Jacob & Joseph Reunited

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Genesis 46.

So Israel took his journey with all he had he had and came to Beersheba and offered sacrifice to the God of his father Isaac.

And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob, and he said, Here I am.

Then he said, I am God, the God of your father, do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation.

I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph's hands shall close your eyes.

Then Jacob set out from Beersheba.

The sons of Israel carried Jacob their father, their little ones and their wives, and the wagons that Pharaoh had sent to carry him.

They also took their livestock and their goods, which they had gained in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob and all his offsprings with him, his sons and his sons' sons with him, his daughters and his sons' daughters, all his offsprings he brought with him into Egypt.

Now these are the names of the descendants of Israel who came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons.

All the persons belonging to Jacob who came into Egypt, who were his son who were his own descendants, not including Jacob's son's wives, were sixty-six sixty-six persons in all.

And the sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt, were two.

All the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy.

He had sent Judah ahead of him to Joseph to show the way before him into Goshen, and they came into the land of Goshen.

Then Joseph prepared his chariot and went up to meet Israel, his father, in Goshen.

He presented himself to him and fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while.

Israel said to Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen your face and know that you are still alive.

Joseph said to his brothers and to his father's household, I will go up and tell Pharaoh, and I will say to him, My brothers and my father's households, who were in the land of Canaan, have come to me, and the men are shepherds, for they have been keepers of livestock, and they have brought their flocks and their herds and all that they have.

When Pharaoh calls you and says, What is your occupation?

you shall say, Your servants have been keepers of livestock from your from our youth, and even until now, both we and our fathers, in order that you may dwell in the land of Goshen, for every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Thank you for joining us on this rainy uh Denver morning.

Denver is a small city in the Pacific Northwest.

My name is James Rather, and I'm uh the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

This is an exciting morning.

We have baptisms uh following our service, or I guess to conclude our service.

We have baptisms this morning, which is which is always a joyful morning.

Thanks to all of you who are joining us today to see your friends be baptized.

Um we've uh uh we're continuing through Genesis, and uh uh almost unthinkably we're nearing the end.

There's 50 chapters in Genesis, and we're on chapter 46.

We started this journey in 2020, um, which is a year you may not remember.

Uh and uh we uh are continuing, and here at chapter 46, only four more weeks to go after this, which is uh amazing, but it's been a wonderful thing to see.

And today we get to see Jacob and Joseph, the father and son that have been exiled by the sins of the brothers, finally reunited.

And it is a it is a joyful thing to see.

So let's pray, and then we'll look at our text for today.

Holy Father, we thank you that all the things we sung about you this morning are true.

You are the one who seeks your people and calls them from all places, from the fearful to the fearless, the uh rejoicing and the broken.

Lord, you are the God who goes and seeks out your people and draws them to yourself.

Lord, we praise you that you have come to rescue us, and that the gospel that we share is one of mercy and joy for the nations under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Lord, I pray that we would see a glimpse of what it means to find our home in you in today's text.

And we pray that you would attend this time of baptism as a joyful picture of how you've drawn people to yourself out of the kingdom of the world and into the kingdom of your beloved son.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So I've got a little cold, so if you hear some sniffles, that's from my cold.

June, uh, I think it's June showers, spring.

I'm not good with months, but June is uh the month of the year where the culture war goes from just like a little, you know, background noise to very explicit.

I hope you all make it home safe from Twitter.

Uh we've lost a lot of good men to the culture war on Twitter.

I saw a great meme.

There was a picture of a like World War II woman awaiting her husband to come home, and she said, I'm I'm waiting for my husband to make it home safe from the Twitter culture wars.

There's a now culture, the culture war, you know, you're all familiar.

It starts to manifest in in uh really explicit ways in June.

And if you think about what is a culture war, what is that about?

It's about home.

Culture wars are about who gets to feel at home.

Because a culture, when it's your culture and you're in it, it's not a culture.

It's just the way that things are.

A couple of months ago, I was joking with a friend in our church who also grew up in Florida, like me.

And we were joking because there are things that are Floridian that we didn't know were Floridian until we moved out here to Colorado and realized, oh, that's actually like a strange Florida idiosyncrasy.

For example, in Florida, you can be unironically cool.

So for example, you can buy a shirt that is cool or wear like a cool chain, and your friends will will not say, that's so ironic that you're wearing that.

