A Future with Hope

‘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)

Like many other churches, we tend to follow the common lectionary. That is, week by week, we read passages selected from the Bible in agreement with other Christian communities around the world. Such a way of reading ensures, first, that we don’t just pick texts that we happen to like. We are directed to all parts of the revelation. And, second, that we are not reading in splendid isolation, but in step with believers elsewhere.

But people who write lectionaries have their quirks, too. Sometimes they leave bits out. That happened this morning. Our reading from Jeremiah 29 began with verse 1, then skipped to verse 4. Now doesn’t that just fire up your curiosity, like kids with an R rated movie? What’s in that bit they left out? It must be good if the grownups don’t want us to see it!

The reading begins: ‘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 to exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.’ Then it jumps to verse 4: ‘Thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel …’ and there follows the text of the letter Jeremiah wrote to his people exiled in Babylon. Are you feeling grown up enough for the bit they left out?

Well, I’m going to risk it. Here it is: ‘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. 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.’ Hmmm … now you know why they left it out. It’s not that it’s R for risqué; it’s B for boring. The lectionary writers took pity on readers who have to get their tongues around a pile of strange names, and hearers who are going to switch off before we get to the important stuff. And good on them, you may say!

Fair enough. However … the compilers of the book of Jeremiah thought it worthwhile to keep these verses in. Why? It’s just the names of a couple of local war lords—Jeconiah and Zedekiah—reference to the queen mother, to court officials and tradesmen, and then the names of the two postmen delivering the letter—Elasah and Gemariah—and, would you believe, the names of their dads! So what? Why put it in?

Because it absolutely anchors this letter—this ‘word of the Lord’ as the text calls it—to a specific time, the time of Nebuchadnezzar and Zedekiah (not, say, Moses and Miriam), to a particular place Babylon (not Egypt), and to particular people, Jeconiah and Elasah, Shaphan and Gemariah (not Abraham and Sarah). This word of God is directed at these people, in this situation, at this time. And the compilers of the book of Jeremiah want us to know that. We won’t get a vital point if we don’t get that.

What won’t we get? Well, the truth about how God deals with us: that is, by name and in situ. The Bible is not a book of timeless doctrines; though it contains teachings of course. And it is not a manual of ethical principles; though it houses moral wisdom of course. The NT is basically stories (the Gospels) and letters (the epistles). Stories about particular happenings (Jesus healing of ten people with leprosy, say, or the beheading of John the Baptist). And letters directed at particular groups (this church at Corinth or that at Rome) and particular people (Lois here and Timothy there). So with Jeremiah. His letter, which speaks the word of the Lord, is to these people, with these names, in this place and time. When God says: ‘For surely I know the plans I have for you … plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope,’ the words are not anonymous and impersonal, they are directed to real, situated, named people.

Now this holds for us. If God has plans for us, and God does; and if those plans are for our welfare and not our harm, and they are; and if they offer us a future with hope, and they do; then these plans, this welfare, and that hope come to us where we are, carried by posties whose names we know. That’s both wonderful, and scary. Wonderful, because God does not deal with us as numbers, but as names; not as anonymous blocks, but as this specific community.

But it is also scary, because then we have responsibility to respond to this Godly address. And just because it is so historically specific, there is no fail-safe way of interpreting it. God is a living God, not a dead rule. And God speaks and acts in new situations as God wills to speak and act. And that almost always carries surprises for us.

It certainly did for the recipients of Jeremiah’s letter in Babylonian exile. The letter created a storm of debate. He knew it would. ‘Do not let the prophets and diviners who are among you deceive you,’ he writes, ‘ … for it is a lie that they are prophesying in my name.’ Because the revelation of God does not come in timeless packages, because God speaks into changing situations, there is almost always conflict about its meaning and implications. And sometimes it’s pretty robust. (When did you last go to a church business meeting?)

It was certainly robust in the case of Jeremiah’s letter. Jeremiah said one thing. His opponents another. We can see why. Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, attacked, defeated, and subjugated the people of Jerusalem. He occupied their lands; levied taxes on their wealth; and deported the cream of the intellectual and artisan population back to Babylon. These people were in exile in an alien space. Far from home and custom. Far from the Temple they knew, and the worship and prayer they loved. Babylon was new, strange, unintelligible and threatening. Psalm 137 famously describes the feeling of the exiles:

¹ By the rivers of Babylon—
   there we sat down and there we wept
   when we remembered Zion.
² On the willows^* there
   we hung up our harps.
³ For there our captors
   asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
   ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
⁴ How could we sing the Lord’s song
   in a foreign land?
⁵ If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
   let my right hand wither!

