An Unexpected (and Surprisingly Upbeat) Prophecy for an Anxious Time - Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

By all accounts, the prophet Jeremiah was a very good student. We know that he trained with the best scribes in Jerusalem, because he told us. I like to imagine Jeremiah as a seminarian, learning how to call people out for things like greed or unfaithfulness to God or stealing other people’s wives. I also imagine that the advanced course for aspiring prophets was how to call out kings and other powerful people without getting into too much trouble. Prophets also had to learn how to comfort God’s people in times of distress. And they had to know the scriptures inside and out, in order to lead people back to God and God’s commandments. All of this was covered in their textbook, The Oxford Handbook of Prophetic Studies, 6th Century BCE edition.

Perhaps the hardest part of seminary for anyone, including prophets, is learning how to communicate the message. There’s an art to speaking difficult truth without turning people off or making everyone mad at you. That’s where the intro to preaching course comes in, since every preacher has to learn the basic do’s and don’t’s in the pulpit. To help you practice, professors often give you a scenario and tell you to write a sermon for the occasion. Even though Jeremiah was a good student, I wonder how he would have done in preaching class, because he took a pretty unconventional road with that kind of assignment. Take a look at the situation he was given to preach about:

God’s people were doing well and had a benevolent king ruling over them. Depending on who you ask, however, God’s people had gotten a little loose in their religious practices, even dabbling in the worship of idols, which God had specifically asked them not to do. Things took a bad turn, and the king was replaced with a puppet king by the Babylonian empire. Soon thereafter, the new king deported the rightful king, along with court officials, elders, priests, artists, and craftspeople. It was a shrewd move to drain cultural, artistic, and religious leaders from the kingdom. They were sent into exile in Babylon, away from everything they knew and away from God’s presence in the Temple in Jerusalem. It was a bleak time for those in exile. And it was Jeremiah’s job to give them a word.

If he had been studying the prophets’ textbook, there were some standard options to choose from. He could have told them to weep for Jerusalem or for themselves. He could have told them to abandon their sinful ways and make straight the way of the Lord. Or he could have cried out to God on their behalf, something like “Comfort, comfort ye my people.” Those are basic prophet moves, which a professor would have expected. But instead he said something completely new and unexpected to those in exile. (https://www.biblewormpodcast.com)

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 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. 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.”

Did you hear that? Instead of telling the people to repent or weep in an uncertain time, he told them to live their lives. Build houses, plant gardens, create families - all acts of hope in the midst of uncertainty. A few verses later Jeremiah will tell them that all will be made well in about 70 years, or two generations down the road. Those in exile now will not live to see that, but they must live with faith and hope all the same.

I can think of no more beautiful testimony to faith than Jeremiah’s advice. His words are powerful today. You and I may not be living in a Babylonian exile exactly, but we have a lot in common with those who were. Like them, we know that all is not right with the world. Things are not as they should be. And with those in exile we share the profound hope that one day God will return and make things whole again. This is a fundamental Christian hope, born from the same biblical imagination as that of the ancient Israelites. It is the essence of faith, our hope in things not yet seen and a future not yet here. What should we do in the meantime? Jeremiah tells us to live the beautiful lives we’ve been given and make the most of them. To enjoy the good things and struggle together in the bad. To take care of our each other and to work for the good of those around us. And, most of all, to live faithfully in the midst of uncertainty.

That feels powerful to me on a personal level, and I hope it does for you, too. Whatever distress we each go through, the call to have faith endures, as does the invitation to embrace life in the midst of those struggles. Jeremiah’s message also works on a collective level, as we look around and see all that is broken. Faith assures us that the brokenness is not the final word. There is a future in God that will look very different.

I also hear a powerful word for the Church in Jeremiah’s sermon. Maybe you’ve noticed that there is a lot of anxiety about Church these days, and about its future. Article after article chronicles the decline of mainline Protestantism, including The Episcopal Church. As a parish, we are not immune to worrying about things like church attendance and giving trends and whether the Church is even relevant anymore in an increasingly secular world. In meeting after meeting, I also hear anxiety about how Church just doesn’t feel like it used to before a pandemic. This is an in-between time, with the past we know behind us and an unknown future ahead of us.

If Jeremiah had stuck to his prophet textbook, he might encourage us to weep for the state of things. He could tell us to clean up our acts, or pray to God on our behalf. Instead, he tells us to live our lives fully and faithfully in the midst of uncertainty. An updated letter from Jeremiah to Christ Church might go something like this: “Take care of your church buildings with a master plan and worship God in them; plant a garden on the corner of 6th and Scott and eat what it produces; build your congregation and care for one another for years to come; and, seek the welfare of downtown Little Rock and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for it is in the city’s welfare that you will find your own.” Wise words for us in an in-between time, and comforting words for those who are anxious. I can think of no more beautiful testimony to faith for our Church than this.