They'll just say, that looks cool.

I'm gonna get one like that, and I want to look cool too.

And then you'll look at each other and be like, if we both got the same chain, that would be so cool.

In Colorado, coolness is all ironic.

It's all irony.

It's like, you know, we it's it's old four by fours and like Patagonia jackets that are ri that like have holes in them, you know, and it's like that's what's that's what's cool.

You know, there's you know, mustaches, come on guys.

They're cool, but look, they're ironic.

But they're very Colorado cool.

Now, I didn't know that being cool was just like a Florida thing.

And when people from Colorado, when people from Colorado go to visit Florida, they don't look and say, look at all these cool people.

That was a shock.

Uh when I first moved to Colorado, and they were like, Why are you dressing?

Why do you wear polos everywhere?

My wife literally said you're not allowed to wear polos anymore.

Those aren't cool out here.

And I was like, What are you talking about?

These are cool everywhere.

Point is when it's your culture, you don't know it's your culture.

It just feels like home.

It feels as comfortable as a, you know, uh Lacoste shirt.

I saw on Friday, that's f that's first Friday.

First Friday's all over Denver.

People do things in the neighborhood.

We do here.

In the neighborhood that Megan and I used to live in, which was the Santa Fe Arts District, that's like the biggest First Friday in the city, where the whole block is a block of art galleries.

And a new store just opened.

It was a coffee shop.

It's called the Drip.

And the Drip is also a Christian ministry where they have the coffee shop basically to employ and help offer jobs to people who are experiencing homelessness or coming out of homelessness.

And they decided, which is a which is the right thing to do, to make their opening day on the first Friday on Santa Fe Street, because that's it, they're incredible.

They're so fun to go to those opening days.

But their opening day was met with LGBTQ protesters outside the door saying, don't go into this shop, it's owned by bigots.

And what they cited was the organization's just like ordinary statement of faith.

And so nobody went in.

Now, how don't you see the culture war, which is, you know, that's not even on Twitter, that's in out here.

The culture war, that very instance, is about home.

Who gets to feel at home in this neighborhood?

The LGBTQ protesters were saying, if this even exists here, we can't feel at home here.

And they're saying, we're here to help people who are home less find a home.

Culture war is about home.

And Genesis is about home.

The story of Genesis is a story about home and homelessness.

Adam and Eve are given a home.

And when they're given that home, they are told to be fruitful and multiply, to have a place that they are to cultivate and develop so that as they grow and there's more and more people, they become more and more at home in this place.

And they are surrounded by more and more people who are their people, united under God.

They could look at each other and say, We are the people of God, and we are in the place that He has put us.

A people and a place.

That's home.

Home is a people and a place.

But of course, that moment is short-lived.

And when they sin from God, who they are as a people is disjointed.

And so they likewise become separate, exiled from their place.

And they are moved into exile as a they're moved into exile in a in a permanent way.

Where an angel with a flaming sword is put at his post to forever guard humanity's entrance back into home.

And so all of humanity from that moment on is rendered homeless.

We cannot find our place in the world, we cannot find our people, and we cannot, and that's because we cannot be united under God anymore.

And we see this theme of homelessness continue as the story goes on.

You know, the promise, first we see it with Cain and Abel.

Cain kills Abel, and then what happens to Cain?

He is made a wanderer over the earth.

He has no place.

He has no people because of his sin.

Abraham, when he's first called by God, is called out of his home and told, I will give you another home.

The promise that Abraham gets, what is it a promise for?

I will make you a great nation and you will inherit the land.

Your offspring will inherit the land.

What is that?

It's a people and a place.

It's home.

The whole promise of God as he comes and he says, I will give you a home.

That home that I intended for you in Eden, which was shattered by your sin, I will give you a promise of home.

And now the whole narrative of scripture really takes off because home is no longer just a nostalgia in the past.

But for those people of God who have the promise of God, home is a hope in the future.

You know a sense of homelessness.

You can feel it all the time.

When you feel like you're unknown even by your closest people, or like you're out of place, or you can't figure out whether or not to put roots down in Denver or to move back home or wherever you may be, how you may have ended up in a job or a career that you didn't expect to be, a marriage that you didn't expect to be in.

We all experience the sense of exile, of homelessness, of things are not the way that they ought to be.

And home implies there's a way things ought to be.

