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Our Next Steps: Jeremiah 29
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Your life is linked by the spirit of God to the people who happen to be near you. And there is no way to get around the fact that the gospel is local. And the part that we play in the repair of the world begins exactly where we are. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad you're here and we hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week.
Speaker 1:Head to commons.church for more information. As we do, welcome today. My name is Jeremy, and I am one of the people who hang out here at commons. It's great to have you here with us, especially as we are in the beginning steps of this new fall season together. Because the fall is always a fresh start in a lot of different ways in life, but it's certainly a beginning for us at Commons as we launch into this new season together.
Speaker 1:And if you were here last week, we had a big party. We had balloons and cotton candy and dumplings, and sometimes it might even seem a little bit silly to have a big birthday party for a church. We actually think there is something sacred and holy about that type of celebration. In the ancient Jewish calendar, there was a series of feasts throughout the year to remind people about God's goodness and the joy in celebrating his presence with us. And I like to think that in some small way, our celebrations here at Kantmans, things like the climax of Christmas and the end of Holy Week at Easter, and even the star of a new season together link us into that ancient tradition.
Speaker 1:So hopefully, you enjoyed that. Last week also, we released our new journal project. And if you don't have a journal yet, please pick one up before you leave. They are free, and they will give you lots of information about who we are and what we do. They will also help to guide you through all of our sermon series for the coming year so that you can follow along and take notes and track with us as we go.
Speaker 1:It is a huge project to put this together every year and to plan out the year this way, but we find that every year, it's an invaluable resource to help us keep on track and moving forward together as a community. Now last week, we started into a new short three week series that we're calling our next steps. And this is all about getting ourselves set for the coming year. Recalibrating around our values, but also pointing ourselves toward our next big adventure together with the launch of an Inglewood Parish. And that team is working hard right now.
Speaker 1:They actually begin meeting on Sunday mornings next month in preparation for the public launch in January. And we are going to be having a prelaunch party in Inglewood in the space that we'll be meeting in the next couple weeks. For all those who are interested in joining the team this fall, keep your ears open for that. We'll have more information really soon. But last week, we began this conversation about the big deal with neighbors and neighborhoods, and we started back where Jeremiah started.
Speaker 1:And that was at the point of needing to hear that he had something worth sharing. And it's really easy to move past that first chapter of Jeremiah if you're not careful. Jeremiah is this big and complex book. And in fact, it's a really hard one to read because it doesn't always follow a particularly clear chronology. It kind of jumps around in Jeremiah's life at times.
Speaker 1:And if you're focused on trying to figure out what's happening in the book of Jeremiah, it can be hard to notice what's actually happening inside Jeremiah as a character. Because when the book opens, Jeremiah is not some fearless prophetic voice who speaks truth to power and faces the future with unflinching conviction. He's actually just this kid who gets called on by God and responds, ah, nami. And so what we talked about last week was how those types of immediate no's and that instinctual response, not me, comes not from the moment and often not from the opportunity or challenge in front of us, but from a long narrative that we have bought into and repeated to ourselves over time. When you tell yourself you are nothing special, eventually you start to believe it.
Speaker 1:And when you tell yourself that you had your chance and you blew it, you start to believe that. When you tell yourself over and over again about all the things you're not, Eventually, it starts to get hard to remember all that you are. And I know I've said this before in other sermons, but what you're not is not interesting. You are fascinating. What you're not really isn't.
Speaker 1:And trust me here, you are fascinating. I am fascinating. Everyone here in this room is fascinating in some completely undiscovered way. Actually, I met someone in our community a little while ago who's a full on trapeze artist. Like, I mean, flying and flipping through the air and hoping someone else will catch you, legit trapeze artist, and I was blown away.
Speaker 1:I was convinced that was all just CGI, but here it is. It's real people. And when we train ourselves to focus on what we're not, it gets harder and harder to notice all of these incredible ways that we are each unique. Now some of us here absolutely do have the opposite problem. I know I do.
