In 597, King Nebuchadnezzar’s forces laid siege to Jerusalem coming over the walls and through the gates and placing Zion under martial law. The Babylonian troops looted Solomon’s Temple and David’s Palace carrying off sacred vessels, the queen’s jewels, the army’s weapons, and national banners as trophies of war. They deported princes, business leaders and promising students conscripting them into the service of the Babylonian state.  In Jerusalem differing voices completed for the vision of the future. Jeremiah’s vision was unpopular. They called Jeremiah a liar,  a false prophet and a sell-out. They tossed him down a well. For the next ten years, the Persians ruled Jerusalem with a series of puppet kings. When the Hebrew King Zedekiak rebelled, King Nebuchadnezzar crushed the rebellion. The Babylonian empire killed the Israelite princes, knocked over Jerusalem’s outer wall, and took all the Temple’s jewels, gold and silver, even pulling the copper wires from the walls. They systematically destroyed the Temple-Palace gardens and fountains, cut down all the trees and burned down every building. They left Jerusalem, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, The Holy City as little more than a pile of rocks.   

After the rebellion, Nebuchadnezzar deported a second round of people to Babylon for reeducation and then service in the Babylonian state. (Daniel 1-3)  Psalm 137 captures the pathos of those young captives, who survived a siege only to be enslaved by their oppressors.

By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down,
There we wept, remembering Zion.
On the willows branches, we hung up our harps.
There our captors asked us for songs,
There, our tormentors mocked us for a laugh
They demanded “Sing of your God, sing your national hymn”
How could we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?
Oh Lord, remember the day of Jerusalem’s fall,
Remember them singing, “Tear it down! Tear it down. Down to the ground!”
O daughter Babylon… you…. you devastator!
Happy will be those who pay you back for what you have done to us!

Scholars summarize Jeremiah’s first 25 chapters, a whole scroll, as a series of sermons and actions that deeply challenged the core of Israel’s religious and national understanding. Before the city burned, Jeremiah had deconstructed Israel’s sacred beliefs and social structures- its Temple, its system of worship,  its belief in the covenant,  its notion of being the chosen people, its claim to the Promised land, and its royal theology.  Jeremiah’s preaching was hated as Jeremiah Wright’s. (Louis Stulman “Book of Jeremiah”, The New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible vol 3)

So imagine yourself marching away from Jerusalem to Babylon. You, one of the Chosen People, are being deported. You turn back to see Jerusalem but there is only rubble and smoke. You arrive in Babylon and receive a letter from Jeremiah, who some call a false prophet. Could you hear a Word from the Lord:  “Surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare/peace and not for harm, plans to give you a future with hope. When you pray, I will hear you. When you search for me with all your heart, you will find me… I will restore you and gather you from all the places I have driven you and I will bring you back home” 

When our souls are deep in the pit, we may struggle to believe that God cares about our welfare: that God never plans harm. When our nation or life is on fire, we may not easily envision a future filled with hope. How do we believe Easter’s Good News, when we have lived through Good Friday?  What does hope look like?  

Yolanda Pierce writes “It is a risk to love again when one has been hurt…. It is a risk to trust again when one has been betrayed…. It is a risk to return to a place where one has been wounded, with no guarantee or certainty that the same harm won’t happen again. … But it is also a risk to never return, to never open ourselves up to the transformative power of redemption and change…. We need empathy and understanding to support those willing to reenter the fray, those who choose to step back into the building or work to forgive their trespassers. …”  (The Wounds Are the Witness.)

We are Easter people, but envisioning a future with hope is a risky deal. However, looking at the world through a lens of cynicism, bitterness, revenge, retribution, or despair seems a sure road into hell.  The Good News is not always easy to hear. God’s plans almost always call us to change our hearts, realign our thoughts, and rearrange our plans. (Matt 4:17-25) 

“Surely I know the plans I am making for you, says the Lord, plans for your peace, plans for shalom and not for harm, plans to give you a future with hope. I will hear you… you will find me. I will restore you all. 