We ought to be united somehow, as a people, in a place, to experience something like home.

Story goes on, Isaac, uh when Abraham has promised a people, he can't have a son, and that becomes the drama of his life.

Will God fulfill his promise for a people in a place?

When he finally has Isaac, and Isaac seems like the fulfillment of the promise, he is asked by God to offer him up immediately, and he's thrown into this terror of exile once again, of losing a people.

Isaac spends most of his life on the outskirts of the promised land, but not possessing it.

He is just a sojourner there.

And every time he wanders away from his wells, a king fills them with dirt, and he's not able to dwell there anymore.

Jacob spends the majority of his adult life in exile because he sins against his brother and father, and then he's sent into exile with Laban.

And so the majority of Jacob's adult life is in exile, away from the land of promise.

And then when they're finally returned to the land of promise, and Jacob has the twelve sons, the family itself left to its own devices, the people in the place.

You know, we think we finally arrived, and what does the family do?

By their sin, they tear themselves apart once again.

And the family is exiled, as Joseph is exiled into Egypt.

So it seems like we don't have a we we can't get all these things to line up at the same time.

We don't have a, we don't have the people, or we don't have the place, and then even once we get the people in the print in the place, it's us who are there.

And our sin keeps tearing us apart, so we throw ourselves out of it again, destroying the people and being removed from the place.

Well, today's story fits this same pattern.

In today's story, Jacob and Joseph are finally reunited, and they are brought together, the people of God, the family of God is brought back together.

But not in the land of Canaan, not in the promised land.

Their reunion is matched with an exile because they cannot stay in the land of Canaan.

Instead, they are driven into Egypt.

And so, once again, as this narrative of the promises of God continues, we see this pattern also continue.

We can't seem to get these things to line up.

The people are together, but they're not in the place.

The place is there, but they don't have the people.

Even when it gets all together, well, we're the ones who are there, and so we mess it up.

This is the type of situation that could use something like a savior.

What we see that's amazing in these continued stories, these continued patterns of exile and homecoming and getting the people back together, and then the people fracturing again, is that God does something particular in exile.

Exile, that sense that you have of this isn't my home, is a part of how God makes the whole world his world.

It's a part of the pattern that God himself participates in in order to rescue us in the most absolute terms, to bring us home.

So as we follow this, we're we're going to get to see that pattern, that pattern of exile and homecoming.

And it will show us how we, as a people who some of us are from Denver.

I say some, I mean like three or four.

Everybody else just moved here like last week.

How could we be a people?

How could we participate in something like a home?

You won't believe me when I tell you, but it's it's found in Jesus Christ.

The way that he participates in this pattern of exile brings us home.

So let's follow the story.

Genesis 46, verse 1.

Genesis 46:1

So Israel, remember that's Jacob, took his journey with all that he had and came to Beersheba and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.

So what had happened was the brothers had gone back to Jacob, Israel, and said, You won't believe it, that guy that we've been talking to in Egypt is Joseph.

And Joseph has bid us all return, uh, that way we might survive the famine, and they will provide for us in Egypt.

So he he asks that the whole family come back, and Pharaoh thinks the same thing too.

And so the family packs up to go and be reunited with Joseph in Egypt.

So Israel journeys, and as he when he came to a place called Beersheba, he offered sacrifices to the god of his father Isaac.

Now, what we see in this journey into Israel is it is into Egypt, excuse me, is it is a blessed journey.

It is a journey that is blessed by the Lord.

And it begins with this sacrifice that Jacob makes at Beersheba.

Beersheba is an interesting place in Jacob's story.

Beersheba is what what was his childhood home.

It's where he decided to swindle his brother and deceive his father so that he might receive the blessing from Isaac.

It's in that place that he first, because of his sin, is exiled from his family.

And so it is the home where he officially leaves for the first time when he was a young man and has to flee to Laban.

And so Jacob comes once again.

I'm certain, having considered, I have arrived in the promised land, and we are here and established, and I find out my son, surely we will be reunited.

But here at the end of his life, just like at the beginning of his life, he is called back into exile by the Lord.

And so he walks out Beersheba.

It's the farthest south of the kingdom of Israel, the farthest south town.

It's like the southern border of the kingdom of Israel.

You can think of it as like the exit door for Israel.

You know, it's what you are now leaving colorful Israel.

