Is Christian Division an Aberration?

17 July 2026  Isaiah 38:1-8,21-22

“I will rescue you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria.”  

(Isaiah 38:6) 

Almost all of the selections from the prophets in the Daily Lectionary reference the Exile in some way, so often, in fact, that preachers feel they run out of things to say about it, and pew-sitters get tired of hearing about it. Why is the Exile one of those things that never seems to go away in Bible Study?

In fact, there wasn’t just one Exile but two – the first was in 722 B.C. when the Northern Kingdom of Israel (the Jews divided into two kingdoms after the reign of Solomon) was conquered by the Assyrians. All the potential leadership of Israel was taken away into captivity, and they were replaced by Assyrian captives from other places in Mesopotamia. The idea was to make the remnant of Israel as unstable as possible, minimizing the likelihood of a rebellion.

Is there a way of thinking about the divisions not as wounds, but as individual facets of the same gem? Or is that wishful thinking, a symptom of the indifference to Truth that caused the Exile in the first place?

The new inhabitants adopted the religion they found there, becoming in time what the New Testament called the Samaritans. The Assyrians never permitted the exiles to return.

The second Exile occurred in 586 B.C. when the Southern Kingdom of Judah was conquered by Babylon. The royal family, nobility, skilled artisans, and military officers were exiled in Mesopotamia, but foreigners were not brought in to replace them.

The Jews of Judah were permitted to return in 538 B.C. after the Persians conquered the Babylonians. The returning Jews thought their exile had been caused by adopting foreign gods and religious practices, and so they resolved to follow the Law of Moses to the letter. They decided to have nothing to do with the Samaritans because they looked and sounded like foreigners, even though they claimed to be Jewish, leading to bitter hatred between them. Various groups quarrelled over how exactly to follow the Law to the letter, and so divisions arose between new groups like the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and other smaller groups, who divided the loyalties of the people. The end of the Exile, in short, did not mean a return to Jewish unity. Divisions persisted and got deeper, leading to intensified expectations of a deliverer, a Messiah, who would restore unity to the people. It was that sad division and perennially frustrated hope that led to all the events of the New Testament.

In short, it is utterly impossible to understand a single word of the New Testament apart from the many fracturings that resulted from the Exile.

And the story wasn’t over – the fracturings continued. Before the Church was a single generation old there was a division between Jewish and Gentile Christians (cf. Acts 15). When the Roman government became Christian there was the emergence of monastic Christians, and when the Roman Empire collapsed there was the fracture between Eastern and Western Christians in the Great Schism of A.D. 1054. Then there was the Western Schism of 1378, which led eventually to the huge rupture brought on by the Reformation in 1517. Today there are more than 45,000 different groups, each thinking it is the one true Church that Jesus intends.

Division is not an aberration, but the central reality of Christian life, and our most persistent scandal.

But is it, in fact, a “scandal”? Is there a way of thinking about the divisions not as wounds, but as individual facets of the same gem? Or is that wishful thinking, a symptom of the indifference to Truth that caused the Exile in the first place? These are serious questions, for serious people who seek to pray serious prayers. Part of that seriousness is reflected in the Church’s decision to put the Exile in front of us in all the selections in the Lectionary from the prophets.

What are we doing to fulfill the prayer of Jesus: “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one” (cf. John 17:22).