Jeremiah 29: 1,4-14; 1 Corinthians 13: 1-13
You may have noticed in the prayer for illumination that Pam called these readings “love letters.” That may be easier to associate with Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth than Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles, but I believe it to be true all the same.Love is at the base of every stroke of every letter of God’s word, and that is certainly true in today’s readings. The same is true, or at least I hope that it is true, with all that we do as God’s people. We may not always get it right, but everything we do is a faithful attempt to demonstrate and respond to the love we have received in Christ Jesus.
Now, before we get into these “love letters,” I want to remind you that over the last few weeks we’ve talked about the way these passages in Jeremiah connect to our core emotions. In Jeremiah 7 we talked about anger and the invitation to compassion. Last week with Jeremiah 18 we talked about fear and the invitation to an uncommon unity – a way of being in the world together that is unlike any other type of relationship.
Today, in Jeremiah 29, we’re talking about love and the invitation to a more common unity – because of these uncommon relationships, we need to find some common ground to stand on. More on that in a bit. First I want to talk with you a little about love letters. I wonder how many of you have a stash of love letters somewhere – maybe in an old shoebox under the bed.
I have one that is for cards and notes that my wife has sent me when I’m away at camp or on a retreat. Here’s one that I think shows the depth of our love. The front says, ‘This card has no purpose,’ the inside says, ‘I sent it anyway.’ Then, of course, it has a nice note inside signed “SHMILY,” which stands for “See How Much I Love You.” Here’s one that’s a little more romantic. It has a dog licking the surface on the front and says, “Sending you a big kiss!” Oh. Wait. This one was actually from my dog. Alright, I have one more to share. It has a cartoon of Jesus telling Peter, “I said cast the nets on the other side.” While Peter is dancing with castanets. On the inside, it says, “I’d be lost at sea without you.”
That’s sweet, huh? It’ll be 21 years in 11 days, and I can’t imagine my life without these cards and the love that inspired them. I do have a confession, though. I have another stash of love letters here at the church. It’s called my “Happy File,” and it has thank you notes, and birthday cards, and other notes of encouragement that I have received. Some of them are from retreats and special events, but a lot of them are from this congregation from over the last 11 years. I keep them to be reminded of the love that binds us and makes us one.
I don’t tell you any of this to boast, because according to Paul, if love is not at the center of what I say and what I do, then none of it matters. I mostly told you about my collection of love letters to frame the way we understand the letters that we’ve read today. Jeremiah wrote a letter that could just as easily be called a poison penned letter since the people he addressed it to in v.1 were pretty much the same people that he described in Vv. 8-9 as those whom God did not send.
Bear in mind that Jeremiah was not a cheerful soul. Remember I said before that people of influence were taken into captivity. Jeremiah was already a captive... by his own people for speaking out against the elders, priests, and prophets! The Babylonians set him free! They took the influencers into captivity and Jeremiah was calling them out as the reason the people were in the mess that they were in the first place.
You may also remember that I said last week that the northern kingdom of Israel had been assimilated by Assyria and was essentially gone, so it seems odd that Jeremiah would say (vv5-7), “Build houses. Have families. Give them your daughters in marriage. Take their sons in marriage.” The thing is, he never said to assimilate. He never said, “Go for their Gods.” He just said, “Settle in. God’s grace is coming, but it’s gunna be a while.”
More than that, Jeremiah said that they should, “Pray for the city’s welfare – for yours is tied up in theirs.” This is where the common unity stuff comes in again. We are constantly getting mixed up with people that we don’t look or think alike. That’s the nature of modern urban life. In some ways, for us, this passage is less about “blooming where you are planted” and more about making space for others to bloom right here beside us.
Again, as I’ve said before, Jeremiah assumes a sort of religious nationalism that places some pretty clear limitations on God. At the same time, the promise of a return to ancestral lands was not so much about the people and their national identity as it was about God remaining true to what God said that God would do.
Some say the promise of 70 years in v10 is a number of completion, others say it was more about letting an unfaithful generation become replaced by a more faithful one. Either way, what matters is that God is assuring God’s people that God’s plans for them, in the long run, are for good things. It’s like God is saying, “I know this seems like I’m not as involved as you might like right now, but trust me. I have plans. It’s going to be fine.”
While I imagine our siblings at Temple Shalom understand the idea of exile and return much differently than those Judeans in captivity in Babylon did, the call to care for the city in which you live is the same for them today. As followers of the way of Jesus, we share the same spiritual DNA with them and many others in this town, though sometimes it is hard to realize that when some of our views can be so culturally polarized.
When we allow our places of disagreement to lead us, we can become exiled and estranged one from another instead of bound up in one another’s well-being. That’s why it is so important to see these letters as not only a declaration of love but even more so as a call to love. Without love as our prime directive, we cannot find the places of common experience that give us any solid ground at all.
What is love, though? Is that just an invitation to be a pushover? I once heard a strong Christian woman who was also a soccer mom tell me that the soccer field is no place for love, and I think that’s how many of us feel when we find ourselves in places of conflict. All that love stuff goes out the window, so maybe we need a review of what love is and what it isn’t.
“Love is patient and kind. It is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; is not irritable or resentful; does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
There’s nothing weak about any of that. In fact, it takes a bit more strength to do most of these on our own. The beautiful thing about it all is that we aren’t alone. We’ve been called together out of our own exile of the heart or the mind or the cultural constructs and barriers that we create, and because we are not alone we know that caring for those outside our circle is the reason we have a circle in the first place.
Friends, if nothing else, what I’d like you to take away from this today is that God has written a love letter to this city. God has signed it and sealed with the empty cross of Jesus, and that letter is just waiting to be delivered. If you have not figured it out yet, that letter is you!
So far we’ve made it through anger and fear and into love. Next week we’ll move into hope and the joy that comes with experiencing God’s active presence in our midst as God’s people. I imagine you already know what that’s like, but we’ll see what Jeremiah has to say about it as the conclusion of our series.
For now, just know that you are loved, that you are the presence of love that someone else needs, and that we are called to care for the welfare of our city – knowing that as it goes for our neighbors, so it goes for us – and all to the glory of God, now and always. Amen.
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