Jeremiah 29:1-9
Jose Ortega y Gassett once said, “Tell me the landscape in which you live, and I will tell you who you are.” There is much truth in that statement. Our sense of who we are is very much determined by the place we are in and the people we are with. It is what one of my favorite Christian authors, Kathleen Norris, calls “spiritual geography.” Spiritual geography is how the soil, the sky, the terrain, the demographics that surround you, and make up your place, plays a huge part in your spiritual development.
But what happens when that spiritual geography gets shifted, maybe traumatically? What happens when we are jerked out of the place we were in? What happens when that sense of place changes, violently and abruptly? We might start asking ourselves questions like, “Who am I now?” Or, if it is a family or group of people, they may ask, “Who are we, as a people?”
This kind of traumatic change, and this kind of spiritual questioning is called exile. In exile from a place or circumstance we were in, we feel like we don’t fit in anywhere anymore. There is no one in that new place who seems to need us. There is nothing in the landscape that helps us get our bearings about where we are. We may feel like extra baggage. We may feel unnecessary. We may feel like our spirit has been leeched from our body when exiled to a different place or status.
A lot of you may not get this. You have grown up and lived here in Pratt, or the Pratt area, all your lives. You haven’t had to uproot yourselves, nor have you been forced to change your geography in any drastic way. You will have to put on your imagination caps, and try to get a vision for what your lives would be like if you, this day, were forced, or had to move to, say, Los Angeles or Chicago. But you should be able to understand on an emotional level when some shift happens in the demographics of your family and relationships.
Many of the people of Israel were taken into exile by the Babylonian army in 587 B.C. The people were uprooted from the place in which they were born and had lived their whole lives. They were forced to march across 700 miles of barren, unrecognizable land. They were moved into the heart of the Babylonian Empire, into bizarre and outlandish cities. In their place of exile, in their new geography (Babylon) customs were strange. The language was unintelligible. The landscape a mystery. All the familiar landmarks were gone. None of the old stories were told. The faces of the people were unrecognized and unrecognizing.
Israel’s exile was a violent and extreme form of what many people experience in their own lives. Inner experiences of exile take place in all kinds of basic, human circumstances and experiences:
--Birth is a form of exile from the womb, that thrusts us out into a life that seems strange and harsh;
—Birth for the new mother and father can feel like an exile into a new and very unfamiliar land of parenthood;
--As young children, we are exiled from our homes into the terrifying and demanding world of school;
--We may, because of work, become exiled from our hometowns, finding ourselves displaced or transferred in new cities or new states;
--As we grow older, changes in our bodies exile us from the health we once enjoyed, especially if you face anything like cancer or heart disease;
--And, we experience different forms of exile as shifts, sometimes traumatic, that happen in our families, marriages, and other relationships.
The exile experience by the Israelites is a dramatic image of what we all experience simply by being alive in this world.
The essential meaning of exile is that we are where we don’t want to be. It is an experience of dislocation--everything is out of joint. Nothing fits together anymore like we think it should. All the little bits of everyday details that we counted on, took for granted, that gave us a sense of being at-home, are all gone. Life is ripped out of the familiar soil of language, habit, and story. We find ourselves rudely dropped into some unfamiliar spot on earth, or some disorienting experience. An accident, a tragedy, a disaster of any kind can force the realization that life is not safe or predictable. We don’t get to stay the same, or in the same place our whole lives.
Interestingly, the place of exile may be a better place. It may be more pleasant. More loving. More hospitable. More intriguing. More challenging. More wondrous. But that doesn’t matter. It isn’t “home.” It isn’t where we were.
How did the Israelites in exile feel? How did they respond to their circumstances? Imagine how you might respond if you were forced to spend any amount of time with people you don’t like, in a place you'd rather not be. You’d probably not be too far from the truth of what the Israelites were feeling.
Mostly, the people complained bitterly to God about their terrible circumstances. They longed, achingly, for life as it was. They daydreamed about their home town. They wallowed in self-pity. And their religious leaders nurtured that self-pity. The false prophets stirred the pots of discontent. They merchandised nostalgia. They gave the people false hope. They instilled the imagery of false dreams.
