Confession time: I’m exhausted from a 3:45 am start (long story) and so rather than write something completely new, knowing I’ve preached on this passage before and realising I wouldn’t say anything substantially different, I’ve used a sermon from 2018. The full text of that sermon is below, but it is longer than what I deliver in the video and will be delivering in church, because it uses one or two stories I’ve already deployed in this series.
If you’ve ever watched The Wizard Of Oz – and I’m guessing most of you have – you’ll know the early part of the story where the whirlwind hits Dorothy’s home in Kansas. When it subsides, Dorothy looks around in bewilderment at the strange and different surroundings she finds herself in. She turns to her dog Toto and says, “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Dorothy could be speaking for today’s church. We’ve been caught up in a social whirlwind, and when we’ve opened our eyes to survey the scene it looks nothing like that in which we grew up. The church used to be respected, but then we’ve gone through phases where first it was no longer a normal experience for people to attend church, and now there is a lot of outright hostility towards Christianity.
Similarly, you probably grew up in a culture where the ordained minister was a respected pillar of society. But again, no more. It is said that the average non-Christian man thinks that someone in a dog collar is either fleecing the flock for money or fiddling with kids as a paedophile.
Many of us would really like to cut to the end of the film where Dorothy finds herself back in home sweet home – there’s no place like it – but I have to say, that isn’t happening anytime soon. We must learn to be faithful disciples as a minority part of society. And actually that’s what most Christians down the centuries have had to do. To live as the majority in a society is less common.
Where do we go for help in being faithful to the Gospel in such circumstances? That’s where I find Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in chapter 29 on his prophecy helpful. The armies of King Nebuchadnezzar have carted off the first lot of Jewish prisoners from Judah to Babylon. Those who found themselves as strangers in a strange land were disorientated and confused, like Dorothy. Had we read more of the letter, we would have heard Jeremiah warning them too not to believe the false prophets who were telling them it would all be over quickly and things would be back to the good old days. Instead, Jeremiah advises them how to live faithfully as aliens in a culture that is different from them and at times hostile.
I believe we can learn lessons for our discipleship today from Jeremiah’s model.
Firstly, it’s about where we live.
‘Build houses and settle down’ (verse 5a), says God to the exiles through Jeremiah.
I wonder whether you’ve noticed in recent years that the church is no longer regarded as the default moral voice in our nation. When Hallowe’en comes, it isn’t the church that is interviewed on BBC Breakfast about the content of the festival or the fears of elderly people about Trick Or Treat, it’s Age UK.
It’s no good pining for the good old days. This is where we are called to be missionaries, not back in some imaginary golden age of decades ago.
God called the exiles to do in some small way what his own Son would do later. What did Jesus say to the disciples in John 20? ‘As the Father has sent me, I am sending you’ (verse 21a). So how was Jesus sent? We have to go back from John 20 to John 1 and a verse that is too good to keep just for Christmas: ‘The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us’ (verse 14a).
Note that: Jesus dwelt among the people. Although he occasionally ministered in synagogues, for most of the time he didn’t say, ‘Come here and listen to me,’ he did his ministry amid people’s lives. He made his dwelling among people – literally, he ‘tabernacled’. Remember that in the Old Testament the tabernacle was the portable sign of God’s presence. So, then, Jesus was the presence of God in the middle of life.
Eugene Peterson puts it like this in The Message: ‘The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.’
Friends, Christian mission today can no longer be sustained (apart from a minority) on ‘Come to us’. We have to go to the world and live actively in it. We don’t want to swallow the values of the world, many of which are contrary to our faith, but we still need to live in the middle of the world, not in a Christian ghetto.
I once took the funeral of an elderly church member, and in preparation visited her relatives, who were not Christians. As they told me about the lady’s life, they told me, ‘Her whole social life was based on the church.’ I could tell they thought I would be pleased by that, but in truth I was deeply saddened. We can’t scuttle across the moat, pull up the drawbridge and cosy up behind the turrets of a Christian castle if we are to be faithful missionaries in a world where we are the minority.
Are we known positively, then, in our neighbourhoods and our networks? And what are we known for? We’ll come on to that in other points.
Secondly, it’s about where we work.
‘Plant gardens and eat what they produce,’ says God (verse 5b).
In his book on Jeremiah, Eugene Peterson (him again!) says this means we should ‘Become a productive part of the economy of the place’ (The Quest, p151).
It’s time to bin the idea that the only work worth doing is church work. Church work – such as mine – is support work for those in the frontline of mission as Christ’s representatives in the world, pointing to the Gospel in word and deed, living lives that are so puzzling and magnetic that people end up asking them why they do what they do.
So when a circuit steward’s wife once told me that her husband wanted to spend more time on the important stuff, like church work, rather than his occupation, I was saddened. This man worked in commercial shipping, helping to ensure that vital goods got from one port in the world to another. He also volunteered as a governor at his daughter’s school. Imagine doing both of those things in a Christlike way, being a good steward of resources but not ruthless, caring for the wellbeing of the school community and its place in the wider area, and so on. Imagine doing these things for Christ, occupying ground in his Name.
You can find all sorts of resources for churches to encourage this approach, not least from an organisation called the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. Their ‘whole life discipleship’ project includes all sorts of courses and resources to help Christians be fruitful on the frontline. It includes material to help preachers and worship leaders support this work.
