Sunday, October 2,
2016
Author Andy Crouch in his book, Playing God¸ helped me put words to my
own understanding of life as a Christian in the United States. We worship idols in our country. These are not statues of god like those
worshipped by the ancients, but they are idols nonetheless. Crouch defines an idol as something that
occupies the space God is to occupy in our lives. The idol starts out promising us wonderful
things. But the more we are drawn to the
idol, the more it asks of us and the less it gives to us. This continues until finally, the idol
demands everything from us, our very selves, and it gives nothing to us.
God also asks everything of us –
complete love, loyalty, faith, and devotion.
However, when we give these to God, we have more, not less. The more love we give to God, the more love
we have for others. The more we trust
God, the more faith we have and the more faithful we become.
An idol demands our worship and
takes and takes and takes from us until it robs us of our humanity. We become disfigured distortions who no
longer bear the image of God.
God graciously receives our worship, our
hearts, and as we give to God, we are transformed. We become new creations.
We – Christians in America – sorely
need to remember who we are. In Christ,
we are sons and daughters of God, bound for the Kingdom. In the Holy Spirit, God is always with
us. We live every little bit of life
with God. Our culture sells us shallow
thrills, materialistic fulfillment, and deviant pleasures that excite or numb
us but, like idols, rip life from us.
You can think of examples. Drug
addiction. Gambling addictions. Idolatry of certain body images. The lust for comfort without regard for the
wellbeing of our neighbors.
Our leaders fail to inspire us. Many people came away from the first
presidential debate disappointed because they find neither candidate
appealing. The thought of spending the
next 4 years embarrassed by our president leaves us apprehensive and
melancholy.
These less than encouraging thoughts
filled my brain as I read Jeremiah 29 this week. But, then I remembered that I had made a
promise a few weeks ago. I alluded to
that promise last week. I promised to
make the case that Christians who live as true Jesus followers are agents of
good who work to help people flourish. Our exclusive loyalty and identification with
the kingdom of God leads us to reject patriotism and nationalism. We do not strive to be good Americans. We do not stand on love of country because we
know we are aliens in this place. We belong
somewhere else, to someone else. Instead,
we strive to live out the Kingdom of God on earth. In living this way, we end
up as the very best American citizens.
People who make love of country their top life
value sometimes set whatever they conceive as ‘American’ in opposition to
someone else, even other individual citizens’ visions of what is ‘American.’ But Christians, whose loyalty and love belong
exclusively to Jesus, contribute mightily to the good of all people in
society. What we read in Jeremiah 29
shows why this is the case.
The people of Judah, God’s chosen
people, had from the end of the 7th century into the 6th
century BC been pressured by the Babylonian empire to pay taxes to Babylon and
serve as a Babylonian colony. King
Zedekiah was installed over Judah by the Babylonians as their puppet. The nation of Judah finally fell in 586 BC
when Zedekiah rebelled and Babylonians destroyed the city of Jerusalem. Before that happened, several thousand Jews
from Judah fled to Egypt. Many others
were taken to Babylon in a first stage of exile in 590 BC.
Imagine tanks and cattle cars
rumbling down the streets of your neighborhood.
A loudspeaker orders everyone out of their houses with as much they can
carry. You have 10 minutes to pack
whatever you can. Then it’s onto the
cattle cars and before you know what’s happened, you’re relocated, forced to
live in a cramped apartment in a country where you don’t know the language and
have no way of getting home. It’s a one
way trip.
That was the fate of the exiles sent to live
in Babylon, modern day Iraq, in 595 BC. Walter
Brueggemann describes this as the end of history for these people.[i] Their identity was tied to the land. In their imagination, they reached back to
the days of Moses and the God of Moses.
God led them (when He led Moses and their ancestors) out of slavery in
Egypt into the Promised Land that flowed with milk and honey. Their life in that land was full of ups and
downs. With delight they remembered
David and Solomon and heroes like Samuel and Samson. With disappointment they recalled the reign
of King Saul and the failures of King Rehoboam, Solomon’s son. They held both, the good stories and the bad,
and they held onto the land.
Now, the people were ripped from the
land. Was Babylon stronger than
God? Was their failure as his covenant
people so grave that they could no longer trust in his promises? Had God given them up? The land was lost. They were foreigners in a strange land. Could they still tell their stories? Or were they, as a people, lost too? In Jeremiah 29 we read a letter the prophet
sent to those exiles to help them make some sense of what had happened.
Writing from the growing chaos in Jerusalem, Jeremiah
sends verbs to the exiles. Build. Plant.
Take. Seek. Brueggemann calls Jeremiah’s prophecy a
scandal. How can the people of God be
the people of God away from the Promised
Land? How can they worship Yahweh,
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in Babylon?
Know this.
Today, America is Babylon. We
live in the richest, most powerful, most technologically advanced country in
the world. We do everything we can to
fill our country with the riches of other countries. Gas.
Oil. We assume it is our right to
have these things in order to maintain our way of life. And we export our way of life, our values,
our individualism, our sense that monetary and material wealth will solve the
world’s problems. We assume that the more
other countries become like us, the better it is for them. America is today’s Babylon.
We followers of Jesus are not made for this
place. We are made in God’s image,
designed for and called to a society of creativity, cooperation, and mutual
care. We are meant for a Kingdom that
welcomes all – really, all – and sees
value in all people. Once we realize who we are in Christ, we know we are made
for somewhere else. How do we live as
God’s people when we have not yet arrived in God’s Kingdom? Build.
