Postkiwi

I am using Jeremiah’s letter to the Jewish people living in Babylon, found in Jeremiah 29:1-14, to explore the experience of being the church in exile. I have used Jeremiah 29 in worship and study workshops for leaders in a variety of congregational and judicatory settings, along with parallel passages, Psalm 137 and Jeremiah 4:23-26.

I have drawn heavily on insights shared by Walter Brueggemann and Gerald Arbuckle. Both writers link the future of God’s people with the gradual process of moving through stages of grief towards hope and action.

William Bridges material on change and transition reminds leaders that the introduction of any change involves a process of letting go, in-between (neutral) time, and the launching of a new beginning. I have used the framework of grieving tasks, outlined by authors such as William Worden, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and John Westerhoff and echoed by Scott Peck in his study of community formation.

Jeremiah 29 stands alone in the gathered writings and sermons of the Jewish prophet Jeremiah. It is addressed to all those who were deported from Jerusalem to Babylon in 598 BCE. Jehoiachin, son of Josiah, has become the exiled ruler of the Jewish people, while Zedekiah, his brother, remains in Jerusalem. Jeremiah’s role up to this point has been to warn the people about the consequences of their complacent and rigid responses to God’s call for obedience and trust. Jeremiah is now writing to a group who, while experiencing low morale, are likely to be looking for a fresh sense of vision. He has identified this group of exiles as the ones who will take the Jewish faith and culture into future.

Brueggemann has written that visionary leadership is integrally linked with the prophetic phrase, “It could be otherwise”.[1] The prophet Jeremiah believes that no matter how desperate the situation, there is a future. That belief is expressed strongly in his letter to the exiles in Jerusalem. In this letter Jeremiah is able to talk about the past in ways that releases people to live in the present and prepare for the future. If the exiles continue to spend their lives pining for the past, they will either dwindle into an insignificant family-based cult or disappear altogether, subsumed by the Babylonian culture. These people cannot afford to passively wait for the day of their return to the glorious days. The time of mourning is now over - the work of grief has begun. Now is the time to live again, to put roots down in the new context. Jeremiah outlines the practical implications of living as residents of Babylon - and in that context he presents the hope of future generations going home.

[1] Walter Brueggemann, Unmasking the Inevitable, From The Other Side Online, 2001 The Other Side, July-August 2001, Vol. 37, No. 4.