One of the stories that set them on their way was that of a schoolteacher who also taught in Junior Church on a Sunday. “Why does my church pray for my Junior Church work,” she asked, “when I deal with maybe a dozen children there, but it doesn’t pray for my Monday to Friday work when I get the chance to influence many more children?”
Any church can start supporting people in this. One of LICC’s ideas is called ‘This Time Tomorrow’. You take five minutes out of Sunday services to interview someone from the congregation about where they will be and what they will be doing twenty-four hours later. You ask them what they most need prayer for, and include that in the service. It’s simple. And it is as applicable to retired people as to those still in paid work, because you can include what people do in the community and in their leisure activities.
Remember, church doesn’t stop when we leave this building on a Sunday lunchtime. As an Australian Christian called James Thwaites puts it, how far apart from each other do we have to be in order no longer to be church? Five yards? Five miles? No: we never stop being the church. It’s just that sometimes we are the church gathered, and sometimes we are the church dispersed. All our work in the world is Christian work.
Thirdly, it’s about where we flourish.
The next thing God says is, ‘Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.’ (verse 6)
Whoa! Wait a minute! At other times, God’s people are told to be very careful about who their sons and daughters marry. Now, they’re meant to settle down in a pagan land. No wonder Psalm 137 asks, ‘How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’
Our trouble today is that having been part of the majority culture where we haven’t had to fight for the place of our faith in public life, we now find ourselves singing the Lord’s song in a strange land, and the temptation is to be negative and self-pitying about it. But God says it’s possible for his people to flourish as minorities. Remember, that was certainly the story of the Early Church, too, both in Israel and in the wider Roman Empire. Why should it not be true for us, too?
In Mark chapter 6 we have the story of the disciples rowing their boat on the late at night, straining at the oars in the fourth watch of the night. Jesus comes to them, walking on the water. He thus comes to them from outside the boat.
Now given that the Early Church also read the boat symbolically, as standing for the Gospel community, maybe Jesus was coming to them from outside the church, so to speak. Maybe he had already been at work outside their community before he came to them in the dark of night.
Could it be that our task in order to flourish involves finding out where Jesus has gone ahead of us in the world by his Spirit, and we join in with him there? I’m not saying that people outside the church don’t need to become Christians, I am simply saying that Jesus prepares the way and we catch up.
Our children started school while we were in my last circuit. When you are a parent of primary school children you have a great opportunity to flourish as Christians in the community. Debbie and I made it our point to lurk with intent at the school gate. We made friends with other families. I told my churches not to expect me to be at my desk at 9 am for that reason. Some of them didn’t like that, because they thought the minister was there to be their private chaplain, but we persisted.
In doing that, and letting people know our door was always open and there was always water in the kettle for tea and coffee, we befriended three young mums who went through horrendous divorces. One husband went off with his wife’s best friend. Another drank away all the family income, even spending time in the pub when it was the birthday party for one of his three daughters. That mum and the little girls nearly joined the church.
When we announced our decision to leave, some of the church people cheered, but some of the community wanted to raise a petition to keep us – including our next door neighbour, who was totally clueless about church. On the last day of term that July, twenty of them threw a surprise picnic for us in the local park.
We may not have flourished in the church there, but we certainly flourished as Christians in the community.
Fourthly and finally, it’s about where we bless.
‘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 too will prosper.’ (verse 7)
Contrast that with the ways today’s church often reacts to the decline of Christianity in the West and the rise of ideologies we dislike. Either we claim that God is bringing revival soon (but remember God told Jeremiah the prophets who were saying that in his day were false prophets) or we rail against evil, and think we’re being prophetic in that way.
But look what happens here. Rather than condemn Babylon, God calls his people to bless it! I’m not calling us to ignore unrighteousness and injustice, but I am asking this: what difference would it make if Christians were known as a people of blessing?
The trouble is, there are plenty of indicators to suggest that we are not known as a people of blessing. If you ever ask an MP who they don’t want to send them letters, I’m afraid that often the answer is ‘Christians’. We are known at Parliament for our complaining and our judgmentalism.
In America, it’s commonly known in the catering industry that the people who moan the loudest and tip the least at restaurants are the Christians.
How exactly does that reputation stack against New Testament verses like these?
‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (Mt 5:44)
‘Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse’ (Rom 12:14)
‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good’ (Rom 12:21)
What would it look like if we were the people who were always wondering what good we could do unconditionally for people? If we were the people who – rather than complaining – were instead always seeking to put in a good word for someone, or leaving a surprise ‘thank you’ gift for somebody? Do we encourage our elected representatives? Do we tip generously at the restaurant, realising that the waitress is a young student trying to make ends meet on her student loan?
What if in the wider society we were getting involved in those civic and political decisions that affect the wellbeing of our communities, as councillors or business people?
The Argentinean preacher Ed Silvoso has a wonderful way of putting this. He says, ‘In the celestial poker game, a hand of blessings always beats a hand of curses.’
So go – and bless your Babylon. See what happens when Christians start blessing. Wait for the questions about why you do this. And then speak of the One who calls you to bless.
Big Circumstance 
What Do You Think?