Plant. Take. Seek.
In these verbs, Jeremiah tells the exiles to
do the unthinkable. Live life to its
fullest in in Babylon. They are to build
homes, homes God will bless. They are to
plant gardens and when they do, they’ll be able to live off the land because
God will make it produce fruit. God is
here – even here in Babylon. The God who
brought them out of slavery in Egypt will bring them life in this place. Only this time, the prophet does not promise
a wilderness journey back home. They’re
staying 70 years, the lifespan of a generation.[ii] Those who receive this shocking word from
Jeremiah won’t see Jerusalem again.
Take wives for yourselves and your sons and
give your daughters in marriage. Did not
Moses have a non-Hebrew wife? He
did. Was not Ruth, the great grandmother
of David a woman of Moab? She was. Do we dare let our children marry Babylonians
– these cursed Babylonians? They’ll
marry Babylonians and bring life with God to Babylon because God has preceded
them there. God has made a way for them
in this, what looks like the darkest hour.
“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” (29:6).
How do we live as people who follow God,
particularly God as have met God in Jesus Christ? We seek good for the city where God has
planted us. Brueggemann calls it a
gospel for hard times. As I think about
the crises of our day, immigration and refugee crises, race relations in
America, our thoroughly self-serving politicians, as I think of it all, I
consider these hard times. But then, I
hear Jeremiah’s word, “seek good for the city.”
I hear God speak through the prophet to us. And Bruggemann is right, this is Gospel,
because even though the times are hard, we have good news. Gospel means good news and Jeremiah’s urging
of us to seek the welfare of our city is good news for our city and for us.
I propose, based the verbs of Jeremiah’s
letter to the exiles, that in the act of seeking the welfare of the city, we
point the world that is dying in sin to the one who can save it: Our Lord and
His Kingdom.
First, we build and plant. We participate in the economy of American life
by holding jobs, doing them well, and helping those around us do their jobs
well. Even in jobs we wouldn’t choose,
we work with integrity and effort. Doing
our work well and loving our coworkers is a holy practice endorsed by God. We do not stay in work that is unethical or
immoral. We choose to leave and trust
God for our provision rather than do dishonest or destructive work.
Risk is involved. Many Christ followers and nonbelievers alike
find themselves in precarious situations as jobs don’t pay enough and don’t
provide health insurance. But even in
those circumstances, how we live is a witness.
Are we joyful or woeful? Do we
see God, even in hard times? Always, we
practice our vocation as people of the cross.
We carry ourselves with a constant awareness of the presence of God.
We pay our taxes and manage our money responsibly.
We are profitable financial stewards who
see our money as a resource to serve the Lord and help others. Don’t confuse
generosity with recklessness. God shows
us how to be wise and extravagantly generous.
We build and we plant. We also enter into relationships of intimate
friendship with people in the world around us, people who are not Christ
followers. Jeremiah said “take wives and
give your sons and daughters in marriage.”
I understand this to be a way of saying, don’t isolate yourselves from others. Don’t hide in a holy huddle inside the
church. Open your hearts to the people
around you and win them over to God with your love and acts of service and
kindness.
We know from the New Testament that many in
the church were single. The best
practice for those who marry is to marry fellow believers. Life is pretty hard if the most important
thing in your life is your relationship with Jesus and your spouse has no
relationship with Jesus. There were New
Testament couples where one was a Christian and the other wasn’t. The early church leaders saw just how
difficult that life is so they recommended marriage to fellow believers.
When we take Jeremiah’s instruction that the
exiles marry where they are, and see it as teaching that we should enter
relationships, then we love those around us as friends, as neighbors, and as
people who help one another.
Building and planting, investing in
relationships, in these things we seek good for our city, our society. We point our world to Christ by living as
Christ in our world. In Philippians 3,
Paul says that “our citizenship is in Heaven” (v.20). We are exiles here. Idols abound around us, sucking the life from
the people who bow to them. We know the
one, true, living God and in the way we live our lives, we can help people know
Him too. Our witness is verbal. It is also life style and it is in acts of
compassionate service.
Also in Philippians, chapter 2, Paul says
that when we imitate Christ we “Shine like stars” in the “midst of a crooked
and perverse generation” (v.15). It is
as if Paul were writing for the church in 2016.
His words echo Jesus’ words. He
told the disciples, “Let your light shine before others so that they may see
your good works and give glory to your father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).
Jeremiah’s counsel to the exiles in Babylon;
Paul’s words to persecuted Christians in Phillipi; Jesus’ message in the Sermon
on the Mount; God’s word compels us to pray for our world. God’s word goads us to work for justice,
which means naming injustice and speaking out against it. God’s Spirit prompts us to fight poverty by
attacking its causes and walking with who suffer from it. God leads us to use our voice in our democracy
to call out corrupt politics and call for integrity. In activism, in compassion, in right living,
and in how we carry ourselves in the comings and goings of daily life – in all
these ways we seek good for our city. We
Christians bring hope and speak life into our community.
I close with God’s words, spoken through his
prophet.
“Surly I know the plans I have for you, says
the Lord, plans for your welfare not for harm, to give you a future with
hope. Then 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, I will let you find me, says the Lord, and I will bring you back to the
place from which I sent you into exile” (29:11-14).
AMEN
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