And as they as as he marches out, he he marks this moment.

You know, he it's as if he's it's as if he's saying, I am leaving this place, but I am following God.

I'm in exile, but with a hope of return.

Man, don't we want our lives to just be settled?

Don't we want to finally just be able to, even just like you can think of this as almost any level you imagine.

A work day.

Don't you imagine just finishing a workday and you look at your to-do list that you wrote that morning and you say, it is finished.

Well done, good and faithful servant.

You say to yourself, you high-five yourself on the way out, and you go take a nap.

How rare is that experience?

A work week?

Your whole career, the way that you've parented, the how it went putting your kids down.

Don't you wish you could just look back at that time and say, oh, well done.

It is finished, it is done.

We long for that rest.

And the end of uh in at the end of our lives, how how much do we hope to look back and say such a thing?

But here, at the end of Jacob's life, he is unsettled once again and taken out of the land of promise, but he goes in faith.

Out the exit door of his youth once again.

In 46, verses two through four, it says And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, Jacob, Jacob.

You know, God goes back and forth.

He renamed Jacob Israel.

Sometimes he calls him Jacob, sometimes he calls him Israel.

I wonder if here he calls him Jacob, because that's what he called him the last time that he left Beersheba.

He might have needed to be reminded, remember, I was with you then, I've been with you since the beginning, and on this exit I am still with you.

And he said, Here I am.

Then he said, I am God, the God of your father.

Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation.

I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again.

And Joseph's hand shall close your eyes.

At the exit door of the land of promise, God is there, saying to Israel before he leaves, I am with you.

Do not fear as you go to this place.

Do not fear as you exit the land of promise, as you enter exile, because here is the strange thing about God.

He sends his people into exile.

And exile is from Eden.

We see this very pattern of being outside of the temple of God.

You know, Eden is where God was in your presence and you walked with him in the cool of the day.

But our God is the type of God who goes with us into exile.

Home.

A people and a place.

Although we may be faithless to him and lose those types of things, God is faithful to us and he goes into exile with us.

And there's this strange promise that God gives about the exile that he's going into.

He says, Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation.

You see, God has his own purposes for exile.

And his purposes are not purposes of destruction.

Do you hear the verse I'm echoing?

You have a hope and a future, even in a place of exile.

This is a coffee cup verse.

That's a verse about exile.

That's to an exiled people.

Jeremiah 29, 11.

So he says to them, I am actually using this exile as a means of building you up into a nation.

I am using this exile as a means of fulfilling my promise.

Exile is bad.

Okay?

Exile is bad.

It's good to be home, it's bad to be in exile.

But God does this.

He works in such a way where he takes these bad things and then he flips them so that they perfectly accomplish his purposes.

And that's what he does with moving them into Egypt.

He says, I'm taking you into exile, and that seems like a place.

What is exile?

It's another nation.

It's where your identity as a people of God disintegrates.

Yet God says, this is the very place where that will grow.

I will grow your body.

I will grow you into a nation as you go into exile.

Now, this is literally the same promise that he had given to Abraham before.

Oftentimes we forget this part of the promise that this was all a part of God's plan.

In Genesis 15, before Isaac was born, God comes, and this is probably the most explicit covenantal moment for uh in the promises that Abraham had received, chapters 15 and 17.

And in Genesis 15, verses 13 through 16, it says, Then the Lord said to Abraham, Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years, but I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.

Genesis 15:13–16

As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace, and you shall be buried in a good old age.

Don't you hear it's the same pattern?

Don't be afraid, Jacob, when you go down into Egypt, and even for you, Joseph will close your eyes.

He's saying, Look, my promises are grand and incredible and huge.

And it might look right now that my promises aren't being fulfilled.

In fact, it might seem as though the exact opposite of that is happening, but make no mistake.

I am accomplishing my purposes perfectly.

Exile.

Yeah, that's bad, right?

That's not a home.

Wait till you see what it's like in God's hands.

That is the promise that is offered.

Jacob could have been even familiar with this pattern of exile as the place that God sends you to build you into a nation.

When Jacob went into exile into Laban's house, he went in just one man, and he left with eleven sons, soon to be twelve, and wives, and uh uh he went from one man to at least something like a tribe or a clan, not yet quite a nation, but God had blessed him in exile before.

And so I think Jacob goes into this exile with the the certainty that even in this place God works.