The trouble is, false dreams interfere with honest living. As long as the people held on to the hope of going home, of going backwards, it made no sense to engage in any kind of committed, faithful, and forward living in Babylon. If they kept looking back, then they would be oblivious to what God wanted them to deal with in the now. If there was a shred of hope that they could soon get back all they had lost, there was no need to develop a life of richness, texture, and depth where they were in that present moment. When you’re in exile, you don’t get to look back to find out how you’re supposed to be.
The false prophets exiled with the people, manipulated the self-pity of the people into unstable and anxious fantasies. The people, glad for religious reasons to nurture small lives, lived hand-to-mouth. They became parasites on the people in their new place. They became irresponsible in their relationships. They became indifferent to the reality of what could be happening if they actually chose to make some changes.
Into this nostalgia, Jeremiah sent his letter. To Jeremiah, the people have become like Lot’s wife. They have turned themselves into pillars-of-salt as they look back at that which God doesn’t want them looking back at. Into the false prophet manipulation of empty dreams, Jeremiah sent his letter. To an exiled people, living small, irresponsible lives, Jeremiah sent his letter. To us, who may be fellow exiles through some life-disrupting experience, Jeremiah sent his letter.
In this letter from Jeremiah, there is some very surprising and specific advice.
First, “Build houses and make yourselves at home.” Jeremiah tells the exiles, they aren’t living in temporary tent cities. They aren’t refugees, someday to go back to where they came from. This place is now their place. Jeremiah tells them to make themselves at home. It may not be their favorite place. It may not be their place of choice. But it is a place. It is, now, their place.
What God is telling the exiles through Jeremiah’s letter is,
“If all you do is sit around and sigh for the time you might get back to your home town in Israel, your present lives will be squalid and empty. Your life, right now, is every bit as valuable as it was when you were back in your home towns. Babylonian exile is not your choice, but it is what you are given. Make a home with that.
It’s hard, I know, when you aren’t in a place emotionally, spiritually, physically, or geographically that you want to be. We find ourselves thinking things like, “My life will be much better when...” Or, “My life will really start when...” Or, “I’m looking forward to the day when...” It’s not only a matter of impatience with us. It’s also a picture in our minds that we attempt to forcefully share with God, of what we think our lives should look like. We tell God, specifically, what we know will make our lives happy and fulfilled. And right when we think that picture we’ve been painting in our minds is going to become reality, life comes along and spray paints some hurtful graffiti all over it. It’s even more painful when it seems like that someone is God.
Then we start painting, all over again, some picture of our desired future. But if we’re always looking into the future for our happiness, then we’re missing what happiness can be ours right now. We’re missing the happiness we can make happen in this present moment. Like it or not, we may not be where we want to be, in some circumstance or another. But we are where we are. (That sounds deep doesn’t it.) It’s that simple. So we need to build a house where we are and start living in it. We need to paint that house, rather than continue working on the portrait of our fantasies.
Next, Jeremiah writes to the people, “Plant gardens and eat the produce.” Every culture has their own kind of cuisine. You can cook Italian one night, Chinese the next, and then French food. When I lived in Bakersfield, one of the popular cuisines was Basque food: hearty soups, crusty bread, and lamb. When you eat these different kinds of food, you are actually eating another culture. You are, by enjoying a culture’s food, becoming aware of the people in that culture. You learn not only about the food, how to prepare it, but also how to eat it, how to enjoy it most, and who to enjoy it with.
Also, gardens take time. It takes time for things to grow. Planting seeds, tending them, watching them grow, and waiting for the produce to be ripe for picking and eating takes weeks, sometimes months. Especially, if, for instance a grapevine is being planted. You have to wait at least three years to begin taking useful grapes from the vine. Three years! If you’re going to plant a garden you have to do all the daily stuff that comes with it: weeding, hoeing, watering. It means making an investment of time and energy in the soil of the place where you are at. It means getting your hands dirty with the soil of your place.