Speaker 1:I always think I'm fascinating. I will tell jokes around the house when there's no one to listen. My wife will call down from downstairs. What are you doing? Who is even listening to you right now?
Speaker 1:I'm like, I am. I'm funny. It's worth it. But for a lot of us and for Jeremiah, it's the opposite, and I know that. And sometimes over time, not me can become really toxic for us.
Speaker 1:And this is why God has to step in to renarrate Jeremiah's life for him, to remind him about purpose and passion, and to speak to him about calling and adventure, to remind him that sometimes getting in over his head and needing to be rescued is not always all that bad. And so I hope that last week, if you were here, you felt a sense of God's presence with you. And perhaps even God's spirit speaking to you about the beginning hints of a new adventure that you might be ready to step into. Because remember, not me is not the story that God wrote for any of us. Today, however, we begin to explore the story that God gives to Jeremiah and the way that Jeremiah begins to share this message with his people.
Speaker 1:But first, let's pray. God of big dreams and unexpected adventures, would you remind each of us that you have written a story for us and prepared an adventure and a calling that is waiting for each of us to discover it. God, remind us that we may not be everything, but we aren't nothing. We can be something to someone. So give us the courage to serve the world and the people who are around us.
Speaker 1:Grant us curiosity to look for new opportunities to contribute to your story. Help us to believe that the world is a better place when we bring our unique gifts to bear in the world. And as we do, God, you remind us that we are part of a community, and that that community is part of a neighborhood, and that neighborhood is part of a kingdom that is moving with purpose throughout the world. A kingdom that is catching us up in its net and inviting us to participate in the beauty of its story. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen. Okay. A lot happens in the book of Jeremiah. Word for word, this is the longest book in the Bible clocking in at just over 42,000 words in English, which to be honest, makes me feel a bit better about the fact that I work so hard every week to make sure that my sermon ends on time because now I know I'm not the only Jeremy who tends to ramble. That makes me feel better.
Speaker 1:But considering that we only have two weeks left in the series, we are clearly not going to be moving verse by verse through this massive body of work. In fact, we are going to be settling in on a passage towards the middle of the book where God lays out a vision for neighborhoods and why local participation is important for us. And that comes from a section in chapters 29 to 33 that sometimes gets singled out and called the book of consolation. As one writer describes it, it is four happy chapters of mercy surrounded by 48 chapters of stomping around divine frustration. So that sounds like a pretty good description of Jeremiah.
Speaker 1:And that said, I do want to give you a brief overview of the book before we move to the good stuff. And this is, of course, oversimplified, but it does help to give us at least a basic understanding of the plot in the book. So chapters one through 10, this is where God calls Jeremiah and asks him to condemn Judah for their sins and their faithlessness and their general unconcerned attitude toward the poor. Chapters 11 to 28, this is where Jeremiah spends most of his time warning the people that destruction is coming and God is not going to help them out. Chapters 29 to 33, that is the book of consolation, and it's all about a new promise that God will make even after his people go into exile.
Speaker 1:So it's all about how God will be with them, and in them, and through them, and that what might seem like the worst moments of their lives can somehow also be the best if those people are only willing to see what's beautiful right in front of them even when they are in exile. That's what we're gonna focus today and next week, and it's a really powerful section of the book. But from there, chapters 34 to 38 is where everybody gets really annoyed with Jeremiah because he keeps talking about Babylon. Eventually, the king of Judah gets so upset because this guy is so depressing to be around that he has him thrown in a well. And then the final 13 chapters through the end of the book in chapter 52 is where Jeremiah gets out of the well, and basically, he recounts the siege of Jerusalem and the exile of the people, and that does in fact happen in May.
Speaker 1:And so when we turn our attention to the book of consolation in the middle of Jeremiah, and in particular that introductory section in chapter 29, we are focusing on a very small part of the overall content and message of the book. It really is a small sliver of mercy and grace in the midst of a very complicated and honestly somewhat depressing narrative. And yet, it is also the real heart and center of Jeremiah. It's the point of the book. In fact, that's the point of this section that even in defeat, even surrounded by muck, even in exile, even exactly where you are, there is something beautiful to be discovered.