Yet in this situation Jeremiah says to the exiles: ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts … Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters … 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.’ In short, God’s plan for you, God’s hopeful future for you, is not in returning to Jerusalem, but staying in Babylon and working for its welfare. Is it any wonder there was hot debate? How can that be God’s plan, the critics argued?

And it wasn’t that everyone felt alien, and just wanted to get back to Jerusalem as soon as possible. Though that was true. But it was more than that. It was that Jeremiah’s reading of God’s plan for his people was so different from the model they were used to in making such theological judgments.

Exodus was the great historical event to which Israel looked for inspiration and guidance. Israel had once been in bondage in Egypt, captive to a foreign power, as they were now in Babylon. Then their beliefs, practices, and social customs were despised, oppressed and subservient to the power of Egypt. Just as they were now in Babylon. But hope back then had a very different tone. ‘I have heard the cry of my people,’ said God, ‘and I have come to release them from their bondage.’ And Moses, messenger of God at that earlier time, delivered a a very different letter to the people in Egypt. ‘Let my people go! Go from this place, to a new and better land.’ With Jeremiah and Babylon, it’s the exact reverse. Not, ‘Let my people go.’ But ‘dig in my people, and stay.’

This kind of diversity in the project of faith seems inevitable if we are dealing with the living God, who relates to living people, in living historical situations, with the living truth, and not with a rigid God, who operates with rigid rules, and a rigid, dead-letter truth.

To know the living God, the God of Moses, Jeremiah and Jesus, is to be thrust into an adventure of life. The plans of the living God are not timeless, they relate to particular situations. The hopes of the living God are not impersonal. They refer to particular peoples with names and connections and locations. And because they are living, they call forth different responses from us. And debate about what they mean. ‘Let my people go! Exodus is the ticket,’ says Moses. ‘Dig in and stay. Exile is the way,’ says Jeremiah. Both speak in the name of the living God. It all depends of the specifics: the times, the names, the situations.

Exodus and Exile. Both are hugely important in the biblical story of God’s dealings with God’s people. They are opposite strategies for living out God’s plans for Israel. But both are fitting and faithful to God at different times, in different places, and under different circumstances.

Isn’t that true for us? When I look back on my own walk with God, these two polarities, exodus and exile, have featured strongly. There have been times when I have left a situation, where (as I see it now) it would have been better, more faithful to God, to have stayed where I was. Stuck it out in a hard situation; built my house there and sought the welfare of that particular place in prayer and service. In short, better to have chosen the exile path of Jeremiah. But I was too fixated on an ‘exodus’ solution: ‘the-let-me-out-of-here’ way of reading God’s hopes and plans for me.

And there have been times when I have done the reverse. Where I have stayed in a situation because it suited me, when probably, to have been true to the calling of God, I should have let it go and left; gone on pilgrimage to a new and different future. But I chose ‘exile’ instead of ‘exodus’.

And (I hope) there have been some times when I have read the letters of prophets more faithfully. When I have stayed when I should have stayed, and dug in for the long haul when it was the right thing to do. And times when I have left when it was right to leave, and moved on to a new thing. Perhaps you have echoes of that, too, in your journey.

What does all this say to us as a community now? Is this a time when God is calling us to Exodus? To move out from where we have been, where it is familiar and safe, where we know the ways of God inside out? Is the Spirit saying to us, ‘let my people go?’, I have a new hope and a new plan for your welfare and future? Or might it be that the letter of the Lord is asking us to ‘dig in’? Not ‘exodus’ but ‘exile’ is the way forward. Stick with it; see through what we already have before us. The job isn’t done. Pray for the city you are set in.

I don’t know. I am no Moses or Jeremiah, who can with certainty say, ‘this is the word of the Lord.’ I can only join with you in the debate that always accompanies a community which seeks the will of God for their future. My guess—and it’s only a guess—is that for us in Canberra the word of the Lord is not ‘either/or’ but ‘both/and’. I have a hunch that the future to which God is calling us will require of us some ‘exodus’ and some ‘exile’. There are probably some things we need to leave behind in Egypt as we strike out on the adventurous way toward a new place under Christ’s leadership. But there are probably some things we will need to stick with; to dig in and see through, even if they are not quite to our liking. Exile and Exodus both call to us. And we won’t always find it easy to discern how they relate to each other, and what they demand of us.

But this much is sure. Exile or Exodus. Exile and Exodus. These tensions name the adventure of faith. We won’t always get it right. And no doubt we will debate it as we go. But this word we can trust through it all: ‘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. … when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you. When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart.’

Graeme Garrett

Canberra Baptist Church

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

10 October 2010