Have you noticed how people who are depressed often don’t eat very well? They eat too much, or too little. They aren’t tending a garden. There is no delayed gratification. There is no investment in the future of the culture or condition of their place. There is an unwillingness to get their hands dirty with the everyday tasks that life in the now demands. Jeremiah’s letter is a reminder to those who aren’t at a place they want to be. It is a kick in the backside to immerse themselves in the daily aspects of the culture they find themselves in, and begin replanting in the now.
Then Jeremiah, in his letter, writes, “Marry and have children. Encourage your children to marry and have children so that you’ll thrive in that country and not waste away.” When I was in high school and dating, I remember my mother telling me never to date or marry a Catholic. Maybe you got similar advice about the kind of people you were supposed to marry.
When I was a pastor in Hickman, Nebraska, the people in that little town of 1000 were mostly of German descent. Down the road about three miles was the little town of Holland. Guess what kind of folks populated that little town. Dutch. The kids in Hickman were not allowed, a few years before I got there, to date kids from Holland. Nor were there any kinds of friendships developed between the adults of those towns. They were, as I said, only three miles apart.
By telling the people in exile to intermarry, God was essentially telling these uppity and exiled people:
These Babylonians are not beneath you, nor are they above you. They are your equals, with whom you can engage in the most intimate and responsible relationships. You cannot be the person God wants you to be if you keep yourselves from others. That which you have in common is more significant than what separates you. They are God’s people as well. Your task, as a person of faith, is to develop trust and conversation, love and understanding with these Babylonians.
The last thing Jeremiah tells the exiles in his letter is, “Make yourselves at home there and work for that country’s welfare. Pray for Babylon’s well-being. If things go well for Babylon, things will go well for you.” All of this advice in Jeremiah’s God-letter must have been met with bitter outrage. But none of it more than this statement to pray for their conquerors and captors. What God was asking the exiles to pray for was the “shalom” of Babylonia. Shalom is the Hebrew word for a person’s welfare and wholeness, their health and peace. To pray for such a thing by the exiles must have sounded abominable. Just like praying for the well-being of ISIS, or for your cancer, or for someone who has been abusive to you.
Jesus said something just as shocking in the Sermon on the Mount:
You’re familiar with the old written law, “Love your friend,” and its unwritten companion, “Hate your enemy.” I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best--the sun to warm and the rain to nourish--to everyone, regardless: the good and the bad, the nice and nasty. (Matthew 5:43-45)
What the Lord is asking the exiles--all of us--to do is pray. To pray to find ourselves in the very heart of God, where God’s will is being worked out, and then to work outwards from his heart. Everything looks different from the place of God’s heart, rather than from the place of our anger, resentment and bitterness.
CONCLUSION
Daily we face decisions on how we will respond to our exile conditions. We can say:
I don’t like it. I want to be where I was a month, or years ago. How can you expect me to take one more step? To start all over again in this wretched place, this awful condition? How can you expect me to throw myself into what I don’t like? Into, in fact, what I abhor? What sense is there in taking risks and tiring myself out in circumstances I don’t like? How can I start building something all over again if I feel like I have no future, no past, and no hope? I can’t. I won’t. I just won’t.
Or, we can say:
I will do my best with what is here and now. Far more important than the geography and climate of my exile is the God of my exile. God is here with me, even when I don’t feel that presence. What I am experiencing right now is on soil that was created by God, and with people God also loves. It’s just as possible to live out the will of God in this place, and in this circumstance, as any place or circumstance. I am fearful. I admit it. I don’t like constantly checking whether my foundation is solid. Change, especially change that is thrust upon me by someone else or some other circumstance, is so hard. Developing relationships with the new seems risky and difficult. BUT if that’s what it means to be alive and human under God right now, I will do it.
It’s clear that Jeremiah’s letter is quite a challenge. The aim of the person of faith is not to be as comfortable as possible in your grief and misery. Instead, it is to live as deeply and thoroughly as possible. It means to deal with the reality of life, to discover truth, to create beauty, and act out of love in whatever present condition you find yourself in. Even when you feel like you’ve been exiled. The only place you have to be human under God is right here. The only time you have to be human under God is right now. The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith, to live prayerfully in God’s heart, is in the circumstances you have been put into this very day.
No comments:
Post a Comment