Sunday, November 24, 2013

"Bloom Where You Are Planted": A Thanksgiving and Reign of Christ Sermon on Jeremiah 29

 
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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