The Biblical word for peace or welfare is “shalom” which means a holistic way of living; the deepest expression of right relationships with God and other human beings.  Gerhard Von Rod tells us “there is no specific text in which (peace) denotes the specifically spiritual attitude of inward peace… We are forced to say that “peace” is an emphatically social concept” (adapted Theological Dictionary of the New Testament  Volume 3 “ειρήνη”).  The Peace of God is not “a peaceful easy feeling”, but a deep commitment to be in “right” relationship with God, ourselves, our neighbors, strangers, immigrants, opponents and even our enemies. In Luke 6:27-35, Jesus reminds us that doing good to only good people is not what it means to be a good person.  Good or godly people show mercy and do right by even bad people. God’s plans for our shalom or peace are not prayerful opiates, but ethical demands rooted in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, the Greatest Commandment, the Golden Rule and  Micah 6:8.

 God has plans to give us a future with hope, but this new future may not necessarily be the future that we once hoped and planned for.  The prophets in ancient Israel disagreed about what to do about Babylon. Some wanted things to go back the way they used to be.  In Jeremiah, the false prophets preached “make Israel great again,” put David on the throne, rebuild the walls, restore the Temple, reclaim the promised land, and enact a theocracy.  Jeremiah articulated a different hope, a hope not rooted in the past, but open to God’s yet unrevealed future plans. Faith begins moving into God’s new thing before it emerges: local synagogues instead of a national temple, rabbis instead of high priests, Bible study instead of pilgrimages, ethical living instead of animal sacrifices, “God with us” instead of curtained off behind  in the Holy of Holies. Friends, we live in the faith that embraced a new vision during the Exile. 

Louis Stulman writes “The prophetic battle is waged over two mutually exclusive understandings of hope: hope in the survival of the old systems, especially the dynasty and a Temple, and hope that demands relinquishing past modes of power in favor of the community’s marginal status in Babylon. Although the latter may not look like hope, Jeremiah insists that the people of Judah must face their harsh social realities head-on and relinquish expectations for a return to the old world before new beginnings can take shape. Hope involves breaking all forms of denial and telling the truth”. (Louis Stulman, Book of Jeremiah the New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible)

When we feel lost, most of us long to go back home.  The prophet knew that home was no more, the Temple was gone, the king dead, the Holy of Holies curtains turned into Babylonian bridesmaid dresses.  We are Easter people, indeed, the definitive Talmud will be written in Babylon not Jerusalem and the synagogue community based faith model that we live today began in the exile. Faith does not always long for the old wine, it embraces the new day and reality. 

Jeremiah lays out a hard hands-on route to hope. “The LORD of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims to all the exiles I have carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they produce. Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children.  Don’t dwindle away. Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the LORD for Babylon, because your future depends on its welfare.” 

That must have stung, pray for the welfare of your opponents, pray shalom on your oppressors. Get in “right” relationship with King Nebuchadnezzar?  Plant gardens sure, but almond trees that take decades to bear fruit? Fix up old houses. Work hard. Start a business. Get married. Build community. Pray for the city’s welfare?  Promote Babylon?  Love your Babylonian neighbor? Such hope deeply realigns your heart and mind. Most of us prefer the ethical immaturity of Psalm 137 that asks God to punish our enemies. Our Crucified Lord preaches forgiveness from the cross. It is antithetical to Easter to preach revenge and recrimination.  

We are Easter people but we do not long to go back to the good old days before Good Friday.  After Easter, the disciples did not sit by the lake listening to Jesus draw in the crowds, watch Jesus open blind eyes, or see Jesus flip over tables. The Risen Christ instead empowers us “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1, Matthew 28, Luke 24)

The Bible is still Good News, but rarely is it the news we once hoped for.  God has plans for our shalom, but those plans will change our plans, how could a Word from God not change us? 

So if we find ourselves in a place where it all seems to be falling apart and we can not figure out the right future is, let us do what we know is right. Let us do the right thing, that is right in front of us.  A future of hope emerges from us doing the right things, right now: plant gardens, raise children, promote the welfare of the city, be peace-makers, work for justice, stand up, speak up, worship even when the temple burns down, work through our anger in songs, stop living for revenge, break the cycle of violence and recrimination, forgive, be a good neighbor, welcome the stranger, shelter poor people, shine a light, do the good you know to do. Allow God to use you to build a future with hope. Amen.