Good morning. This morning we’re going to continue on in our sermon series, looking at the book of Jeremiah. We’re actually going to jump quite a ways ahead now to a letter that Jeremiah has written that’s recorded in the 29th chapter of this book.

Before I actually to read this to you, I thought I might start by trying to help set the context for this letter so that we can have that in the back of our minds as we hear the text read. Let me start by giving you the historical context.

Historical Context

I know that for some of you this is a repeat. But let me just remind you again that Jeremiah writes during a time period in Israel’s history that we might kind of think of as the unfolding of the exile.

The exile is where God was allowing his people to be taken from the Promised Land into captivity. And I say "the unfolding of the exile" because it didn’t happen really as a single event. It kind of went in stages.

Early on, the so-called northern portion of Israel (northern tribes) were taken off into exile. So much of the scripture really focuses on the southern kingdom-the kingdom of Judah-with Jerusalem as its capital city.

Now Judah probably had its last moment in the sun–its last bright spot–with the reign of King Josiah. Josiah reigned for 30 years from about 639-609 BC. And during those times:

• He discovered the law.
• He redirected the hearts of his people back to a more single-minded focus on Yahweh.
• He did away with a lot of idolatry that was going on in the land.

And it was a time when God really looked with favor upon Israel.

Israel at this point wasn’t a super-power, but it was at least politically independent; a separate and independent nation. Now that began to change–to unravel, really, with Josiah’s death. As Josiah was dying, a superpower in the region was arising. In this case it was Egypt.

And the pharaoh of Egypt, Niko, summoned the new king after Josiah to meet with him and then in effect deposed him and put a substitute king on the throne…a kind of puppet king whose name was Johiakim. He instructed Johiakim to tax his people heavily so that a large tribute could be gathered this year and then handed off to Egypt. That’s really what it means to be a vassal state–it’s to take your economic wealth and hand it over to another people. That was the way it went for several years with Johaikim.

At the same time, another super-power begins to rise in this region. This is the state of Babylon, led by king Nebuchadnezzar. And Babylon and Egypt engage in a series of battles and gradually Babylon begins to take more and more territory and its sphere of influence includes Judah. And at that point, Jehoiakim is told to redirect the payment of tribute from Egypt to Babylon. And that goes on for a number of years.

Now at this time, in Israel, there is a lot of intrigue going on. A lot of different factions are maneuvering. And one very strong faction has been pushing on Jehoiakim to declare his independence from Babylon...to revolt...Jeremiah's prophecies and counsels to the contrary.

But Jehoiakim looks and sees a big battle that Babylon, he thinks, lost. And then says to himself, “Aha, Babylon is kind of weak.” And so He decides he’s going to revolt. Revolting in this case simply means not turning in the tribute payment. Bad idea. In fact, Babylon wasn’t all that weak after all. Babylon just charges across the west, surrounds the city, and Jehoiakim dies.

[Many think Jehoiakim was in fact assassinated by his own people as a way of trying to push back on the anger that King Nebuchadnezzar might have.]

So when Jehoiakim dies, his son–18-year-old Johaikin-is put on the throne. And for about 3 months, he’s there before Jerusalem surrenders to Babylon. And perhaps they have to some extent appeased Nebuchadnezzar’s anger. Because when he comes in and takes over, he does not destroy the city. He and his army loot the temple, they take out the silver and gold vessels and so forth, and take those with them. They also:

• grab the king...the young king, Johaikin
• grab the queen mother.
• (and) grab every other leader-type in the community.
  That is, they find all the leaders in politics, the leaders in business, the leader artisans, the prophets, the priests.

They gather up anybody who might have an ounce of leadership capacity. They skim, in a sense, the cultural cream of the crop and they take it off to Babylon–to exile.

And that’s the group to whom this letter is written. Jeremiah, for some weird reasons, is left in Jerusalem. And that’s the group he’s writing this letter to.

Now let me just finish out the story so you can see how important this letter is historically...to remind you what happens in Jerusalem after these people are taken out.

A new puppet king is put in (King Zedekiah) and this guy rules over a bunch of, shall we say, “not leader types.” He is himself not terribly strong and has somewhat of a death wish that sets in after about a decade because he, too, declares independence from Babylon. And once again the armies of Babylon come, march west, surround the city, and this time they finish the job.

