Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

First Congregational Church of Searsport – Rev. Scott Campbell

Let’s set the scene.  The Babylonian exile of the Jews took place in 587 B.C. and it occurred in waves.  The first to be carried off were the most prominent citizens—the political leaders, religious scholars, skilled craftpersons and artisans.  There would be two more removals following in successive decades.  The letter that Jeremiah writes, part of which we just heard in today’s text, is sent to those deportees who were carried off in the first wave.  He is writing during the ten-year interim period between the first and second rounds of the exile.

There was tremendous disagreement among the Jews about what this first band of exiles ought to be doing.  Some, who called themselves prophets, were predicting that Babylon was about to fall and would collapse in two years.  Their advice to the exiles was to resist assimilation.  Hold on as long as possible.  Deliverance was on the way.  Jeremiah was furious at these pretenders.

Jeremiah was not one for quick fixes.  He tells the exiles to settle in for the long haul.  They’re going to be in Babylon for generations.   So, Jeremiah tells the people to make the best of a bad situation, to flourish in their new setting.

From 1977 to 1980 our family had the wonderful experience of living in Paris, France, where I served as the Associate Pastor of the American Church in Paris.  The women of that church offered (and still offer) an orientation program for newcomers to France every fall that they call “Bloom Where You’re Planted.”  The program is tremendously popular with the incoming expat crowd.  They issue a resource book regularly as well.  In its own words the book:…provides helpful hints and suggestions on a wide range of topics including how to shop in the markets, how to access medical care, what the French school system looks like and how to find out what is going on in the city.  It also has a wonderful section with conversion and equivalent charts to help with shopping for clothes and cooking.  It is a practical, real-life guide to navigating the City of Lights.  

The program is an invaluable aid in helping people who are no longer in their own cultures to adapt to their new setting.  There is a huge difference, however, between those folks who come to Paris for an adventure for a few years (many of whom, by the way, enjoy the support of multinational corporations) and the people to whom Jeremiah is offering his counsel in this morning’s reading.  For one thing, the expats choose this new land; they are not carried off to it by an invading army.  Further, there is no comparison between committing to a few years in a foreign country and knowing that your children and your grandchildren are going to grow up there, whether you wish it or not.  

Yet, there are similarities as well.  Jeremiah tells the exiles from Jerusalem, however long they might be where they are, to also bloom where they are planted.  

 “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. ⁶ 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. 

In other words, make your life where you are.  Don’t refrain from living because you are either longing for something that once was or hoping for something that will never be.

Do not cling to the past that is yours no longer.  Do not look backwards to what was but live this moment in its fullness.

But then Jeremiah goes on to say something even more remarkable.  Remember now, the prophet is speaking to people who have been carried away from their homeland as prisoners of the Babylonians.  The city of Jerusalem has been destroyed, and they have been ripped out of their homes, separated from family and friends, exiled from all that they knew.  Listen to the advice he gives to these prisoners in a foreign land:

…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.

Can you even imagine such a thing?  Praying for the welfare of your captors?  Praying that their city will prosper and that they will be blessed?

What a remarkable notion this is that our own welfare is bound up in the welfare of those who have done us harm.  If we extend this metaphor, we will begin to understand something that has largely gone missing in our modern-day American setting.  We will begin to grasp what used to be called a sense of the common good.  It is tragic that a high-minded commitment to the common good has been largely replaced in our day by sectarian, partisan devotion and even instances of political violence.  

Our country is struggling right now.  It is bordering on being politically unworkable as elected officials who are accountable only to particular populations consider serving the common good to be a kind of betrayal of those base constituencies.  Because of their narrow focus, they often thwart anything that does not specifically serve the interests of those who elected them.  

Don’t misunderstand me.  I have no problem with policy disagreements.  We can solve our problems in a hundred or a thousand different ways.  But unless we as a nation are committed to finding solutions that seek to serve the common good, we will ultimately destroy what we love.  Unless we learn anew to cherish kindness and find pathways to being gentler with one another, the future we are creating for ourselves is foreboding indeed.

