In his death, resurrection, and ascension, what did Jesus secure for his people? In a word, home.

You see, just as the human condition cannot be understood apart from the categories of guilt and grace, it cannot be understood apart from the categories of displacement and placement. Since the Protestant Reformation, many in the church have tended to describe mankind’s situation post-fall in legal terms. Yet litigation is far from the only metaphor that the biblical writers employ. In the biblical imagination, sin is the quintessential displacer. When God’s people sin, they are exiled. Seen through this lens, the biblical story after Genesis 3 isn’t just about guilt, it’s about dislocation. It’s not just about atonement, it’s about placement.

In Genesis, exile is a covenantal punishment. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve rebel against God’s explicit instructions and death is the foretold consequence. However, their death isn’t immediate, at least not in the literal sense.

First, they are exiled from the garden—this is the consequence of their sin, reminiscent of death in that they’re separated from Eden (i.e., immediate access to the presence of YHWH). The presence of death indicates separation from home. Eventually, exile “became a metaphor for political disenfranchisement, social inequality, and alienation from God,” says Martien A. Halvorson-Taylor in Enduring Exile. The fallen condition of mankind is one of dislocation.

Thus just as exile is a consequence of sin, so too is placement the fruit of a reconciled relationship with YHWH. Home isn’t an end in itself—home represents a healed relationship, just as exile typifies a ruptured relationship. Whenever the Israelites have a ruptured relationship with YHWH, they are in exile, irrespective of their location. Indeed, making “home” and security ends in themselves, apart from God, is what leads to Israel losing those very things.

The life of Christ illustrates the fact that sin leads to displacement. Jesus’s life—beginning with displacement in Bethlehem, climaxing with the Son of Man having no place to lay his head—embodies the metaphor of death as exile. In the life of Jesus, we see the life of Israel played out in miniature.

The bad news of sin is that before Christ’s return, we are all alienated and displaced to one degree or another. The good news, however, is that Christ has come to be the new Joseph—leading us to a new place. I hope you can join us Sunday as we live together in presence of Jesus, home.

Guy+ in conversation with Tim Hudson about the journey into the Lenten season and the opening of a seasonal art exhibit to aid us in deepening into the significance of the journey leading to resurrection.

Below see "Ash" by Tim Hudson.