I want you to consider that for yourself.

Consider your exiles.

Even in this place, God works.

In fact, he seems uh particularly active in such a place.

Genesis 46, 26 through 27.

This is uh I'm skipping a lot of this chapter because it's a list of names, and I don't know how to preach those yet.

All the persons belonging to Jacob who came into Egypt, who were his own descendants, not including Jacob's sons' wives, were 66 persons in all.

And the sons of Joseph who were born to him in Egypt were two.

All the persons of the house of Jacob of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy.

Now this is a marker.

Who is coming into Egypt?

It is 70 persons.

And we hear 70, and we think, okay, they did some accounting on their way in.

I guess that'll be nice info to have later when we do an Israelite audit.

But there's something being said with this number 70.

70 is a pattern of a completeness of representation.

When Moses goes up the mountain to speak with the Lord, 70 elders are in attendance.

It is when the even even in extra-biblical times, when the Jews gather together a group of people to make a translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, they gather together 70 people.

There is a fullness, a completeness of this number, which is saying that they are going into this place as a complete body, a real distinct people.

And the Lord is attending them with power.

Another example of 70 in Scripture is a time of completeness, which is relevant to this, is the Babylonian exile is 70 years.

Seventy years they find themselves in exile.

A complete time, a fullness of time.

So they go in a full people.

Now let's look at this glorious return.

You know, we've spent so much time in this book.

Let's see Jacob and Joseph get back together.

In Genesis 46, 29.

Then Joseph prepared his chariot and went up to meet Israel, his father, in Goshen.

He presented himself to him and fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while.

So Joseph mounts up his chariot, goes to Goshen, which is on the outskirts of Egypt, which is where you put the strange new tribe of shepherds, and he presents himself to Israel and he falls on his neck and he wept a good while.

You know, we've seen a lot of weeping from Joseph.

But this might be the climactic weeping, where Joseph is finally reunited with his estranged father, the echoes through scripture of being united with the estranged father, or this, or the estranged son being united with the father.

Like, don't you hear the prodigal son in this?

Running to each other, weeping in joy.

The reunion has taken place.

They are together again.

Listen to what Jacob says.

Israel, remember they're the same.

In 46, verse 30, Israel said to Joseph, Now let me die, since I have seen your face and know that you are still alive.

Joseph has uttered things like this before in the story.

When Joseph was first gone, he says, My and his whole family gathered around to comfort him when he thought that Joseph was dead.

He said to his family, My soul will go down to Sheol in grief.

There is no comforting me here.

There will be no comfort in this life.

Instead, I will just die.

He's basically saying, I might as well be dead.

And then when things, circumstances unfolded in such a way where Benjamin would have to go to Egypt, if you remember the story, and Joseph's heart was so knit together with Benjamin that he says, if I lose my son Benjamin, then surely I will die of grief.

And all his brothers understood this, that his their dad would die of grief if Benjamin were lost to him.

This phrase here in verse 30, it's almost the opposite of those.

Instead of I might as well be dead, he says, now I can die.

What does that mean?

It means I can go to rest.

Excuse me.

My days have been fulfilled.

This is a sufficient happiness for me to be reunited with my son.

Now let me die.

This is a famous phrase, and it's picked up in the New Testament.

Does anybody know Latin for now let me die?

You might recognize the phrase.

Have you ever heard the term nuncdemitis?

And I'm alone.

Well, it's an old phrase, and it means now let me die.

And it's the name of a Christian prayer that's been with the church uh like forever, because it's in the Bible.

It's uttered at the beginning of the prayer of Simeon.

This is a small story that you may or may not remember, but Simeon was an old man at the end of his life, and he had received a vision from the Lord that said, You will live to see the Savior of the world, the Savior of Israel.

And in the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the scriptures, that his prayer begins with this phrase, Dunc Dimitis, which is, Now let me die.

I'll read it to you.

When Jesus arrives and he sees baby Jesus at the temple, the old man, Simeon, who received this vision from the Lord, grabs Jesus, the child, and he says this prayer, Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word.

For my eyes have seen your salvation, that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people, Israel.

He looks at Christ and he says, Now I can depart in peace.

Excuse me.

He's gonna make us a people.

Who is he gonna make a people?

A light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people, Israel.

He's the one who will go into the truest exile.

