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The Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Almighty and everlasting God, who in Christ hast revealed thy glory among the nations: Preserve the works of thy mercy, that thy Church throughout the world may persevere with steadfast faith in the confession of thy Name; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 24)
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The Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14; I Corinthians 10:1-13
A Sermon by
Fr. Spurlock
on
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14; I Corinthians 10:1-13
✛
In Their Peace will be Your Peace
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If you live in the city, you know what it’s like to live here. And if you are visiting New York, you might wonder, what would it be like to live here day in and day out. Well, I’ll tell you. New York can be a tough town to live in, especially for a Christian. At times the city can seem downright godless, but then at other times it comes off as devout and religious, what with all its temples. There are temples to mammon, aesthetics, vanity, sex, gluttony, political ideology, there’s a lot of worship that goes on in New York. Sometimes, like now it’s even done in a proper church. So, it begs the question: how is a Christian supposed to live in a place like this?
After the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians, the kingdom to the south, centered at Jerusalem and bejeweled by the Temple, resisted the Assyrians only to fall to the Babylonians who began their conquest with an initial wave of deportations that carried the Jewish king, his vassals, the priests of the temple, prophets, and many more, into exile in Babylon.
Now, the prophet Jeremiah was one prophet who was not sent into exile but was left behind in Jerusalem, and he made some predictions that were very unpopular. He put a wooden yoke on his neck as a sign and he said, get used to being yoked to a pagan and idolatrous people. Not only have they taken some of our people into exile, but they will come back and destroy Jerusalem and destroy the temple, and they will carry all of us away with them.
These predictions made the people angry. Another prophet, one who knew how to tickle the ears of his audience, took the yoke from off Jeremiah’s neck and broke it and proclaimed that God would remove the yoke of Babylon within two years and God would smite the Babylonians. Jeremiah said, you’ve broken a yoke of wood, but God will supply you with a yoke of iron that you will not be able to shake off or to break.
It is at this point that Jeremiah writes his letter to the people in exile in Babylon. “To all the people in exile in Babylon: build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce; marry and have children. Increase and do not dwindle away. And most important of all, seek the wellbeing of any city that you live in, and pray to God for it. On its welfare your welfare will depend.”
This letter made the leaders in exile very angry. Jeremiah’s letter made them angry because he wasn’t telling them what they wanted to hear. What the letter said to them was settle down and live your lives where you are. Say your prayers where you are. Worship God where you are. And when you do pray to God, pray for the Babylonians, pray for your enemies, pray for their wellbeing as much as you pray for your own. Do this, and God may very well bless you through them.
To the ancient Jewish mind, this was heresy of the highest order. The nation was God’s chosen nation. And at the center of the nation was Jerusalem, a holy city, and at the center of Jerusalem was the temple. That was God’s house. That is where God lived. And God lived in the midst of his chosen people. Now, for us Christians, this way of thinking is as close to our understanding of incarnation as you can get until the birth of Jesus Christ.
The temple was vital as the place where God lived. But by believing that God was so localized, the Israelites did something they ought never to have done. They carved God’s creation into bits and pieces and suggested there were certain places where God was sovereign and present and there were certain places where he was not. God couldn’t be worshipped in Babylon because God didn’t live in Babylon. This is much the same thinking that prompted certain Jews to criticize Jesus for eating with tax collectors and sinners. God doesn’t eat with tax collectors and sinners because he doesn’t go near them.
But what God was saying through Jeremiah was that he would go where he willed to go, that he would live where he willed to live, that he could be found as much in Babylon as in Jerusalem. He would roam the great wide expanse of his creation, fill every nook and cranny of it because the world and all that is in it was his, for he made it, his hands prepared it, molded it, his eyes beheld it, and he declared that it was all good and he would subdue it for his own purposes.
God was telling the people to love him wherever they were, and to be neighbor to whoever lived there. A wise monastic understood this when he instructed his brother monks saying, remember, if you are called from your prayers in the chapel to go wash the pots and pans, remember that God is in the midst of the pots and pans too. Where is it that God can’t go? Who is it that God can’t bless?
We are blessed beyond measure here at Saint Thomas because we have a special place to go to help us to find God in a rough and tumble sort of town. But even if you can’t get here or you don’t have this wherever you might live, you might find encouragement in something a bishop of our church said a long, long time ago.
For my own part I take myself bound to worship with Body, as well as in Soul, whenever I come where GOD is worshipped. And were this Kingdom such as would allow no Holy Table, standing in its proper place (and such places some there are) yet I would worship God when I came into His house. And were the times such, as should beat down Churches, and all the curious carved work thereof, (and such times have been) yet I would worship in what place soever I came to pray, though there were not so much as a stone laid upon stone. (Wm. Laud)
How is a Christian supposed to live in a place like this, or any place for that matter? By remembering that once in human time and history, in a little town, God was content to get very specific and to come to us in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. And then by remembering that there is no place, anywhere, ever, where Christ is not king. By also remembering that wherever any one of us goes in this great wide world or in our own small ones, our love for God in Christ goes with us, and his love for us goes there too. Not even death can separate us from that love. And when we bring that love to bear on our neighbors or our enemies by praying for them and seeking their wellbeing, we will be blessed, because we have bestowed some of that love on a person who is in desperate need of it too, and we have awakened to the truth that no matter where we live and move and have our being, God is there too.
