Scripture: Jeremiah 29:1–14
We see another time jump for today’s passage. Last week, Amos the prophet correctly told the Northern Kingdom that their failure to care for the most vulnerable in their midst would bring about their destruction…and so it did. Then many other prophets, including Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah, and Zephaniah, correctly told the Southern Kingdom that their failure to care for the most vulnerable ion their midst would bring about their destruction. They were joined by the prophet Jeremiah, who not only predicted the downfall at the hands of the Babylonians, but suffered from that very destruction personally, and then wrote a letter to fellow sufferers who had already been exiled into Babylon. Here is a portion of that letter:
Jeremiah 29.1–14
1 These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. 2 This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the court officials, the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the artisans, and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem. 3 The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom King Zedekiah of Judah sent to Babylon to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. It said: 4 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 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. 8 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let the prophets and the diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to your dreams that you dream, 9 for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, says the Lord.
10 For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. 11 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. 12 Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. 13 When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, 14 I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
Jeremiah was NOT a fun guy to have at parties. When you were looking at someone to say that everything is going to be OK, that the bad stuff is almost over, that your generations and generations of disobedience can be fixed with the snap of your fingers…Jeremiah is NOT your guy.
Hananiah? That was your party guy. He was a prophet that lived at the same time as Jeremiah, and the chapter before he wrote a letter to the Exiles to say that everything was going to be just fine. That the Exile was only going to last a couple of years. That God saw that they were sorry, and that’s all that it takes. That generations of abusing the poor and trampling on the vulnerable wasn’t that bad. “Hang on,” he said. “It’ll all be over soon.”
Not Jeremiah. His message in today’s passage, and really throughout the book that bears his name, is this: “Not only do you deserve this punishment because you laughed in the face of God and the poor, now you will receive punishment for your injustice not for two years…not for a generation…but for 70 years! Let’s be clear. Things are bad. They will get worse. No one is coming to save you.”
Not a popular guy, then…or even now. What if Jeremiah walked into our congregation this morning? What would his message be to us as American Christians?
- Look at what you did to the Church. In the last 70 years, the percentage of Americans who said they were Christian has dropped from 93% to 62%. Church historians point to the ways that you have embraced the culture of consumerism and greed and embraced church growth and ignored church depth. And the result is that you have sacrificed both. There is evidence to suggest that in another 70 years, the percentage of Americans who say they’re Christians will go from 62% to 35%.
- Look at what you did to the climate. You might finally get your act together and start to address your affluence. You might lower your carbon footprint. You might slow the rapid heating of the earth that is causing storms and floods and disasters. You might actually pay attention to the poor and vulnerable in your hemisphere that are crossing the border to escape the droughts that you helped cause. But even if you do, in 70 years, your climate in central Kansas will feel like it currently feels in southern Texas.
- Look at what you did to the poor. In the last 70 years, the average income of the bottom 20% of your nation has not changed, relative to inflation. At the same time, the top 1% has increased 600% and the top .01% has increased 800%. The numbers are worse for people of color. The numbers are worse for senior adults. The numbers are worse for those without access to heath care. The top earners now earn 139 times what the bottom earners receive. There is no reason to believe that these trends will reverse, so just imagine what the wage gap will look like in 70 years.
- “Let’s be clear: Things are bad. They will get worse. No one is coming to save you.”
Jeremiah is not the guy you want to invite to your party. We in the Church, especially in the American Church, have a hard time with Jeremiah, and really all of the prophets, and really all of the Old Testament. Because it is filled with these messages that aren’t that…fun. I think that we as Americans are basically a pretty optimistic people. Whether our politics are red or blue, a lot of us want to believe that things are generally getting better. And this is a strength of the American people, but it also comes with a cost. Especially when you overlay that optimism with a microwave/air-fryer/instant-gratification mindset, we think that we can fix everything with the push of a button…or filling the bubble on a voters’ ballot. If you are fans of Jim Davis’s Garfield cartoon, you might have seen this week where Garfield the Cat was standing on a scale and looking in the mirror, and he says, “I ate healthy this morning…why don’t I have a beach body?”
In contrast, there is something needful and healthy about a Jeremiah, who shows us the mirror and says, “This isn’t the kind of thing that you can fix right away.” It may not be popular, then or now, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. “Things are bad. They will get worse before they get better. No one is coming to save you….yet.”