He will leave his home in the heavens, and he will dwell with a people who say, We are not his people.

He is not one of us.

And he will be exiled even unto death.

To the point of crying on a cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

It was as if he had no God in the world.

As if he was a man of no people, utterly homeless.

But that homelessness could not keep him down.

There was something about that entering into that homelessness, which would act, which would actually accomplish the very building up of his nation, of his body, the making of a new people, because he is resurrected.

And he is not resurrected into a small amount of authority.

He is resurrected, and all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him.

It's in my office.

Says, there is not one square inch in the whole domain of existence over which Christ, of which Christ, who is Lord over all, does not proclaim mine.

This is all his.

And when we are his, we say, this will all be home one day.

He will restore the earth under his rule.

And you think, yes.

But then if we are the ones who are to be his people, we'll ruin it.

Don't you know you?

Have you ever taken yourself on vacation and looked forward to it and thought how wonderful it would be, but then you were there and you ruined it.

This is our Savior.

He doesn't just give us an identity as a people, he does that.

He doesn't just give us a place which is all of creation, he does that.

But he transforms our hearts.

So that our sin, which tears apart all the good people and places that He has given to us, we are now able to participate with in fullness of joy, absolute hopefulness.

We're able to experience it in the way that you experience home.

If you were to just give us heaven and have our hearts unchanged, you wouldn't like it.

But our Savior, Christ, goes into the deepest of exiles, not just a national exile, the exile of your own heart.

And he says, Come to me.

I offer you forgiveness.

I offer you the true rest.

I offer you salvation from your sins.

Come to me, you Gentiles.

Come to me, you who are outside of me.

Come to me, you who are protesting against the things of God, feeling like home.

We have a home for you here.

That's what we mark with baptism today.

Our God is the God who draws people from all nations.

And he says, You are home here.

I will be your God.

You will be my people.

That is what his church is.

So I look forward to marking that today with baptisms.

Now I can die in peace.

How could we who never finish anything utter something like that?

It's because we've seen the Lord and our rest is in what He has accomplished.

He is the one who makes our home and makes us fit to live there.

It's the good news of the gospel.

At home, you have meals.

It's a good segue.

It's one of the best parts of home.

Gather around the table.

You eat together.

When you do that, you're saying something.

You're saying we are the people who eat together in this place.

This is a unity amongst us.

And Christ is one of the sacraments that he's given us, the other being baptism, is that he invites us to a meal at his table.

And the meal at his table is not just, you know, food that happens to be there.

It is the offering of himself.

Where he says, like the food unites you and makes you a people, where you're able to gather around and eat in peace and truth.

I am that for you.

I am the thing that gives you your identity as a people.

I'm the thing that nourishes you and cares for you.

I'm the thing that cleanses you and gives joy to your heart.

That is Christ.

So for those of you who are in Christ, we invite you to the communion table, to share a meal together as his people, to give thanks and remember the one who went into exile for us, so that we have this absolute hope that our little exiles will find their meaning in him.

That our exiles that we participate in, which seek only to destroy, even the ones that we bring upon ourselves, as you sin against your spouse and you feel exiled in your own home.

Even those exiles Christ has taken on himself.

And by his grace and mercy, he offers you to come home again.

Come home again in him.

Paul writes this, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

This is the new covenant.

The covenant to Abraham, there you will be a people and a place.

That covenant is fulfilled in Jesus.

He washes you to make you a people.

He says, Go to all nations and make disciples.

You can't find a place anymore that isn't his.

We come to the table, made a people by our King, because he went into exile on our behalf.

Holy Father, we praise you.

We praise you that you are the God who goes into exile with us, and that in Christ you are the God who went into exile, the greatest exile, even death for us.

Lord, that while all of our stories have this incompleteness, which is the same incompleteness as Joseph's story, or as Jacob's story, or as Isaac's, or as Abraham's, or as Cain's, or as Adam and Eve's, that incompleteness, which is we can never really seem to make this place really home.

Lord, that you have accomplished that on our behalf, and that by faith in you you freely give it to us and invite us to your table and say, home is not just something, a longing in your heart, like a nostalgia, such a sweet word for something so utterly painful.

It is not just a nostalgia, a homesickness, but it is a hope, a certain hope for your future.

And I will use all of your exiles to accomplish it.

Lord, let us participate in that by faith.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.