Speaker 1:That's what the book is about. And to get this, one of the things that we have to understand about the ancient Jewish culture is the idea of tikkun olam. And tikkun olam roughly translates to something like the repair of the world. Sometimes it gets translated construction for eternity or even the construction of eternity, but repair of the world is the most literal interpretation. And this is because in ancient Jewish thought, particularly in the prophets like Jeremiah, heaven and hell are not really the driving categories we sometimes imagine them to be.
Speaker 1:Instead, in the prophetic imagination, it was something called Olam Hazar and Olam Habah that shaped how they saw things. Now, Olam Hazza means the world that is or the age that is perhaps. And this is everything that we all experience in our daily lives. Joy and pain, sadness and gladness, everything that we go through, but all of it touched and tainted by injustice and brokenness ever since the Garden of Eden. Olim Habah, on the other hand, was the age to come or the world that will be.
Speaker 1:And this was an imagination of the world completely renewed. Everything healed, the world repaired and set right, reimagined just as God has always intended it to be. And so in the Jewish imagination, the tension between a good but broken world, Olam Hazar, and this ultimate reimagination of everything healed and renewed, olemhaba, was reconciled in the concept of tikkun olam or the repair of the world. And the prophets believed that God intended to fully repair all things. But the way he intended to repair all things was in and through the Jewish people.
Speaker 1:Now, this goes all the way back to Genesis 12 where God speaks to Abraham for the first time and says, I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make you a great name so that you will be a blessing to all peoples on earth and they will be blessed through you. So the prophets believed that the blessing of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all of Israel was intended for the blessing and the repair of the world. And this made them incredibly interesting people because they could be full of hope and optimism even in the most dreary situations. Jeremiah still has hope in the midst of exile.
Speaker 1:I mean, after all, God is going to repair all things. Am I right? But then, at the same time, they could also be the most frustrated, angry people around when they saw others who were using their blessing and their privilege to abuse rather than repair the world. So at one point early in the book of Jeremiah, he gets so fed up with all these people who are just out for number one that he goes out in the streets of Jerusalem and he walks up and down the boulevard and he reads off this enormous poem that he's written. And a part of it he says, you have become rich and powerful.
Speaker 1:You have grown fat and sleek. You do not promote the cause of the fatherless. You do not defend the just cause of the poor. So the issue for Jeremiah, it's not idol worship, it's not murder, it's not bad sex, it's not even a really terrible language. The issue is people are doing well, and they're not using that blessing to care for others.
Speaker 1:In fact, earlier in the same poem, he says, on your clothes is found the blood of the poor. And that word clothes there is actually the word in Hebrew, and literally, it means wing. But in this context, what it actually refers to are the decorative tassels that were sewn along the edges of Hebrew religious wear, like on the edge of a prayer shawl. Essentially, Jesus or what God is saying here is that when I look at all your fancy clothing, particularly your Sunday best and your religious wear, all that I see is all that you've done to exclude the needy. And so God says, we need to try something different.
Speaker 1:And obviously, yes. The exile of Judah and the loss of Jerusalem is framed as a punishment on the people. But there is so much more to it here than just that. There's actually this very tender loving side to God's discipline in the book of Jeremiah. Listen to what God actually says to these people who are being taken into exile.
Speaker 1:This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says to all those I have carried from exile or into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat what they produce. 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.
Speaker 1:Increase in number there. Do not decrease. 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. Now, remember that when God talks about the city to which I have carried you, that is Babylon.
Speaker 1:The sworn enemy of the Hebrew people, the armies that have just crushed your nation and have taken you away as captives, and God has the audacity to say, guys, what's good for them will be good for you. That is tikkun Olam. Now, I have no doubt that God would have loved the people to embrace the repair of the world without having to return to exile. But God really does seem to see exile as a chance to start over again. A couple verses later, God famously says, for I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope in the future.
