ECO/FOP
In exile or exodus: God’s unrelenting, staunch loyalty
ORLANDO, Fla. — “What time is it? What I am really asking is this: What time is it for this particular gathering of Presbyterians like yourselves?” Donna Petter asked those attending the opening worship service of the Fellowship of Presbyterians (FOP) and ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians on Wednesday night.
It may be a sad, happy, discouraging or joyful time, she said. It may be a time of bondage or a time of liberation. “There are no doubt different feelings among yourselves.”
“Some might characterize it is as time of exodus,” she continued, “you are leaving the place you have been for a very long time. … You’ve been comfortable and uncomfortable with it. .. and it has become a place of bondage.” While some may be looking forward to the journey, it becomes a learning time.
However, she said it may also be characterized as a time of exile.
“You are no longer in a place where you want to be and are placed in a strange land because of alien theology, ” Petter said. “Although there is a sense of deep sorrow for the displacement, the journey turns into a big lesson of trust as you journey in a foreign land, and as you learn to be God’s people there.”
“Exile and exodus — it can seem very similar when you are in the middle of it,” she said. “Learning to see His loyalty … learning to lean on His loyalty, either in exile or exodus is the key.”
For her sermon text, Petter read from the Old Testament book of Ezra.
The year was 539 BC, she said, and “God’s people were living out the consequences of their theological failures, on account of their willful turning away from God … on account of cultural accommodation … Israel experiences a military takeover and they were plucked out of the Promised Land and they were displaced.”
The temple was reduced to rubble and their markers of identity as God’s people — the temple and the land — were lost. “It could have, and should have been avoided,” said Petter.
Now the year is 2013. “What are the consequences facing this family of Presbyterians as a result of our own theological failures?” she asked.
“The Book of Order, the Book of Confessions, John Calvin seem tattered and no longer upheld,” she said and the issues of the culture and the church have gotten into the people as well.
“Some characterize this as a willful turning away from the Lord. … Some may have a sense of shame at what happened in the denomination and in some congregations,” she said. “If we are honest with ourselves, we are experiencing an exile of sorts.”
Petter said that she wasn’t trying to expose shame or guilt, or even try to find out what went wrong or how the mess began. “I’m here to encourage you.”
“Here is the good news. God stirs the pot in the middle of our messes,” Petter said.
God the pot stirrer
Ezra 1:1 makes this abundantly clear, she said. God stirred the heart of Cyrus, King of Persia, and this is how God made His promise through Jeremiah (read Jeremiah 29) come true.
“God roused this individual as if to wake him from sleep,” said Petter. “God deposited the idea into his heart and in his mind and then the king carried it out. … God was the trigger in Jerusalem’s story of redemption.”
Petter said that God will often make something happen to give hope to hopeless hearts. He can stir the pot at an individual level and that life will be on a new trajectory.
“God raises up a movement like this to stir up hope in a denomination that might feel hopeless,” she said. Ultimately, God is the trigger for restoration. He will bring the relief on His time, and “He will allow the building blocks of restoration to be erected in our lives and our congregations.”
“Why? What is behind this stirring in Ezra 1?” she asked. “God’s promise to Jeremiah was the springboard” but Petter’s audience would learn that springboard isn’t the only answer to the question.
Jeremiah 29:10 says, “This is what the Lord says: “When 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place.”
“These words were the interpretive lenses through which the people should have viewed the king’s actions,” she said. “Through the events of rebuilding and returning to Jerusalem, their God was coming back to them. … It was at His time of choosing and He was coming to bring relief amidst their miserable theological failures.”
“Here is the developing picture for you and me,” she continued. “While living out or living in the consequence of our theological failures, God stirs the circumstances. We need to see that it is He — the living God — that is approaching us.”
“Why is He approaching us? Because God is the biggest people person I know. Because He is relentlessly pursuing people for relationships,” she said.
“Without the Divine Presence, restoration is not possible. That is what is behind the stirring in Ezra 1. God comes and moves and acts for the purpose of the redemption of His creation,” she said.
Beyond presence to promise fulfilled
Petter then asked her audience several more questions:
- “What is really behind the stirring of Cyrus?
- “Why would God initiate restoration?
- “Why would He bother to come to people who personally affronted Him? With people who had failed Him in word and deed?”
- The people were still “off” theologically, she said. The men were marrying foreign women, which went against the law of Moses.
“God didn’t stir the pot to bring restoration to the exiles because they finally got it all right and were doing it by the book,” she said. Ezra 9:9 says in part, “Though we are slaves, our God has not forsaken us in our bondage. He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia…”
Petter took issue with the word translated as “kindness” in the NIV, because she said that “here it totally misses the point, because it is not as if God is offering a job or the use of a vehicle. That would be a kind gesture.”
What is going on here, she said, cannot be described as kindness. God was reaching out and extending covenantal loyalties. This is hesed.
This, Petter said, is what is behind the stirring — God’s unrelenting, staunch loyalty.
“This is why God bothers with you and me,” she said. “This is why God bothers with people who continually get it wrong theologically — His unwavering loyalty drives Him.”
She called the outcome of the stirring in Ezra remarkable. When God stirred the people, people went to Jerusalem while others gave funds and materials to help with the rebuilding.
Once the people were back in the land, they “gathered as one man — as one person– in a unity they had not tasted in years … They were gathering to worship God,” she said, adding that the first thing they did was not to rebuild the temple or even its foundation. “The first thing they built was the alter for burnt offerings … They didn’t wait to worship until everything was in order to worship.”
The hinge of hesed
“This loyalty business is like a hinge in God’s relationship to Israel and to ourselves,” said Petter. The loyalty spoken of in Ezra 9 points both backward and forward.
She said that it pointed back to when the children of Israel worshiped the golden calf while Moses was on Mount Sinai. God didn’t destroy His children, but, instead, forgave them. In spite of their theological failures, His presence was with them.
The hinge points forward, she said, to another remarkable moment in redemptive history. “Rather than destroy humankind, God did something radical. He forgave us. … The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God came to us in flesh and blood.”
Petter called the Incarnation of Jesus Christ the most tangible expression of God’s covenant loyalty. “In Him and through Him and His work on the cross, humankind has redemption. There is exile from sin.”
“Rather than abandon and forsake us in our theological failures, God does something radical. He restores us,” she said. “God is coming to you and me in the person of the Holy Spirit so we can experience daily, ongoing restoration individually and in the lives of our congregations.”
“Maybe the Fellowship of Presbyterians and ECO is God’s tangible expression of His relational loyalty … a return to the worship of the living God,” she said, “It does not matter that it is not all in place, you want to reconnect to your theological roots. Through the Holy Spirit, He is coming to you and graciously offering restoration.”
In a time of exile, Petter said, “whether you are happy or sad, you need to lean on His loyalty in the circumstances of the theological failures … God is in the business of restoring broken down covenantal communities. He did it then. He does it now.”
God’s ultimate motivation
Her final question to the audience was, “Is there any payoff for God for being loyal?”
Ezekiel said that it was not for the people’s sake that God acted, but for the sake of His holy name.
“The exile and our theological failures profane God’s holy name. His reputation is on the line. By being loyal, and bringing restoration, He gets recognition,” she said. “That’s the payoff for God.”
“Recognition for His great name made Him act then, and makes Him act now,” Petter said. “Our testimonies of restoration begin and they end with God. He gets the ball rolling and He gets the praise. Our testimonies of restoration give God the name recognition that He deserves.”
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness.”
Donna Petter is the associate professor of Old Testament, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.
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In exile or exodus: God’s unrelenting, staunch loyalty – The Layman Online