I want to tell you a story about someone who embodied the qualities of compassion, kindness, and gentleness that I’m talking about.  Brian Bowden died in 1986 at the age of seven, almost eight.  He was my brother’s nephew by marriage.  Brian had a remarkably clear sense of what caring about other people looks like.  Cynics among you might ask what a seven-year-old knows about any of that, but I assure you that Brian had something to teach us all.

In many ways he was just an ordinary little boy.  He loved animals.  He played sports.  He loved to ride his bicycle.  In fact, he was riding that bike when he was struck by a pick-up truck.  He was pronounced dead 30 minutes later at the local hospital in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Yes, in many ways he was just an ordinary little boy, but in some fundamental ways he was an extraordinary child.  Brian, you see, had a plan for his life.  He had decided at the age of seven that he was going to be a millionaire, but not so that he could have all the things he wanted in this world.  No, his plan to become rich was conceived as a solution to a problem.  Brian had decided to put an end to homelessness.  When he made his fortune, he was going to buy a house for everyone who needed one, a kind of one boy Habitat for Humanity.

I know.  Lots of naive little children have wonderful ideas about how they are going to save the world one day.  The difference between Brian and many others was that he had decided that there was no need to wait until he had the money.  He was going to bloom where he was planted.  He had already begun to implement his life plan by befriending the friendless.  His single mother, Ginny, discovered what he was up to the day that she walked into her kitchen and discovered two homeless men sitting at her table eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  A beaming Brian introduced his friends and announced a plan to fix up their basement as a homeless shelter.

Ginny made it clear after that that Brian could not bring his friends from the street into their home, but the new ground rules didn’t deter Brian from seeking out the ones nobody else ever looked for.  He would find the loners and befriend them.  There was one man who lived in the local YMCA who talked to almost no one, except for Brian.  Brian would bring these forgotten men small gifts and share his candy with them.  

He became especially close to one homeless man, Mickey Ober.  To the rest of the town, Mickey was someone with whom to avoid eye-contact on the street.  To Brian he was a special friend.  The Christmas before Brian died, Mickey scrimped and begged for change to buy a present for the boy.  It wasn’t much by most standards, but the small matchbox car, crudely wrapped in newspaper, was Brian’s favorite gift that year.

On Mother’s Day Brian cut down all of his mother’s tulips and took them around to all of the women in his neighborhood who owned pets.  He explained that the animals were unable to give gifts on Mother’s Day, so he was doing it for them.

Ironically, Brian usually spent a bit of time most weeks in the cemetery which was across the street from his house, because he was disgusted that people would throw their litter over the fence and onto the graves.  He would pick up the paper and the trash, because, he explained, the dead people couldn’t do it for themselves.

On the day of Brian’s funeral not one of Brian’s homeless friends came to the church for the service.  I looked around for them.  It seemed strange that they were missing.  The service ended and the procession of cars left the church and headed for the cemetery.  As the line turned the corner from the church onto Cabot Street, we saw them.  Five raggedy men stood straight and tall on the curb.  Their faces were streamed with tears, and their right arms were locked in a military salute, which they did not relinquish until long after the little coffin had passed by.

I guess what I think about today when I think about Brian is the way in which this little boy was able to see beyond the categories to the people who were behind them.  

I think it really is as simple as that, Christian friends.  I think that all of the law is summed up in the gentle, kind, compassionate heart.  

Jeremiah, more than 2500 years ago, knew this.  He told the exiles to work and pray for the welfare of the city in which they found themselves for however long they might be there.  They were to care for those in whose midst they had been planted.

The coda to this exile story is that the people of Israel did as he urged them.  They wound up staying three generations in Babylon before a new king came along who allowed those who wished to do so to return to Jerusalem.  Some did, but most stayed in their new land.  During the three quarters of a century that they sojourned in Babylon, they built houses and planted gardens and raised families.  And they prayed and worked for the welfare of their neighbors.

Some called Jeremiah a traitor for his advice that the exiles seek the welfare of their captors.  They saw him as selling out his homeland and betraying his tribe.  Jeremiah did not see it that way.  Nor did Brian.  They both believed they were called to proclaim the things that make for peace, wherever they were, and by whatever means they had at their disposal.  And that is exactly what they did.  

Amen.