Friday, March 27, 2015

Friday, March 27, 2015

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-13

When the kingdom of Babylon defeated the Assyrians almost 1000 BCE the Jewish leaders resisted their incursions. Hence a series of three waves of exile began. The rich, the priest class and the influential Jews were carried off to Babylon. The poor were scattered to places like Egypt. It is to this first group of exiles that Jeremiah pens this letter.

We know that the experience was devastating for the Jews – any mass uprooting of people creates huge suffering and hardship, as we see in places like Syria and Nigeria today. What makes this letter stand out as a unique message to an exiled people is the strategy for living Jeremiah outlines. You would expect him to advise them to resist the oppressing enemy who had captured them and do everything possible to undermine the stability of their society.

Instead, he opens with advice to build homes, plant gardens, marry and have children. He wants their sons and daughters to marry and have their own sons and daughters. He encourages them to keep their numbers up. Clearly, he foresees a long stay in Babylon.

Next he encourages them to work for the prosperity and peace of the city.

“Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

Over the years, various religious leaders have taken this passage to mean that the task of the People of God is to accommodate the politics of the place where they find themselves. The story where Jesus says “Give Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Matt:22,21) seems to support this idea. Certainly, such thinking has led to a brand of accommodation that separates Church and State to the extent that when anyone from the Church speaks out against anything the State is doing (such as a prophet), they are quickly silenced or discredited. At the same time, some people of faith aggressively demand that prayer and other elements of their personal beliefs be built into legislation. This passage is quoted back and forth all the time.

For my part, I keep hearing the words of simple gospel songs: “Bloom Where You’re Planted” and “They Will Know We are Christians By Our Love.” For me, this passage does not speak at all to the fight over national policy. For me it says: Lead a spirit-led life so that whomever you touch can see the love of God in you. Like the religion of Jesus, it speaks to one-on-one encounters with those around us.

Another stand-out passage here is the caution against false prophets – those who would have the people ‘wait it out’ as if the exile was going to be brief. Their message of hope was easy to follow.

“Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you.
Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have.
They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I have not sent them,”

This is what the Lord says: ‘When seventy years are completed for Babylon,
I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place.’”

This message clearly told the people not to prepare to return to Jerusalem, but to prepare their grandchildren for that return. It was an alarming, but sensible message, tied to the advice to plant and make homes, to marry and prosper.

Jeremiah ends in a powerful and consistent message to his people:

“For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you,
plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me,
and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

This strategy was sound, but it was a new approach to people in exile. Some say the Church in Western Culture is a people in exile. If this is so, then we have to rethink our ideas of accommodation towards the dominant culture and our own personal behaviour first towards those inside our own homes and then towards those inside the circles of our acquaintance. The catch, as Jeremiah says is that we must seek God with all our hearts.

Peter Mansell the week of Palm Sunday, 2015