And there is the shift. Because for all of its gloom and doom, Jeremiah is actually a book with a lot of hope. Because while they look the same, there is a significant difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is often blind and lazy: “just wait…it’ll get better on its own.” Hope is different. I want to take a few minutes today and unpack the message of hope in Jeremiah, and what it means for us. I want to highlight three hallmarks of hope:
The first hallmark of hope in Jeremiah is: Awareness. For Jeremiah, it was important to be aware of the truth all around them. The people to whom he wrote this letter were in Exile, and they weren’t getting out of it soon. A message of false optimism, that the Exile would be over soon, would only increase their despair. For Jeremiah, it was important for the people to be aware of the truth: “You need to buckle up and get ready for the long haul.”
There is a Christian organization named Brugmansia Ministries, named after a plant called the “angel’s trumpet,” who want to be like a herald to inform churches about not only the dangers of climate chaos, but also what climate resilience looks like. Like Jeremiah, they aren’t pretending that the future isn’t troubling. But their response is to increase awareness about what can be done in response. They encourage churches to assess their local climate risks, and to plan to be ready for a climate disaster that is most likely to come. They suggest that we can prepare now to be good neighbors, but it begins with awareness.
The next hallmark of hope is Attitude. There is a famous line in today’s passage: “I know the plans that I have for you, plans for your welfare and not your harm.” Contrary to public usage of this verse, Jeremiah was not giving his local high school senior a graduation card. Or a new couple a wedding gift. Now, it’s great if you want to give that message to young people beginning on a new adventure, to remind them that God is with them. But as you can see in context, Jeremiah is talking about something else. This is a communal message, to a communal people who have plenty of reason to feel like God has no plans for them, or no concern for them, or may not even exist anymore, given the current evidence. Jeremiah wants them to tweak their attitude from one of despair to one of hope. Not hope that God is going to fix their problem immediately…the problem that took them generations to get into. But hope that even in the midst of their problem, in the midst of their despair, in the midst of their hopelessness, God is there. God is present. God is not leaving or forsaking them.
Chuck Swindoll, author and pastor, has a good quote about attitude that sounds like Jeremiah: “We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing that we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude…I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.” Swindoll and Jeremiah remind us that there is a lot out of our control, but the thing that is in our control is our response. Our attitude.
Finally, a third hallmark of hope might be obvious, given the sermon series: Action. Do you notice how Jeremiah tells them to act in the middle of their oppression? It isn’t armed uprising. It isn’t even public resistance. Jeremiah tells them to plant, and parent their children, and even pray for their oppressors. I would argue that what Jeremiah is suggesting is resistance, but it is a personal and cultural resistance. Instead of falling into the patterns of Empire, he writes them, stay true to the things that you have learned. Be who God has called you and commanded you to be. But Jeremiah doesn’t suggest that they hide away, creating walled-off enclaves away from their enemy. Instead, he encourages them to live among, and show support to, and pray for the welfare of their enemy. Sounds like some of that message that Jesus came to fulfill, not abolish.
Fellow American Baptist pastor Travis Norvell has written a brilliant book titled Church on the Move. In it, he writes that our work is not to despair that the Church isn’t what it used to be, and that the culture doesn’t care about the poor, and that the climate is disintegrating around us. Those things are true, but we don’t have to despair about them. He suggests that we leave the walls of the church and begin to listen to our neighbors. Ride our bikes and walk through the neighborhood. Ride public transportation, where we learn more about our neighbors. Use our physical space as a front door to the community. Because when we choose to be a church on the move, when we pray for the welfare of our neighbors, that’s when we discover who we are called to be. And he isn’t suggesting that we cannot participate in social change when we live this way…in fact, he suggests that church renewal and social change are closely connected. But it is slow going. He ascribes to the “2–3% rule” of social change. We aren’t going to fix the world around us right away, just as Jeremiah told the people not to expect change tomorrow. But if we can accomplish 2–3% a year, every year…over a decade, that reverses trends. Over 70 years…that changes the world.
We close this morning with a prayer from Pastor Norvell, inspired by Mother Teresa:
People will say walking, bicycling, and taking public transit are unreasonable, irrational, and slow. Do them anyway.
If you are kind with your staff, building, and money, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful meeting and befriending your neighbors, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere with people you meet on foot and while pedaling and taking public transit, some may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
When you arrive at a gathering refreshed and connected and happy because you walked, cycled or took public transit, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
All the reductions of your carbon footprint will often be forgotten. Reduce it anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God. Amen.
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