• They capture Zedekiah. They torture him. They kill him.
• They knock down the walls
• They raise the town houses and set them on fire.
• Most importantly for the Jews, they burn the temple to the ground.

So this is the place where the center of their identity, where they would meet with God, has been brought to the ground.

Now, at that time, they take some more folks out of the land into exile. But they leave a very small remnant. This group has another appointed leader. As soon as the Babylonians leave, the locals rise up and assassinate that leader. Then the assassins grab most of the local residents and run off to Egypt to hide.

In effect, really, at the end of this process, there’s nothing left of Jerusalem or Judah. It’s completely decimated. There’s nothing to build on there. If Israel is to have any future or hope, it resides with this remnant of people... these initial exiles who were taken together into Babylon...the ones who get the letter that Jeremiah writes.

This letter is critical for the future of Israel.

Emotional context

Okay, so that’s the historical context. Now let me see if I can help you to think through the emotional context for this letter. And I want to invite you to use your imagination, if you might. Close your eyes if you want.

Try and imagine yourself as one of these leader types. You can pick your leader. You can be a counselor to the king, a priest, an artisan…whatever you want.

You’re one of these leader types in Jerusalem. You’ve lived in Jerusalem all your life. You have a house there. You have family there. And there are thousands of little sensory cues that you are not even conscious of that kind of bombard you and constantly remind you that this is home. This is your place.

It’s the smell of the air on the mountain in the fall

The way the sun comes in the summer

The dust; the way it smells

The children when they run around; the sounds

The smell of lamb on a charcoal fire

The taste of the wine just after its been harvested

The whole set of sensory experiences say to you over and over, “You’re home. This is where you belong.”

And theologically, you know it’s where you belong.

• This is the country that God has given His people.
• Jerusalem is His city.
• The temple is where God is dwelling with His people.

You’re home.

Now, you know that your city has been under siege for a couple of years and you have learned that the king has decided to surrender. And you worry, frankly, what’s this going to be like. Is Babylon going to come in and destroy this place? Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll just ask for money.

And you wait.

And as the day unfolds, it looks pretty good. Nobody’s running around with torches to burn the place down.

Maybe it is that they’re just going to take money and go away.

And then while you’re home you hear a banging on your door. And you open it up, and there is a Babylonian army officer, who has a list. And he asks you to identify yourself. And your name is on the list. And he says to you,

You’re got two hours – two hours to pack whatever belongings to take with you, to gather your family with you, to go down and meet at the north gate.

And frankly, he says, I wouldn’t take too much cause it’s a long ways.

Imagine those two hours, scrambling to try to figure out what you’re going to take, what you’re going to leave. Is there anything you can do to organize your affairs when you are gone, to gather your children, to say goodbye to people...?

And then you’re at the gate. And the Babylonian army surrounds these (future) exiles and leads you out of the gate. And makes you walk away from Jerusalem.

And you look back over your shoulder and you see the city that has been your home forever.

And you go a little further and you can still see it. It’s smaller now.

And a little further, and it’s very tiny.

And then you go into the horizon and you can’t see Jerusalem anymore.

And then you walk for 700 miles through really desolate territory, surrounded by the guard from Babylon that tells you when you can sit down, and when you will walk, and when you can lay down, and when you can eat.

It’s a hard trip. In fact, some of you don’t make it. Some of the sadder moments along the way are when you have to bury some of the elders who couldn’t stand the trip. And at the end of this long trip, the remnant of the army (most of the army has peeled off a long time ago) that is still there to guard you takes you to a place in Babylon.

Babylon itself isn’t such a bad looking place. But it’s strange. Everything about it is strange. The people look strange. They talk strange. It smells strange. Nothing feels normal here.

He takes you to some place next to a city in Babylon. And he points to the ground and says, “This is where you will live.” And he pulls back and establishes a perimeter and leaves.

And that’s where you are…an exile in Babylon.

Try to imagine. Imagine yourself lying the first few weeks on your back, looking up at the sky at stars that don’t look familiar. Imagine the feelings that would race through you; feelings that would race through some of the people who have come with you.

Surely there’s a great sense of confusion. A sense of “Who am I?” I mean, I knew who I was when I was in Jerusalem. I was somebody that counted. People would call on me. They would ask for my opinion. They would seek my support. Here I’m a nobody. I’m just a faceless political refugee. I don’t matter to anyone. My God doesn’t seem to be here. My land. Nothing seems families. I’m lost. I’m lonely.

