels, tents, or shelters. It doesn’t always take a stretch of the imagination to see the state of exile in your or other’s lives.

But it also may be less obvious. For example, we live in a time of an epidemic of social isolation. This is a form of exile to not have sufficient human connection. Or there are those among us who grew up without a stable and safe home who may never have felt anything other than a sense of exile in the world. Wholeness and safety may never have been part of their experience.

The invitation and promise in Jeremiah is that even those who are the least able to journey back home out of exile will be provided a path to restoration. The blind, the disabled, or those in labor. Jeremiah isn’t promising that a new beautiful life will be available only for those able to fight for it, earn it, or achieve it. This life, this home, this wholeness is available to all of us, including the tender, vulnerable parts of ourselves. All are included. All are welcome.

You might be thinking of a situation that has existed for years in your life with no hope of it ever being resolved. What are we supposed to do with these situations? What is the holy timing of restoration?

For that question, I turned to the gospel. I’m always struck by the beginning of John. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This is a poetic reference to Christ Jesus, but also a reference to Genesis 1: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth,” which he created with his word, his language. “Let there be light and there was light.”

God’s use of language is powerful. As ones created in the image and likeness of God, it makes me wonder about our use of language and how our language, our words might also become manifest in the flesh. It strikes me that our language and the stories we tell might be more powerful in our lives than we might think. The way we tell stories, the way we talk to ourselves and each other, the way we narrate our worlds really are the lenses through which we experience the world.

We all have stories we tell about ourselves, the world, and each other. If, for example, we have an idea, a story, buried deep in our bodies and hearts that we aren’t enough or worthy of love in some way, we will likely experience that truth again and again. We will see evidence for it everywhere, even if that “evidence” is really a misinterpretation of something that happened. For example, someone’s annoyance in your presence may have absolutely nothing to do with you, but if you believe you’re always problematic, you might quickly assume their annoyance has everything to do with you. And then you feel badly and take it as further evidence of your unworthiness. We all do this sort of thing all the time.

Our stories and words are powerful. And I wonder if they alone can sometimes create our own exile experiences. If we believe we are unworthy of love, perhaps it’s hard for the love that is already in our lives to crack through that powerful story we tell ourselves.

Let’s consider again where we are experiencing exile in our lives. Is some of that storytelling we’re doing in your head keeping us in exile? Are we telling true stories about ourselves, such as the story that we are wonderfully made? The true story that we are children of God, precious as we are. Could any of us truly stand in front of a mirror as say with an open and unconflicted heart, “I am a wonderfully made, perfectly precious child of God who is fully accepted as I am.”?  Few of us could, right?

So, if we’re not telling ourselves God’s version of our stories about ourselves or other, might this be part of our exile experience? This might be part of how forgiveness feels so impossible. Perhaps it is part of how compassion seems to evade us when it comes to certain people. Would Jesus tell the same stories as we are telling?

These are tough questions. Thankfully we’re at church in community. It is easier for us to discern between true stories and our less-than-true stories in community. Our brothers and sisters in Christ can help us to see ourselves in our wholeness and we can do this for them. In the spirit of thanksgiving for community, I’m so glad that we are welcoming new members to Celebration Lutheran today.

The goodness of Christ is always creating new life in our lives. Always. From John’s prologue, we read, “All things (including you, me, and all people and life) came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being (again that includes you, me, and all people and life). What has come into being in him was life (that’s us!), and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” John is providing us a story from God about us and all people that that is the Truth of who we all are, including all of Creation. We are the light! Any story we tell ourselves about ourselves or others that does not match up with this Truth might need to be looked at more closely. Are we telling ourselves the truth as Jesus would have us do?

Perhaps it’s time to come home from the exiles of our old, tired stories. Perhaps it’s time to release our grip on them, let them go, and let the Word of God tell us better stories for us to cling to. May we all cling to the promise of our radiance, the light of which we are a part that the darkness will not overcome.

AMEN