CHS, Plymouth Proper 22, Year C October 6, 2013 For the last several weeks, our first Scripture lesson has been taken from the writings of the prophet Jeremiah. (The book of Lamentations, from which we read this morning, is also attributed to Jeremiah.) Jeremiah is the second longest book in the Bible (only the Psalms is longer). Both it and Lamentations were written in response to the enormous trauma that the people of Judah endured in the sixth century BC, when the expanding empire of Babylon essentially swallowed their country, turning it into a client state and deporting most of the population to Babylon. The crisis point in this historical drama was the siege of Jerusalem by the armies of Babylon, in which men, women, children and animals starved and died in the streets before the Babylonian attackers overran the city. This experience of disaster and disorientation profoundly shaped the identity of the people of God, forcing them to reevaluate their relationship with God: to ask the question so poignantly posed in this week’s Psalm – “How shall we sing the Lord’s song upon an alien soil?” – and to reckon with the impulse to vengeful violence expressed in that Psalm’s final verse. How could they be God’s people if they no longer lived in God’s city and worshiped in God’s temple? And if Babylon had killed their children, should they – or should they ask God to – turn around and kill Babylon’s children right back? In wrestling with those questions, Jeremiah created some of the most searingly honest, deeply meaningful passages in all of Scripture. We’ve only scratched the surface in these weeks. I’ve compiled the readings for the past three weeks, the current week, and next week in the handout you have with you. Their trajectory goes like this: the desolation of the land; the desolation of the people; hope for the future; despair in the present; hope in the present. The first two passages take place as the land of Judah braces itself for the Babylonian attack. In the first selection, Jeremiah’s words echo those of Genesis, but in reverse, as he laments how the people’s wickedness has brought destruction on their homeland: “I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void; and to the heavens, and they had no light. … I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before the Lord …” In the second passage, the prophet and God lament together over the suffering of God’s people: “For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt, I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.” It’s not clear whether “I” is God or Jeremiah, and it’s not at all clear that it matters: the deep love and anguish are common to both. The third passage, from last week, takes place while Jeremiah is imprisoned for his preaching, in Jerusalem, which is under siege by the armies of Babylon – and he nevertheless takes the deeply irrational action of purchasing a parcel of land from his cousin Hanamel. The final line of the reading explains why Jeremiah does this: “For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.” In the midst of catastrophe, as everything he and his people have ever known falls apart, Jeremiah trusts God’s word and creates a small symbol of hope, that God has not abandoned the people, that one day, the people will once again be able to flourish in their land. The fourth passage, today’s selection, is simply a lament, in the aftermath of the conquest and exile, as the holy city lies broken and shattered, and her people have been taken away to foreign lands. And in the final passage, which we will read next week, Jeremiah sends a letter to the exiles in Babylon. He tells them, “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. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 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.” That’s quite a rejoinder to the final verse of the Psalm. Seek the welfare of the city? When we’re living in exile in the city of those who killed our families and destroyed our own city? Yes, says God through Jeremiah. I am your God, in Babylon as much as in Jerusalem. And so the people endured, and survived the exile, and came home again to rebuild in their own land. And they read, and preserved, and passed on, the writings of the prophet Jeremiah, to remind them of that experience, and how God had sustained them through it, and what it had taught them about themselves, and about God. What it teaches us, more than two and a half thousand years later, is how the relationship between God and God’s people in the Hebrew scriptures is not a dyad – God and the people – but a triad: God, the people, and the land. God cares about the land, and cares how the people treat it. When the people are unfaithful, the land suffers as a result: “the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black”. And when the people are restored and redeemed, the objective proof of this is in the land: that land is once more bought and sold, cultivated and built on, passed from one generation to another; that the land sustains the people the way God wills it to. Today, we need this message as much as the people of Jeremiah’s day did. This weekend, we observe St. Francis’ Day with the blessing of pets and other animals. And we recall our responsibility to care for, not only those individual animals we love the most, but all of God’s creation. In the book of Jeremiah, the people’s conquest and exile is depicted as something that they brought on themselves by failing to remain faithful to God, failing to worship God alone and to give thanks for the blessings that only God could bestow. And when the land was restored, and when the people were restored to their right relationship with God and the land: the land’s fruitfulness, the people’s blessings, and their faithfulness to the one God, were all intertwined and interdependent. In this season of harvest, let us give thanks for the beautiful and fruitful land where we live. Let us give thanks for the blessings of sun and rain, cold and heat, seedtime and harvest. Let us give thanks for the faithful devotion of the animals who share our lives, who bring the wonder of God’s creation into our homes, and who model to us the unconditional love of God. And let us hear the words of the prophets and resolve to cherish, care for, and tend, as best we can, the land that God has entrusted to us, and all the plants and creatures that depend on it. To “seek the welfare of the city,” and not just of the city, but of the whole of this beautiful earth. And resolve always to remain faithful to the God who made it, and who loves all of creation without reservation. Amen.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Oct 2013 18:43:52 +0000
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