Scripture can be found here....
For surely I know the plans I have for you,
says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future
with hope. ~Jeremiah 29:11
Home.
There’s no place
like home for the holidays.
Home is that
place where, when you show up there, they have to take you in.
Feels like home
to me, feels like home to me… feels like I’m all the way back where I come
from.
But what about
when there is no home? Or, there is a home, but you can’t get there. Or, you
need to find a new home for financial reasons, or health reasons, or safety
reasons.
What about when
you are forcibly removed from your home?
For surely I know the plans I have for you,
says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future
with hope.
We are now in a
part of the story of God’s people that is so important, so central to their
identity, it ranks on a scale with the experience of slavery and Exodus. We
are, with this morning’s passage from Jeremiah, at the beginning of that period
known as the Babylonian exile.
The history: Assyria
is no longer the great superpower of the Ancient Near East; it has been conquered
by Babylon. And, just as in a corporate takeover, Babylon has taken to itself
all of Assyria’s lands and wealth, including Judah.
Then, somewhere
in the vicinity of 597 BCE, during the reign of King Jeconiah, Judah chose to
stage a protest against its occupier. It chose not to send its tribute (which
is to say, taxes). Babylon responded. You’ve heard the phrase, “using a nuclear
bomb to kill a fly”? Babylon did that. The mighty empire invaded Jerusalem,
looting the temple and carrying off its many treasures. Babylon also removed
the king and his court, replacing him with a puppet-ruler.
King Jeconiah, the
royal family, the court officials, the leaders of Judah (including the temple
priests), the artisans, and the smiths, were all taken to Babylon. All the
leadership, gone.
This is part of
a political and military strategy known as “decapitation,” in which all the
elites—the learned, the powerful, those who can read, write, strategize,
inspire—they are all either killed or removed. This leaves behind only the poorest
and the most powerless.
“Home” is no
more. “Home” is a distant unreachable land for those who have been carried
away. And “home” is forever changed and made unfamiliar for those who are left
behind. “Home” is no more for the exiles.
For surely I know the plans I have for you,
says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future
with hope.
Here’s what God
tells the exiles through the voice of this prophet Jeremiah:
Build houses and
move in. Plant gardens and eat what you grow. Get married. Settle down. Have a
family. When the time comes, encourage your children to do the same.
Live. Don’t just
survive. Thrive. Bloom where you are
planted.
This is not
always what our instincts tell us to do. We can spend a lot of time railing
against the present circumstances, and understandably so, whether our sense of
exile is about external relocation or internal dislocation. We can feel exiled
in the same house we’ve lived in all our lives when we experience a surprising
and unwelcome change in our health, or a disruption of an important
relationship. When our children leave home—or when, kicked around by a nasty
job market, they come back.
Exile is a state
of the heart as much as it is a state of the body, and a state of the mind as
much as it is the state of the nation. And God’s instructions to the exiles
have to do with returning to and embracing those habits of the heart that have
always signified God’s care and concern for them. A safe place to live. Good
nourishing food to eat and no one going hungry. Smiling faces around a table.
Generations gathered together. Making a home where there was no home.
For surely I know the plans I have for you,
says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future
with hope.
God throws a
little surprise in with the instructions. Did you notice it?
But seek the welfare of the city where I
have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its
welfare you will find your welfare. ~Jeremiah 29:7
God goes beyond
the old habits of the heart to an entirely new one. For anyone who’s ever
immersed himself or herself in the history of God’s people, there has not been
a whole lot of seeking the welfare of the people who are more often than not
described as “the enemy”. The people who have ruined our lives, messed up our
government, caused us to lose our homes and leaders and sense of a world we
recognize. God has, often, been party to, and cheering on those who, wiped such
people out.
Not here. Not now.
Seek the welfare of those you are inclined not to trust. Pray to the Lord your
God for the very soldiers who came into the temple you were serving and bodily
removed you. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor
and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those
who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he
makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous
and on the unrighteous” [Matthew 5:43-45] Thus says the king we honor today, on
the Sunday marking the Reign of Christ.”
How can we read
this passage here on Thanksgiving Sunday and not think about our own history as
a nation? How can we not wonder about the role of our own ancestors in sending
others into exile? How can we read this and not think about the experience of Native
Americans, people indigenous to this land, who were forced to walk a trail of
tears, and who still live with disproportionate amounts of mental illness,
depression, addiction and crime? In the assigned roles of Jeremiah 29, the
Native Americans are God’s covenant people. The European settlers are Babylon.
And just as in Jeremiah
29, this is not about blame, or plans for revenge. This is about: what shall we
do now? And it occurs to me, why
shouldn’t God’s instruction apply to the occupiers as well?
Live in your
houses. Plant your gardens and eat what you grow. Cultivate relationships that
feel like family. Live fully into the relationships that are God gifts to you. Be
grateful for your unique and beautiful reflection of God’s image. Settle down. And
seek the welfare of those who are still in exile. For in their welfare, you
will find your welfare.
Habits of the
heart die hard. God invites us to bloom where we are planted anyway. God
invites us to live and thrive. God invites us to trust that there is a future
for us, that is even better than we can imagine. God invites us to invest
ourselves in the promise that we will learn a new and more expansive definition
of “home.”
And God invites
us to a life where turn to our neighbors, to see whether they too are blooming.
God invites us to see whether others, too, are living and thriving. God invites
us to trust that there is a future for all of us, that is even better than we
can imagine. God invites us to invest ourselves in the promise that we will
learn and live out and share with one another a new and more expansive
definition of “home.”
A safe place to
live. For all. Good nourishing food to eat and no one going hungry. Smiling
faces around a table. Generations gathered together. Home.
Home, that place
where, when you show up there, they have to take you in.
There’s no place
like home.
For surely I know the plans I have for you,
says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future
with hope.
Home.
Thanks be to
God. Amen.
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