Speaker 1:That's Jeremiah twenty nine eleven, by far the most famous verse in this book. But it's important to realize that that plan and that hope and that prosperity comes after literally generations of the Jewish people investing in the story of Babylon. And I'm fascinated by what God sees possible here in exile. Talks about building houses, planting gardens, celebrating weddings, and praying for peace. And I wanna save each of those to talk about in more detail next week because I think they represent a really compelling vision for a local life.
Speaker 1:But there are a couple background pieces here that are really important to the story. First of all, when God talks about the peace and prosperity of the city, that is an attempt to get at a single concept in Hebrew, and that is the idea of shalom. Now, the English translation peace is fine. That's what shalom means at its core. But the struggle here is that shalom means peace in a much bigger, much more holistic way than it generally does in English.
Speaker 1:We sometimes use peace to mean that there is an absence of war. So you're either at war or you're at peace. That doesn't work for shalom. Shalom encompasses everything that it means for a human being to be at peace. And this is why the English here adds the phrase peace and prosperity to try to translate the single word shalom from the Hebrew.
Speaker 1:They're trying to get at this bigger picture. Now can you be at peace if you're not incredibly prosperous? Of course, you can. Right? Nobody would argue that you need to be ridiculously wealthy to be at peace.
Speaker 1:And if you're making that argument in your head, you need to slow down and rethink things. Because in fact, sometimes wealth works against our peace. We start worrying about how to protect it and how to multiply it, where best to invest it. Do you put it under the bed or in the sock drawer? These are tough decisions, and I know about this because I have literally hundreds of dollars invested in my life.
Speaker 1:But we could also ask, can you be at peace if you don't have the resources to care for your most basic needs? Things like food, things like shelter, things like the ability to look after your family. And I think we would answer no. You could never truly be at peace if you're wondering about where your next meal comes from. And and we don't even have to look hard for this.
Speaker 1:There's all kinds of research and studies that show that when people don't have their basic needs met, it results in unrest and strife and eventually violence as the peace is broken. So shalom has an economic aspect to it. That's why the English translations talk about prosperity. But it's not primarily an economic term. In the same way, we could ask, can you be at peace if your country is at war with another country?
Speaker 1:And I think we would probably answer no. Of course not. Clearly, that's not what peace means. That's not going to be a peaceful place for anyone. And yet at the same time, does that mean that you will be at peace if your country is not at war?
Speaker 1:Well, no. And there are all kinds of ways that you can be warring and fighting, tearing yourself up inside with anger and hate, even if the situation in the surface of your life is calm. And probably, most of us, maybe all of us here in this room have found ourselves at some point sitting at a family dinner where tensions were incredibly high and conversation was imminently polite, And that was the least placeful place to be in the world. And so shalom has an economic aspect to it, but it's not really an economic term. It has an outward aspect to it, but it's not really an outward term either.
Speaker 1:Shalom is the full experiencing of all that it takes to be complete and whole as a human being in the world. It's a big concept. It's hard to admit fit into English. It's economic and outward. It's inward and spiritual.
Speaker 1:It's emotional and physical and relational and ecologically at peace with the world that surrounds us. Shalom is the world repaired, the world that is to come. Here, God says that all of that can begin right now regardless of where you are even when you find yourselves at the mercy of your enemies in exile. And it begins by shifting from an us versus them narrative into a local story about houses and gardens and parties and prayer for the people who surround us. Now, there's a lot of meaning embedded in this language that Jeremiah uses.
Speaker 1:And again, we'll explore what houses and gardens and parties and prayers mean next week in more detail, but there is also a lot of history and something that biblical scholars call intertextuality embedded in this language. You see, one of the things that is happening all the time in the bible is that writers are building on the story as it goes. And one of the ways they do that is to take what has been previously written and to reuse it or repurpose it to recontextualize it in new ways for new situations. That's called intertextuality. That's what Jeremiah is doing here.
Speaker 1:Because this specific language he employs actually comes from much earlier in the story. It comes from Torah. Now Torah means law in Hebrew, and it's sometimes used as a general term for all of Hebrew scripture, but specifically, it applies to it means the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses. A prophet like Jeremiah would have known these books inside out. But way back in Torah, hundreds of years before the kingdom of Judah existed, before the life of Jeremiah, the fledgling nation of Israel found itself about to go to war.
