#2 seek the peace of the city

A reflection on Jeremiah 29.1-7

Have you ever had an epiphany, a moment of revelation or calling? I’ve only had two in my life. One was in the Spring of 2006, eighteen years ago. 

At the time I was working at Whitley College and living in Little Lonsdale Street. My revelation happened mid-morning and mid-coffee. I was returning home from a meeting in Docklands. I remember standing at the peak of Batman Hill on the western extension of Collins Street, coffee in hand and the undulating roof of the new Southern Cross Station to one side. As I looked down the fall and rise of Collins Street disappearing into the CBD, I had this strong awarenesss of God’s presence and an equally strong sense of this city as the place to which I am called. As the years go by, that sense remains. In fact, it has deepened with time. 

I imagine in a congregation like this, there will be different responses to the idea of an epiphany. Some of you will be encouraged. You like your pastor to have a strong sense of God’s calling. It’s reassuring. Others of you will identify. You, too, have known moments of clarity and calling in your life. You get it. Others of you will be mystified, even skeptical. Really? God does that?

Whatever your reaction, I know not everyone here today will feel the same way about the city as I do. The fact is, we are here for myriad reasons, not many of them to do with such grand things as a divine calling. Sometimes we end up in a place for more mundane reasons: family history, marriage, retirement, work, study, immigration, affordability, or perhaps a crisis of some sort. Truth be told, we might prefer to live somewhere else if only we could. For some of us, living in this city is a matter of choice. For others, it’s all circumstance: life happens and here we are. 

Over three Sundays we are talking about the role of the church in the city — the role of this church, you and me together. It’s a tough subject to explore because we are such a mix of people, stories, cultures and perspectives. That said, what holds us together in our differences are two things: the faith we share and the place in which we share it. However we feel about this city, however much or little we are invested in it, however deep or non-existent our sense of calling to it, this is where we are. So what does God ask of us in it? 

The text

Today we have read from the prophet Jeremiah and his words to the people of Judah.  Last Sunday we were with them at the end of their exile in Babylon as they returned to their home city of Jerusalem. Today we head back in time to the beginning of their exile story, a period of no less than 70 years in which they were displaced from their homeland.  To appreciate this reading, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the people of Judah.  That’s a tough call for us, but imagine it this way.  

Australia has been invaded by a foreign power.  In a matter of days our military resources have been overwhelmed and destroyed.  As a consequence, our government has collapsed.  Our Prime Minister and his cabinet along with all elected members of parliament have been forcefully relocated off shore.  Corporate leaders, educators, public servants follow in a mass, forced evacuation.  Religious leaders are executed, along with our poets, writers and political activists.  Slowly but surely all who remain are picked up and taken into exile, dropped in the same place as their leaders, encamped at the edge of a foreign city in a foreign land.  

Jeremiah speaks to the people of Judah on the edges of Babylon.  His track record as a prophet is not strong.  Though he has spoken to them in the past, his admonitions were always rejected.  The trouble is with Jeremiah, he never knew how to make palatable the challenging things God asked him to say.  Still, he persisted.  

Of course, what the people wanted to hear in their exile was that God was about to swoop down and rescue them from this dilemma, but that is not Jeremiah’s message.  His message is that this exile is going to last, and what they need to do is to settle down and make a home.  They are to build houses and plant gardens, get married and have children, and then watch their children get married and welcome the grandkids.  This is no short-term stay.  Here at the edges of Babylon is their new home. Jeremiah ends with an even more challenging word in verse 7.  They are to “seek the welfare of the city” to which God has sent them. 

God was not just calling the people of Israel to put their heads down and wait this thing out.  God was calling them to engage with this new home, to invest in it, to treat it with the same degree of respect and care that they would Jerusalem.  God’s command was that they put down their roots and to make this their home until God directed otherwise.  

The challenge

In truth, we cannot begin to understand what this meant for the people of Judah. Indeed, to make easy connections between their story and ours can do their story a great injustice.  Regardless, in our search of an answer to this question of what God expects of us in this city of ours, I really do think God’s admonition to the people of Judah is worth hearing: “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you … and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” 

We human beings are a people of place. We are created that way. We are not made to be homeless or without roots.  As the philosopher Martin Heidegger says, “to dwell is to be.”  Equally, to be is to dwell. Certainly from a theological perspective this is true. From the very beginning of the biblical story we are made for place — we are made to be home, to belong.  From the garden in the creation story to the final city of our eternal hope, we are created for dwelling.  It’s why the experience of homelessness is so violating.  It cuts at the core of our human identity and our in-built, God-given need for security and home.  What’s more the places we inhabit can only ever be fully human when we live into them with intention and energy. For when we seek the city’s good, we seek the good of our shared humanity.