There’s a sense in which there’s a great grieving for Jerusalem. This is actually captured a little bit in one of the psalms…a famous psalm-Psalm 137.

“By the rivers of Babylon. -
there we sat down and there
we wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth,
saying,
" Sing us one of the songs of Zion."

How could we sing the Lord’s
song
in a foreign land?”
(Psalm 136:1-4)

And This grief–this loneliness-turns into anger. You’re angry at the Babylonians. In fact, the same Psalm ends,

“Blessed are those who will dash
the little Babylonian babies
against the rocks.
(Psalm 136:9)

You’re angry. You’re probably unnaturally, unreasonably angry even at the peope who got left behind. How come…

• They get to stay in Jerusalem?
• They get to still worship at the temple?
• They still get to live at home?

How come…? And this all kind of wraps up into an immobilizing self pity.

Others in the group have given over to fantasy; to dreams. They say, “Huh! What if this is just for a little while? Surely God wouldn’t have intended this as a big, long term…This is just another one of his object lessons. We’ll be going back.”

And in the community, people begin to spring up. And they say, “I am a prophet. I have a word from God. You don’t even need to unpack. This is going to be such a short duration. You’re going right back.” And so people become immobilized in their dreams of an early return.

Others in the community aren’t really immobilized by that sense of going right back. They’re starting to make plans. But their plans are something like this: “Okay, if we’re here in Babylon, let’s try as best we can to pretend we’re not. Let’s try to build at least sort of mental walls to hold this enemy Babylon. And right here we’ll do our best to replicate a Jerusalem. To sort of do it again, but just here in this place.”

And then there are some cynics. The cynics are the ones who say, “You know, you’ve got to be kidding. You’re trying to save Israel? There is no Israel. There is no land. There is no God. There is no people. I mean, what are we here? Just a bunch of political refugees who’ve been dropped down in Babylon. If you want to know what we should do, we should work hard to become Babylonians. That’s what we should do.”

And you have all of these emotions swirling together.

Then imagine that you get word that a messenger has come– actually two messengers have come from Jerusalem-from King Zedekiah. And they’ve come to your camp. And the word spreads through the camp. And you all jump up. And you run to where they are. And everybody’s shouting out the questions they want to know:

• How is so-and-so?
• What’s going on?
• Who’s doing this now that we’re gone?

But the messengers stop and they say, “Hey, wait a minute. We first need to read a letter that we are carrying from Jeremiah."

Now you remember Jeremiah. You didn’t like him very much back in Jerusalem. You didn’t like what he said. But actually, he turned out to be right and so, “Okay.” You gather around. You’re standing. You invite them to read the letter from Jeremiah.

Let me invite you to listen with them to the letter. Jeremiah 29:4-14

If we think about the kind of emotions with which this letter is being written, it really seems to me that it has both a strong challenge and a strong set of words of comfort. A challenge and a comfort.

The challenge is pretty clear: To those people who have gotten immobilized in their dreaming and their fantasies, God says,

Wake up! You’re not going back in 2 years. In fact it’s going to be 70 years. In fact, what it really means is that it’s going to be a whole generation. Not one of you who left Jerusalem will ever see it again. And these people who are popping up in the midst of you; they’re lying. I have not sent them.

The Hebrew is interesting. He says, “In your dreams, you have caused them to dream these prophecies–these dreams.” It’s like saying, “Your desire for a magical quick fix has created the soil that has made it ripe for these false prophets to spring up and to tell you what you want to hear. They are lying. Wake up!”

And to those people who are immobilized in their own sense of grief, and loss and loneliness. He says to them, nicely,

Get over it. You need to move on.

I don’t want you living in make-shift tents. Build a house that will last.

Plant because you’re going to be there in the fall to harvest. And figure out what will grow in Babylonian soil because that’s where you’re going to farm.

And marry. Don’t spend your time dreaming about what a wedding in Jerusalem would look like. It ain’t gonna happen. Marry here. Have children. Give your children in marriage.

Grow.

In other words, "Live deeply, richly, into the place where I have brought you. Give your life to this place."