Speaker 1:And in Deuteronomy, there's a call for conscription. So nation is at war just like in Jeremiah, and the army needs soldiers just like they did in Jeremiah, and everyone is required to fight just like they were in Jeremiah except that in Deuteronomy chapter 20, God says, the officers shall say to the army, has anyone built a new house and not yet begun to live in it? Let him go home or he may die in battle and someone else begin to live in it. Has anyone planted a garden and not yet begun to enjoy it? Let him go home or he may die in battle and someone else enjoy it.
Speaker 1:Has anyone become pledged to be a woman and not married her? Let him go home or he may die in battle and someone else marry her. So way back in Torah, the conditions that exempt you from going to war are houses and gardens and wedding celebrations. And here, to the people who have been taken into exile, God says through Jeremiah, build yourself a house, plant yourself a garden, celebrate your weddings, and this will bring you peace. Do you see what God is saying to these people who've been conquered and taken into exile and might be tempted to think of their new neighbors as their enemies?
Speaker 1:God is saying, the time for war is over. And the time for thinking of your neighbor as only those within your tribe is coming to an end. The time for thinking that the repair of the world will require violence against your enemies. This is done. Because as Jeremiah says that when the Messiah comes, God will put his law in our minds and write it on our hearts, and that will change everything in and for us.
Speaker 1:Is he forgotten? The tikkun olam, the repair of the world begins when we stop thinking in terms of us and them, and we begin to focus on the peace of whoever happens to live right where we are. When the kingdom comes, there will be no more them. You see the point of exile seems to be at least in part, God showing his people that repair begins by sharing our life, not by going to war with the people around us. This is actually God pointing us to Jesus in some of the clearest terms that we see in all of the Old Testament, and it's why small acts of local life, things like conversations over our fences and dropping off meals for neighbors, things like shopping locally where we can and investing in the common good, things like neighborhood parishes and home groups and dinner parties are more than just nice ideas that link us together.
Speaker 1:They are actually the stuff of tikkun olam because they remind us that the world we believe will be starts when we link our lives to the people that we once may have been inclined to see as the other. And so whatever you do to bring peace to the people who are around you, economically, socially, physically, emotionally, spiritually. All of that is peace that will somehow find its way back to you. Because your life is linked by the spirit of God to the people who happen to be near you. And there is no way to get around the fact that the gospel is local.
Speaker 1:And the part that we play in the repair of the world begins exactly where we are. Now next week, we will talk about houses and gardens and parties and prayer, but for now, understand that Jeremiah intends to change the narrative in Judah. And in those same ways, Jesus intends to change the narrative in Calgary. And as big as the dreams we were encouraged to have last week were, today, we are reminded that whatever it is that God has in store for us begins exactly where we already are with the people who happen to be where we already are. Let's pray.
Speaker 1:God, help us as we begin this new season together, as we move through this ancient text of Jeremiah, to understand that the places that you have brought us, in whatever way you have brought them us to them, They are a place where you see vision and mission and purpose and calling for us. That you see us as agents of tikkun olam, bringing peace in whatever way we can to the people who happen to be near us, our friends, our neighbors, the person who bags our groceries, the person we sit beside on the bus, the person we bump into when we walk our dogs or we buy our coffee. The peace that we can bring into their life in whatever honest and meaningful way that we can, that is peace that will come back to us. And so as individuals, as a community, as a church that wants to be present here in Kensington and now in Inglewood and spreading out in neighborhoods across this city, God, everywhere that we live in a 100 different neighborhoods across Calgary, would we have the courage to bring peace in a thousand different ways? And even if we don't see why or how or when it will ever return to us, might we trust the peace of this city is our peace as well.
Speaker 1:Because our slice of the kingdom of God is local, and you've given it to us to repair. God, thank you for your imagination of your kingdom, and the small slice that we have been given to participate in your incredible story. In the strong name of the risen Christ, pray. Amen.