What is the role of the church in the city? In part at least, it is this: to live into the city, to fully inhabit it, to take our place in its neighbourhoods with intention and grace. To use Jeremiah’s language, our role is to seek the neighbourhood’s welfare and peace wherever we are.  

Let’s be clear: whether we feel a sense of call to this place or not, we are called. It is part and parcel of our discipleship. Jesus’ invitation “come and follow me” is the calling that governs our lives. This call of Jesus to follow is not a call into the ether, or even into the whole world for that matter. Instead, Jesus calls us to live our faith in particular places, the places we can see and walk. This place. Our Christian call is not be everywhere but somewhere. It is particular. This shared call of God upon our lives has to be lived. We live it here, or we don’t live it at all.

At the beginning of 2023 we appointed Katherine as our Coordinator of Neighbourhood Mission. This appointment came out of our commitment as a church to be part of the renewal of this city post pandemic. We appointed Katherine with a clear job description: to lead the church in the development of its ministries of renewal and hospitality in the city. Importantly, we did not appoint Katherine to do this work for us, but to do the work with us. For together we are called to seek the good of this city. This is our calling.  

The word welfare is the Hebrew word shalom. Quite simply it means peace. More deeply, it carries a sense of wholeness or completeness. It speaks of a complete and unbroken relationship in which all is in harmony: “seek the wholeness of the city and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its wholeness you will find your wholeness.” There is a clear relationship between individual wellbeing and the wellbeing of the city, an unbroken continuum between God’s intention for us and God’s intention for this city of ours. 

You may have never experienced an epiphany. The language of calling may feel alien or awkward to you. Regardless, I remind you today of a conviction deep within our Baptist tradition: the priesthood of all believers. To seek the wholeness of this city is part of our priestly vocation — that is, our calling to embody the presence and healing grace of God in the world, wherever we are. Together we are the agents of shalom, we are the conduits of wholeness in our neighbourhoods.  Lest this talk of a priestly vocation still sounds too grand for you, let me finish with a story, a story I first told years ago in a little book on cities and neighbourhoods.  

I stood with Belinda by the front gate. The sky was overcast and rain threatened. After sitting at the kitchen table for an hour chatting about the neighbourhood, she was keen to show me her street. Belinda is a single mother living with three children in a modest 1970s brick home in suburban Brisbane. Since an acrimonious divorce six years ago, Belinda had to secure a restraining order on her ex-husband. He has a propensity to violence and she is fearful for her children; the past decade has been harrowing. Still, this home and neighbourhood have been constants for Belinda. Determined to ensure some degree of stability and normality for the kids, she has consistently refused the temptation to move. The kids are happy in their schools and the support of neighbours has been, in her words, priceless.

Belinda spoke animatedly of those who live in her street. There is one neighbour she talked about with particular warmth. As she looked across the street, Belinda pointed out an elderly man in a beret pottering in his front garden. “That’s Bill!” she said and waved. Bill is a retired school teacher; he and his wife never had children of their own and, though he never talks about it, it is known up and down the street that she has a mental illness. “He’s just the most wonderful man,” Belinda reflected quietly. “I don’t know what I would do without him.” Belinda recounted easily the ways that Bill had helped her and her neighbours. After mowing his own lawns, she said, he routinely takes his mower to the homes of other elderly residents—those unable to keep up with their gardens. She has often seen him taking bags of his home-grown vegies and leaving them anonymously on doorsteps.

“He’s also the neighbourhood handyman!” Belinda said with a laugh. “Nothing’s ever too much trouble.” “He’s not a great talker,” she continued, “He’s a doer! He’s always fixing something for me. I saw him clearing out Joan’s gutters a few weeks ago. He’s even had his arm down my toilet, unblocking the drain pipe!” Belinda recalled, too, the times Bill has watched out for her and the kids. “One night my ex-husband kept calling on the phone. He was drunk and threatening to come around and hurt me. He said he was going to take the kids. I was beside myself. I didn’t know what to do, so I called Bill.” Belinda wiped away tears as she told of how he came straight over and sat on her front fence: “He stayed there for hours into the night, just smoking his cigarettes.” As she pulled a tissue from her pocket, Belinda looked across at Bill: “I know he’s a religious man, though he never talks about it. He used to go off to the Catholic church every week, sometimes two or three times a week. He can’t leave his wife for too long now. I guess he doesn’t go as often.” She paused. “Still,” she finally shruged, “he’s one of the best men I know.” Belinda paused again, then looked directly at me with a mischievous smile and concluded, “He’s a bit like our own neighbourhood priest really.”

In truth, this idea of God’s calling upon our lives — our shared vocation to live the grace of God wherever we are — is an extraordinary thing! But it’s no mystery. It’s not a truth hidden away for the few who can find it. It simply is, part and parcel of our discipleship. We are called to seek the peace of this city together. May God grant us the courage we need to do so.

Amen.