For those who are saying, “Well, let’s circle the wagons. Let’s make our own little Jerusalem here. Let’s hold those evil Babylonians at bay," the word of the Lord is just to the contrary.He says to them in verse 7,

What I want you to do is work and pray for the welfare, (the word here is shalom, which is that great, rich word of wholeness and peace; all goodness and rightness coming together) for the shalom, not just of your little community, but for the city.”

To pray for the shalom of Babylon. It is not a situation of you against them. It’s you and them. You are part of their community. You pray for their shalom because it’s your shalom as well. That means you:

• join the school board
• work in water purification systems
• share agricultural techniques
• read each other’s poetry
• invest in their community
• work for its welfare

because you are a part of it.

And for those who say, “Well see. We really are just Babylonians,” it also has a challenge. It says,

No you’re not.

Because even as you pray, you are praying to the God of Israel. And you are praying to a God who, at the end of this time, will gather up His people and bring them back to Jerusalem.

Israel is not gone. Israel is just in exile. And as you invest your lives–as you pray for shalom–you do so as God’s chosen people.

Now that’s the challenge. The passage also has words of comfort for the people.

First of all, he says “Pray.” Pray for the city.

Now this may strike you and me as not a big word of comfort. But it’s because we don’t have the Jewish framework here. This is a radical statement.

You see, up to this point of time, the Jew’s understanding of their ability to access God was always geographically specific. God was in a particular place and they could go to that place and meet with God. So God was in the cloud on the mountain, or in the pillar of fire, or in the shekinah glory of the tabernacle, or in the Holy of Holies of the tabernacle. So, for their picture, God is back in Jerusalem; that place that they’re never going to get to go back to. And the message is,

No. Even in the hardest, furthest, loneliest places of exile, if you pray, I will listen. I will hear your prayers and be there. If you pray, I will listen. I will hear your prayers and be there.

God is with them.

The second word of comfort that comes out of this. He says, “Look. In some way, I planned this for your welfare."

It says, “My plans for you are not to do you harm, but to do you good.” And so even as hard…and it is hard to be in exile, to be a political refugee…it is hard. Even in the hardness of that, it is my plan that it will work for your shalom – your welfare.

Now we get a hint as to why that might be. Actually the word “exile” in Hebrew is the same word that’s translated many other places in the Old Testament meaning “to uncover.” It’s in the law, where “Your nakedness should not be uncovered.”

And so there is a sense as the people are sent into exile, it is a time of uncovering–a time of revealing..revealing what they have become as a people; a people who have only a half-hearted devotion to God, who are easily distracted and going after other gods. It is a time, in a sense, where all of the things that have given them a sense of belonging, of counting, is stripped away and they see themselves as they really are. And they’re given a chance to turn and to return to God, and to come to Him and to call Him, and to see Him with all their heart.

My plans for you are for your good, not for your harm.

And finally this great word of comfort that comes through at the end: God says in effect, “This is not forever.”

The exile will be a long time, but it will not last forever. There will be a time when I will gather my people and bring them back to Jerusalem. And that’s the letter.

So I was trying to think, “What does that letter have to say to us here at Bethany, many many thousands of years later. What does it have to say to us?

Well, it seems like it talks to us at a bunch of different levels.

1. Simply, one thing it does, is remind us of how hard it is to be a stranger in a strange land...how hard it is to be a refugee, in exile.

One of the cool things about living in Seattle is that there are many, many foreigners in our midst. Some of them are indeed political refugees. Some of them are simply visitors.

But all through the Scriptures God over and over emphasizes that we should be looking for ways to be kind to–to reach out to –the foreigners, the strangers in our midst. And just thinking through what it was like to be a stranger in Babylon I think should call forth from us a desire to reach out and make these folks feel more at home as best we can-to recognize the loneliness, the grief that they may be carrying.

Some of you may not know that Bethany has had a long history of caring for refugees in our community. In fact, some of the longest term missionaries that we have sent out really grew out of a time period probably 25 years ago when this church was very involved in bringing refugee families–Indo-Chinese refugee families–into our midst and taking them and helping them to get settled.

And out of that, several of our members have gone to work with World Relief which is in the business of refugee resettlement. It’s been a big part of the life of this congregation. And it continues to be a call…that we look for the foreigners, the strangers in our midst, and extend to them as best we can a sense of home.

