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Rev. Bill Pederson
Biblical Text: Jeremiah 29:1,4-14; 2 Corinthians 9:6-15
The year was 601 B.C.E. Jeremiah had been prophesying in and around Jerusalem for the better part two decades by this date. The year 601 B.C.E. was a decisive year for the Kingdom of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Times they were a changing in the region of Palestine. Israel’s ancient, dreaded enemy and overlord, the Assyrians, were finally coming to their end and would do so at the hand of the Babylonians in 612 B.C.E. The next two decades would witness campaigning and fighting back and forth between the two region’s superpowers – emerging Babylonia to the north of Judah and ancient Egypt to the south. Almost geographically halfway between Babylonia and Egypt, Judah’s succession of kings and ruling class would find themselves waffling back and forth between the two superpowers trying in vain to maintain Judah’s national sovereignty and the sacred city of Jerusalem’s integrity.
In 601 B.C.E., Egypt and Babylonia collided in a massive battle on the Syro-Palestinian plain that left both sides devastated and reeling. King Jehoiakim of Judah saw his chance to cast his lot with Egypt and throw off his weakened Babylonian overlords from the north. King Jehoiakim of Judah publicly denounced his vassalage to the Babylonians, hoping the Egyptians would come to Judah’s aide. The prophet Jeremiah vehemently opposed this political folly, offering the theological insight that Nebuchadnezzar was God’s chosen servant and that through him Babylon was serving God’s purposes. Judah should submit to the yoke of Babylonian vassalage until God determined Judah’s time of servitude was done. King Jehoiakim, the ruling class, and the more popular court prophets disagreed with Jeremiah, physically assaulting Jeremiah and publicly humiliating him as a Babylonian sympathizer.
Turns out that Jeremiah was correct. Egypt never showed up when Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon came calling on Jerusalem. And in 597 B.C.E. Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. A Babylonian account of this, the first sacking of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, has survived and it reads as follows: “Year 7, month Kislimu: The king of Akkad [Babylon] moved his army into Hatti land, laid siege to the city of Judah and the king took the city on the second day of the month Addaru. He appointed in it a (new) king of his liking, took heavy booty from it and brought it to Babylon.”
The “heavy booty” that Nebuchadnezzar took from Judah and Jerusalem was a heavy price for Judah to pay. Noted Old Testament scholar Bernard W. Anderson writes this about Judah’s first Babylonian deportation by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 B.C.E.: “Bereft of its first citizens, Judah was only a shadow of its former self. The cream of the leadership – the nobility, the artisans, the highest military ranks – had been shipped off to Babylonia. [Judah] was crippled – at the very time when the need for resourceful leadership and stable traditions was greatest. Into this vacuum moved a new nobility, ill-equipped for the heavy responsibilities of the hour and even less capable of perceiving the religious meaning of the crisis. Governed by a short-sighted nationalism and swayed by the emotional appeal of prophetic demagogues, these new leaders hastened the downfall of the nation.” P.371
There is reason why Jeremiah has been called the weeping prophet. It was Jeremiah’s lot to witness his beloved Judah slip further and further into political, religious, and economic ruin. Never swaying from his message that Nebuchadnezzar was God’s servant, and against Judean leadership and against the more popular prophetic demagogues prophesying that Babylon would be overthrown and Judah returned to greatness any day now, Jeremiah had a word from the Lord, and that word was unsullied by nationalistic hopes and patriotic dreams.
In his now famous letter to the exiles in Babylon, Jeremiah does not write of Judean nationalism nor does he give these exiles false hope of return to Jerusalem anytime soon. His words do sound treasonous, unbelievable given the tenor of hatred between Babylonia and Judah. Jeremiah writes: “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…For thus says the Lord: Only when Babylon’s seventy years are completed will I visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” (Jeremiah 29:7,10-11)
Two prominent words in this section of Jeremiah’s letter are very important: exile and hope. Exile in Babylon was a devastating experience for Judah. Gone was the promised land. Sacked and crippled was the holy city of Jerusalem. Defiled was the locus of God’s presence in Jerusalem, the sacred temple with its most precious pieces ransacked and carried into captivity. Gone were the best politicians, the best educators, the best financiers. Completely sacked was the Judean economy. In short, exile meant gone was everything that had meant Judean sovereignty and power and integrity. Babylonian exile was a displacement of immense proportions.
But the word “hope” is in Jeremiah’s letter. Out of the destruction, deportation, and deep displacement of exile, prophetic voices would emerge giving the people of God a new hope in a future. The prophet of the late Babylonian exile known as Second Isaiah would hear Yahweh’s word: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:18-19) Jeremiah himself will write of this hope in these remarkable words: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34, selected)
And is there no more vivid account of hope during the Babylonian exile for God’s people than infamous dry bones of the prophet Ezekiel, himself carried off into Babylonian captivity in this first deportation of Judah. As Ezekiel stands before a valley of dry bones and watches those bones resurrected to human form and life, he hears this word of the Lord: “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people…I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on our own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.” (Ezekiel 37:11-14, selected)
I heard this week a financier in Zurich say that there are absolutely no words to describe the economic meltdown we are now facing across the global economies – it is that deep and that devastating. We are in a territory that former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan described this week as a once in a century credit tsunami.
We are in a foreign land now, a deportation not of geography, but in many respects just as devastating to our senses as we have watched trillions and trillions of dollars blown away. The amount itself is astounding. What should cause us even more pause for deep alarm is how fast and how steep the decline has been, highlighting how seriously flawed we are as human beings, how tenuous are desperately in need we are of redemption.
We are in exile now my friends, an exile from a land we used to consider unassailable, in exile from a way of life and expectations and dreams we used to consider sacrosanct and impregnable. We are in a foreign land now, an uncertain land, a land whose ways are not our ways, a land in whose bounds our future is not at all certain. And we are asking all the questions of exiles: How did we get here? How long will it last? What are we to do, now? Is this the end? Has God forgotten us? If not, is God punishing us and is there any hope, any hope at all for a restoration?
Against this backdrop of unprecedented economic times, within the landscape of our own exiles today, we are going to have to make discerning decisions when it comes to our money. We are going to have look deeply within our souls and make decisions about what really matters to us. Economic exile has taken away our freedom and economic exile will reduce our margins and we will be forced to make decisions about what is of ultimate value when it comes to the use of our money.
The prophet Jeremiah has something to say to a people of God who find themselves in the turmoil and upheaval of exile, a time when things seem constricted and we want to pull in and pull back. Jeremiah says to a people of God in exile: build; plant; multiply there, and do not decrease; 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; don’t be deceived by the false prophets of quick and easy answers; God is in the midst of the upheaval and displacement of exile with you – search and seek and you will find God.
In the midst of the exiles of our lives, Jeremiah bids a people of faith to share his conviction in God: “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).
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