Brian McLaren considers the stories of empire and exile that appear in the Bible and continue to this day:
If you ask Jewish people what the central story of their Bible is, they will usually say the Exodus, 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.
Sadly, the non-fictional enslavement and mistreatment of refugees has happened too many times and to too many people over the centuries.
If you ask what the second most important biblical story in the Hebrew Scriptures is, many will say the Exile, when large numbers of Jewish people were taken to Babylon where they were made to serve the elites of the Babylonian Empire.
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 too many Trails of Tears, too many Nakbas, too many pogroms and internment camps over the centuries, right up until today.
Together, 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 liberate and liberation would be better translations for the Hebrew and Greek words commonly translated as save or salvation.
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:
By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down, and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How could we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy. (Psalm 137:1–6)
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—even if doing so offends the elites of today’s empires of violence and domination?
Reference:
Brian McLaren, “Exile: A Recurring Nightmare,” for Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations (CAC Publishing, 2026).
Image credit and inspiration: Michael Sturgeon, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, Ukraine, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The drummer holds on to the inner rhythm that exile cannot erase—a rhythm echoed in the Psalms—the power of music to name oppression, remember home, and resist forgetting.
Story from Our Community:
When I feel a great deal of anger for whatever reason, I first read one of the Psalms. I don’t have any certain one, but I often turn to Psalm 27. I try to sit quietly and tune in to God with a hand labyrinth, running my finger around a wooden board that has a spiral cut into it. As I go towards the center, I think of traveling into the heart of God. As I go outwards, I think of taking God’s heart out into the world.
—Liz H.