2. A second way in which it seems to me that we might think about it as applicable to us is when we go through exile periods in our lives. You know, you don’t really have to literally be picked up out of your home and stuck in some foreign country to be in exile. Exiles can occur anytime a sense of home is pulled out from underneath you.

Eugene Peterson describes, or defines, exile in this way. He says, “Exile is being any place you don’t want to be with people you don’t want to be with.” Which I think is kind of too broad a definition because, for some of you, it may cover Christmas with your in-laws. But still the notion is that there are little exiles along the way.

Places of loss. You were feeling safe and secure, then all of a sudden something’s pulled out.

• Somebody dies
• There’s a divorce.
• There’s a betrayal.
• Something you had not known, you discover.
• There’s a sense you’ve lost your job.
  There’s an economic disaster in your life.

These are all places where your sense of feeling like you belonged, you were safe, you belonged, is pulled out from underneath you. And if you’re in one of those places now, or as you go into those places, you might remember this letter. Because it’s a letter, I think, written to us in these places.
It’s a letter with challenges and comforts.

It challenges us, in a sense, to get on with it. Nicely. But it says “Don’t sit and wallow in the grief and the anger.” It says, “Really, take wherever you have landed and live deeply in that place. And pray for and seek the shalom–not just your own–but of the community that you’re in and of the whole group that you’re put with, including those who may have caused your loss. Seek their shalom."

But it also has all the words of comfort. When you’re in that sort of most broken place, the word is again, “God is with you. If you pray, He will listen.” The word is again (while I would never say that God orchestrates these great losses in our lives), the word is that God will use them to take us closer to His heart. His plans for us are for good, not for ill. And the word is always that this is not the end. You will not be left in exile.

3. One last way it seems to me that this pass may have comment to our lives. In another sense of the word, I think we could say that we are collectively–all of us–in exile; good times and bad times.

I have lived an incredibly charmed life. So many good things in my life. So I don’t have lot of these great loss experiences. But even in all the goodness of my life I regularly recognize that this place that we live in doesn’t quite feel like home.

Some of you may be old enough to remember, I think, the very first Christian rock-and-roll singer. If you remember this name, you are old...Larry Norman.

Larry Norman was famous early on for some songs like, Why should the devil have all the good music?” But his most (sort of) famous song–it really was an album cover–was “This world is not my home. I’m only passing through.”

And there is a sense, that as we look out at the world that we live in that it is not the world that God intended for us.

• It is broken.
• There’s lies and deceits that run all through it.
• There’s poverty and illness that run all through it.
• We’re forced to live daily to live in what feel like compromised situations.

This doesn’t feel right. And I tell you, as I get older, it seems like every day almost, this desire grows stronger and I want to say, "God, I want to go home."

The Scriptures end with, “Come, Lord Jesus. I want to go home.” But the letter is written to us in this place, too. The letter is written to us as we live this life in this weird in-between time when we’re waiting. And what the letter says again is,

Live deeply into the place where I’ve put you. Sink roots. Live your life abundantly. Reach out to your community. Pray for your city.

We should pray for Seattle. Seattle has lots of difficult decisions it has to make.

We should pray for the state of Washington. There’s so much going on.

We should pray for the United States...in this rough and ugly campaign season

We should be praying for and seeking the shalom of our nation.

We should be seeking the shalom of the world.

The places that are broken in the world. This is what God calls us to do:

• To roll up our sleeves.
• To build.
• To plant.
• To marry.
• To have children.
  To pray.
• To work for shalom.

That’s what we do. That’s the challenge. As hard as it sometimes is.

And then there’s the comfort for us, too. God says,

Even in the places where the world seems most broken and most beyond repair, I will be with you. If you pray, I will listen.

He says,

There is something that I can’t fully explain to you about why you need to live through this kind of exile time because I am using it, not for your harm, but for your good. I’m using it, perhaps, to uncover in you places that yet need to be changed to draw closer to me.

And then we also live assured of this final word. And that is, at the end, we are going to go home.

There will come a day. There will come a day when the shalom of God will fill the earth like the waters fill the sea, when there will be no more of this brokenness and poverty and lies and all the things that seem so hard for us now… There will be that day. The new Jerusalem. will come down and you and I will be invited to live in that city forever.

God says,

I have made you to be a people with a hope and a future.

And exile is not the last word.

The last word is “home.”

Let us pray.