Peace and Prosperity

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 [Jeremiah 29:4-5].

For many years now, I’ve long been drawn to Jeremiah, one of the least likely theological leaders in the Hebrew Bible. He’s from the wrong side of the tracks. A native of Anathoth, in the territory of Benjamin, Jeremiah had a lot going against him. Benjamin was the home of the first king, Saul. At the time, the Israelites wanted a king worse than anything else in the world. That’s what they got, of course—a king worse than anything else in the world. Kingship 2.0, of course, came in the form of everyone’s favorite, David. After Saul’s demise, anyone from that region was denigrated. Moreover, Jeremiah’s hometown had been named for the Canaanite goddess, Anat.

Not a few OT scholars argue that Jeremiah was illiterate. To be sure, he employed a special scribe, Baruch, yet that very employment seems to have been crafted so as to deal with Jeremiah’s intellectual limitations.

In short, Jeremiah was a nobody. Yet, he was a nobody to whom Yahweh liked to talk. Anytime Yahweh seemed to have bad news for the Southern kingdom of Judah (recall the Northern Kingdom of Israel had already been obliterated), Yahweh called upon Jeremiah to deliver the sad message. Jeremiah, therefore, was the man to whom the folks didn’t want to listen. And you know what folks do when someone says something that’s politically incorrect. They say, “Let’s cancel him.”

When Jeremiah tells the leaders that the kingdom is going to be conquered, he gets death threats. His opponents find out where he lives, and they demonstrate around his house. For a while, he’s held captive.

Alas, Jeremiah’s talk of doom turns out not to be fiction, but fact. In 597 B.C.E., the Babylonians overrun Jerusalem and carry off King Jehoiachin (a/k/a Jeconiah), his queen, and all the important people of Jerusalem. Since Jeremiah’s a nobody, he’s left behind with all the other peons.

That brings us to this week’s OT reading [Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7, the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year C]. Yahweh wants Jeremiah to send a special letter to the exiles in Babylon [29:4]. It seems that Jeremiah’s chief rival, Hananiah, is in Babylon telling the exiles what they want to hear—that their ordeal is to be short-lived. He’s spreading the word that everyone will be allowed to return in just two years [Jeremiah 28:3]. Yahweh wants Jeremiah to clarify things. The reversal of fortunes won’t be so easy.

And so, in his letter, Jeremiah tells the exiles that as bad as things are for them, things are going to get even worse for those who were left behind. Indeed, in 587 B.C.E., ten years after the Babylonian deportation, Jerusalem will be obliterated, the Temple will be destroyed, many in and around the once strong capital city will be killed. But that’s still in the future. For the present, inspired by Yahweh, Jeremiah has some strange-sounding words for the exiles.

To be sure, the exiles will someday enjoy a moment in which they are no longer in Babylonian captivity, but that moment is 70 years away [29:10]. There is to be no quick fix. Until that future day, when virtually all who are alive to hear Jeremiah’s letter read will be dead, they must pray, search for God, and call out to Him with voices that they know will not be answered [29:13-14]. Only when their “sentence” is up will Yahweh again be approachable.

The difference between Hananiah’s message of a quick turnaround and Jeremiah’s missive that promises seven decades of purgatorial waiting could not be starker. Jeremiah tells them that while they await redemption, they are to build, plant, and live out the ordinary cycles of family life. Likely many didn’t hear anything positive in Jeremiah’s words but included within them is a hidden blessing. Yahweh’s command, given through Jeremiah, that they are to go on with life was a clear statement that if they did what Yahweh told them to do, then there would in fact be an ordinary life to live. Those remaining in Jerusalem would not get this assurance.

There’s only one catch. It seems with Yahweh there is always a catch.

Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you two will prosper [29:7].

Can’t you hear the exiles now? “You want us to do what? You want us to pray for our enemies? You want us to ask You to allow them to prosper? They’ve already prospered sufficiently enough to end our world as we know it.”

Like it or not, Jeremiah tells the exiles that their future—if they are to have one—is bound up alongside of the future of others whom they hate. They are not to hate their enemies, but to work toward their enemies’ blessing. Six and one-half centuries later, a young, itinerate rabbi from Nazareth would offer a similar command. Eventually, i.e., in 70 years, the Persians will successfully overrun the Babylonians. The Persians will then become the exiles’ masters. But in the meantime, the exiles are to carve out their existence among those who opposed them.

Many who study the period of the Babylonian exile report that much good came from this difficult period. Recognizing that Yahweh was “with them,” but that He insisted on remaining silent for a while, the exiles were forced to consider and wrestle with new and important theological questions. They learned that worship was not dependent upon the Temple nor any other particular place. Jesus would later converse with a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well and tell her that true worshippers worship the Father in Spirit and truth [John 4:24]. The exiles discovered that true worship can happen anywhere, not just in the Temple.

Other important strides were made during the time of exile. Much of the Hebrew Bible was formed during this period. Synagogues became a vital part of the community. The Babylonian exile, together with the subsequent harsh destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple produced what modern academics refer to as the Jewish diaspora. Jews became scattered throughout many parts of the Mediterranean world. To the extent that they could remember Jeremiah’s words, they tended to flourish. Jeremiah, for example, eventually immigrated to Egypt.

All this is quite interesting, you might say. But why should we spend our time thinking about a letter that an unpopular prophet wrote to a bunch of conquered people who were forced to live for seven decades in what is now Babil, Iraq?

Well, for one thing, Jeremiah’s letter is a scriptural reminder that no situation is beyond Yahweh’s power. Joseph’s jealous brothers sold him into slavery, tricking their father into thinking Joseph was dead. Faced with horrific circumstances, Joseph did not lash out at his captors. Rather he forged what at the time seemed to be quite an ordinary existence among them. And eventually—Yahweh often moves slowly—Joseph’s captivity was transformed into the mechanism through which Egypt, as well as Jacob’s home territory, was saved from famine. Jacob’s family was also restored. This never would have happened had Joseph worked against, and not with, his captors.

Moses fled Egypt after killing the Egyptian who had been beating a Hebrew. Far from his home, he married Zipporah, who gave Moses a son, whom Moses named Gershom, saying “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land. Before he ever saw the burning bush, Moses spent many years away from his birthplace. He lived and cooperated with those around him. We know how the story ends. Yahweh used Moses to free the Hebrew people from their enslavement in Egypt. Again, no circumstance is beyond Yahweh’s purview.

Quite a few folks these days point to the arguments ongoing in American society. They proclaim that we’ve never been more divided. Those of us who remember the torrid summer of 1968 might beg to differ, but the point remains: many on the right hate those on the left, and vice versa.

I wonder if Jeremiah is telling us something that we know is true; we really just don’t want to hear it. He’s telling us that if we’re on the left and despise the right, or on the right and despise the left, or in the middle, and can’t stand either side, our futures are nevertheless all likely bound together. Can we “seek the peace and prosperity” of those who oppose us? Will we stubbornly hold on to our not-so-secret desire to cancel anyone with whom we are in conflict?

I wonder if Jeremiah is trying to remind us that the divisions among us may not be healed in the short run and so, therefore, we must obey the Nazarene who died on a cross to save any of us who have sinned and yet, who believe in Him. We must love those who agree with us and we must also love those who vehemently disagree with our point of view. We must pray for their peace and prosperity. Might we, at least temporarily, forget how wrongheaded our opponents are, at least from our viewpoint. What would society look like if we fervently prayed that those who oppose us might prosper?