September 20, 2020 Exile Jeremiah 29:1-14

 (Introduction to the Bible readings for the day: Psalm 137, Isaiah 6:1-8, Jeremiah 29:1-14, Isaiah 40:3-11)  

In our Bible readings for today we will read a smattering of texts about the exile.  We start off with Psalm 137 which is a hate psalm.  You can feel the anger towards the Babylonians and the Edomites.  We move to Isaiah 6, which was written centuries before the exile.  That text points out that God is sending the prophet Isaiah to speak to the people even though they won’t listen.  It is as if God is giving them every chance possible knowing full well that it isn’t going to work. 

The Jeremiah 29 text is advice from God to the Jews in exile in Babylon about how to live during these decades.  The advice is to not fight it but settle into the time of exile.  This is not the sort of message you’d expect from a man loyal to his country.  We’d usually cry out to act with defiance, fight back, never give in or give up.  But Jeremiah has a different word from the Lord to the people.  They should remember that they are not forgotten.  God will act.  They will eventually be freed.

The Isaiah 40 passage comes to us not from the prophet Isaiah himself, but centuries later by another prophet living in exile.  To cite from the book of Isaiah is not to cite the work of one single person but more of a school of thought about how God acts.  In the midst of everything being lost in the exile the people discover God’s ongoing presence.  They discover that God will act in ways more powerful than they ever knew before.

I should note that a big chunk of the Old Testament comes from the time of the exile.  Jeremiah prophesied up to the fall of Jerusalem and for awhile after.  Ezekiel prophesies during the fall of the nation and into the exile.  The book of Daniel takes place during the exile.  You may remember famous stories like Daniel in the Lion’s Den, and Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego and the Fiery Furnace.  They are about faithfulness in exile.  Books like Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers all come to be fashioned in the form we recognize them during the exile.  The laws laid out in Leviticus - things like an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth - are not Jewish in origin but Babylonian.  They are Babylonian laws from the Code of Hammurabi that are incorporated into Jewish holy writings.  That they are actually Babylonian in origin does not mean we can discard them.  It just means that’s where they originated.  Today we are only looking at a tiny slice of the impact of the exile on scripture.  We’re looking at the slice that continues the story of the kings.

 

(Sermon)

In the July/August newsletter I included this quote from Martin Luther in a letter he wrote to a friend, “I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands that I still possess.”

            I believe these words speak to the Jewish exile in Babylon that our service is about today.  It is important to note that these words from Luther are not some sort of strategy of reverse psychology.  Don’t think you can get clever with them.  Don’t think that if by putting things in God’s hands you’ll actually be able to keep stuff.  No, putting things in God’s hands truly means putting things in God’s hands.  It is trusting that God’s will is going to be done and you are going to accept the outcome.

            We’ve been coming up to the exile from the perspective of the biblical books of 1^st and 2^nd Kings.  They give a perspective on God that we may not like.  You’ll remember that most of the kings of the nation were bad.  Only a few were good.  God seems to get increasingly upset as time goes on.  When we finally do meet a truly good king, King Josiah, we feel God will finally be happy that the nation has turned.  We’re perplexed, angered even, that God says that it’s too late the consequences of all their sins are surely coming anyway.

            Our Christian sensibility of fairness is challenged.  But sticking with the perspective of 1^st and 2^nd Kings, lets look at it this way.

            Imagine you have a friend and over time you discover this friend has a serious alcohol addiction.  His or her life is falling apart because of it.  Family, friendships, finances, even their home is all going down the drain.  You try to be personally supportive.  You encourage them to seek support like AA and other therapy.  But they don’t.  Or if they do it is only occasionally and half-heartedly.  Sometimes you stop by their home and you find it a filthy mess, barely fit to live in.  You help with clean up and improvement.  Sometimes there are improvements but they only last a short time before things go right back to being bad.  I think that’s the way the Jews were with the kings. 

Let’s say you visit your friend one time and you discover that he or she is going to AA.  The house is clean.  Your friend has gotten a job and is holding it.  For a moment you rejoice.  Things are good and definitely improving!  Then your memory kicks in and you wonder if it’s going to last.  And indeed, all too soon things have gone back to bad.

That’s the perspective 2 Kings gives as good King Josiah reigns.  Maybe things were good for a time.  But it wouldn’t last.  The people were simply too deep in their sinful ways of turning away from God.  Indeed things do go bad shortly after Josiah’s death.  The consequences come and the nation is destroyed.  The wealthy are taken to the city of Babylon where they live in exile.  A good number of others flee to Egypt.  Only the poorest are left.  All is lost.

The last couple of weeks I’ve said that ironically it is in this destruction that they actually discover how big and powerful God is.  They also discover their true power.  I don’t think they would have gotten there without losing everything – as Luther said, having everything they were clinging to slip out of their fingers.

Consider what happened to the other nations conquered by the Babylonians?  Do we ever even hear about them.  How about the Moabite nation and religion?  Ever hear about them?  How any Ammonites, or Edomites, or Philistines, or Assyrians do you know about?  None.  Their nations, their cultures, and their religions are all gone.  There is only scant archaeological evidence that they ever even existed.  Not so for the Jews.

 When the temple and the city of Jerusalem and the whole nation have slipped through their fingers only then to the ancient Jews realize that it’s all been by God’s grace.

How much worry and energy did they put into trying to keep the nation together?  How many tricky diplomatic deals had they made in order to keep some sort of national independence?  And yet did any of it ultimately work?  No.

When they have nothing left to cling to do they realize just how firmly they’ve been in God’s hands all along.  Consider that Isaiah 40 passage.  They are told to prepare a highway for God.  They are to make a straight way through the desert and raise valleys and lower mountains.  But are they really to grab picks and shovels and get to work constructing a great causeway for God?  No, of course not.  It is a majestic image of God’s certain actions.

The grass withers, the flower fades, says the text, but the word of God will stand forever.

Those are not the words you’d expect from a defeated people in exile who have lost everything.  Yet they know they are not done.  They know that God is only beginning to do big things.  Jerusalem will be rebuilt, yes.  The temple will rise again, yes.  But God is not to be content with such small things.  God is up to global things.

By the time we get to the life of Jesus another 500 years will have passed.  Jerusalem and the temple will have been rebuilt.  And once again we see the Jews are not independent but occupied.  Would that the lessons of the past been fully remembered.  For what are so many of Jesus’ conflicts with the religious leaders?  They are worried about Jerusalem and the temple and all that.  Jesus reminds them that God is up to something much bigger.  And indeed in the year 70 it all happens again: Jerusalem destroyed again, the temple destroyed again.  And while Jerusalem is back the temple is not.

When things seem overwhelming in life and everything is falling apart, when you are clinging to things with all your might but they are still slipping through your fingers, remember the lesson the ancient Jews learned and what Jesus also taught.  It is all held securely in God’s grace.  God does act.  God will act.  It may bear no resemblance to what you expect, but it is all firmly and forever in God’s hands.