{"id":26695,"date":"2026-03-23T08:10:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T12:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26695"},"modified":"2026-03-23T11:03:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T15:03:00","slug":"26695","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26695","title":{"rendered":"A People in Exile"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Josh Garrels - Farther Along (Motion Lyrics)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IctD9l4F-ag?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Sunday, March 22, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/email.cac.org\/t\/d-l-ghidytt-dkgktyktu-y\/\">READ ON CAC.ORG<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>CAC faculty member Brian McLaren offers a brief history of the Babylonian exile, a defining crisis in the biblical story:&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was about 800 BCE. The Israelites and Judeans had already survived so much. In addition to all the trouble within their respective borders\u2014much of it caused by corrupt leaders\u2014even bigger trouble was brewing outside. The two tiny nations were dwarfed by superpower neighbors, each of which had desires to expand. To the north and east were the Assyrians. To the east were the Babylonians, and to their east, the Persians. To the south were the Egyptians, and to the west, the Mediterranean Sea. How could <strong>Israel and Judah, each smaller than present-day Jamaica, Qatar, or Connecticut,<\/strong> hope to survive, surrounded in this way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The northern Kingdom of Israel fell first. In 722 BCE, the Assyrians invaded and deported many of the Israelites into Assyria. These displaced Israelites eventually intermarried and lost their distinct identity as children of Abraham. They\u2019re remembered today as \u201cthe ten lost tribes of Israel.\u201d The Assyrians quickly repopulated the conquered kingdom with large numbers of their own, who then intermarried with the remaining Israelites. The mixed descendants, later known as Samaritans, would experience a long-standing tension with the \u201cpure\u201d descendants of Abraham in Judah to the south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Judah resisted conquest for just over another century, during which Assyrian power declined and Babylonian power increased. Finally, around 587 BCE, Judah was conquered by the Babylonians. Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed. The nation\u2019s \u201cbrightest and best\u201d were deported as exiles to the Babylonian capital. The peasants were left to fill the land and \u201cshare\u201d their harvest with the occupying regime. For about seventy years, this sorry state of affairs continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>By 538 BCE, the Persian Empire allowed the exiled Judeans to return to the land and rebuild. They experienced new freedoms but remained under imperial rule:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How should they interpret their plight? Some feared that God had failed or abandoned them. Others blamed themselves for displeasing God in some way. Those who felt abandoned by God expressed their devastation in heart-rending poetry. Those who felt they had displeased God tried to identify their offenses, assign blame, and call for repentance. It was <strong>during this devastating period of exile and return that much of the oral tradition known to Christians as the Old Testament was either written down for the first time, or reedited and compiled. <\/strong>No wonder, arising in such times of turmoil and tumult, the Bible is such a dynamic collection! [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Psalm 42 expresses the pain of exile:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I say to God, my rock,<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \u201cWhy have you forgotten me?<br>Why must I walk about mournfully<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; because the enemy oppresses me?\u201d<br>As with a deadly wound in my body,<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; my adversaries taunt me,<br>while they say to me continually,<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \u201cWhere is your God?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Why are you cast down, O my soul,<br>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 and why are you disquieted within me?<br>Hope in God, for I shall again praise him,<br>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 my help and my God<\/strong>. (Psalm 42:10\u201311)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Exile: An Ongoing Reality<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Monday, March 23, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Brian McLaren considers the stories of empire and exile that appear in the Bible and continue to this day:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you ask Jewish people what the central story of their Bible is, <strong>they will usually say the Exodus<\/strong>, the story of their refugee ancestors being enslaved by the rulers of the Egyptian Empire, until God liberated them and led them to freedom. Although historians and archeologists argue about how much of the story is historical and how much is literarily enhanced or fictional, biblical scholars date the story somewhere between 1500 and 1200 BCE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sadly, the non-fictional enslavement and mistreatment of refugees has happened too many times and to too many people over the centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you ask what the second most important biblical story in the Hebrew Scriptures is, <strong>many will say the Exile, <\/strong>when large numbers of Jewish people were taken to Babylon where they were made to serve the elites of the Babylonian Empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And sadly, mass deportation and domination of Indigenous peoples have happened too many times and to too many people over the centuries: There have been <strong>too many Trails of Tears, too many Nakbas, too many pogroms and internment camps over the centuries, right up until today.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Together,<strong> Exodus and Exile remind us that the same empires that produce luxuries for those at the top of the social and economic pyramid also produce great suffering for those at the bottom. And just as the gods of the emperors are portrayed as legitimizing their rule, for those at the bottom, God is seen as their only hope for liberation. In fact, I often propose that the English words\u00a0<em>liberate\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>liberation<\/em>\u00a0would be better translations for the Hebrew and Greek words commonly translated as\u00a0<em>save\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0<em>salvation<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many of the psalms are intense poems of pain from the Exile period. One of the best known is Psalm 137. You feel the pathos as the Judean exiles feel they have been dehumanized, turned into entertainment for their oppressors:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>By the rivers of Babylon\u2014<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; there we sat down, and there we wept&nbsp;<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; when we remembered Zion.<br>On the willows there<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; we hung up our harps.<br>For there our captors<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; asked us for songs,<br>and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \u201cSing us one of the songs of Zion!\u201d<br>How could we sing the Lord\u2019s song<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; in a foreign land?<br>If I forget you, O Jerusalem,<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; let my right hand wither!<br>Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; if I do not remember you,<br>if I do not set Jerusalem<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; above my highest joy. (Psalm 137:1\u20136)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>In this psalm, the refugees in exile refuse to sing. They refuse to sacrifice their own dignity and humanity for the entertainment of their oppressor. Their pain echoes through the centuries and asks us: Where are people experiencing exile today? Dare we humanize them and feel their pain? Dare we take their story seriously\u2014even if doing so offends the elites of today\u2019s empires of violence and domination?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>=============<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Individual Reflection:<\/strong>&nbsp;Think of one specific community experiencing exile or forced displacement today. What has kept you from fully entering their story \u2014 is it distance, overwhelm, ideology, or something harder to name? What might it cost you to stop looking away?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Group Discussion \u2014 choose one:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Where are you currently being asked to sing a song you don&#8217;t have?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Who are the exiles you&#8217;ve been trained not to humanize?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What would it mean for you personally if liberation and salvation were the same word?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday, March 22, 2026 READ ON CAC.ORG CAC faculty member Brian McLaren offers a brief history of the Babylonian exile, a defining crisis in the biblical story:&nbsp;&nbsp; It was about 800 BCE. The Israelites and Judeans had already survived so much. In addition to all the trouble within their respective borders\u2014much of it caused by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26695"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26695"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26704,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26695\/revisions\/26704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}