Welfare

Jeremiah 29:1,4-7

“But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

Welfare has become a loaded term these days. But providing aid to the most vulnerable of society is not a new concept. Giving food to orphans and widows, leaving a corner of each crop field un harvested, showing hospitality to travelers and the homeless are written in to the law of God’s people. God placed negative stigma on the one who refused to help a brother or sister in need. Most commands to show hospitality and compassion to the poor and vulnerable are punctuated with a reminder that the Israelites had been a vulnerable, oppressed, and poor people. I’d take the command back even further to the promise of God to Abraham that through him all nations would be blessed.

The word translated from the Hebrew as “welfare” in today’s text is also a loaded term. Perhaps you’ve heard me use it in my benedictions to you each week: “shalom.” “Seek the shalom of the city…” Shalom is commonly translated as “peace,” here it’s translated “welfare,” but so much richer than that. The concept of shalom has to do with the well-being of the community, but it’s also linked to the well-being of all the earth. Shalom can also be translated as “wholeness” or “completeness” and for the Israelites, this could only be found in relationship with God. During the time of today’s text, Jeremiah’s audience’s sense of shalom was being tested by one of the most tumultuous periods in Judah’s history.

The book of Jeremiah dates roughly to 595 BC, and was a correspondence with exiles in Babylon who had, at this point, only been there a short while. They were being held captive in Babylon, essentially as hostages, and used to extort regular tribute payments from the ruler of Judah. These people had lost their most cherished social and political symbols. God’s promise to Abraham came with a promise of a land.

Those in exile had no land to call their own. Along with that loss came the loss of their temple, which was a sign of the certainty of God’s presence. How can we have shalom without these things? Jeremiah knew that their confidence in God was waning, he knew that they were vulnerable. This vulnerability was being taken advantage of by those whom Jeremiah goes on to criticize as false prophets, preaching false hope of an early return of the exiles. Jeremiah’s prophecy is trying to get the people to reckon with the actual terms of their condition.

I would imagine that many of the accused “false prophets” couldn’t stand to see their people, friends and family, losing hope. So they sought to comfort them with hopeful prophecies of returning home. But Jeremiah knew that these weren’t realistic hopes to instill, and that making these claims in the name of God would ultimately be damaging to the people’s faith. Jeremiah doesn’t want them to lose their relationship with God. He doesn’t want the people to think that their prolonged inhabitance in a foreign land means that God has abandoned them there. Jeremiah also doesn’t want these people to lose their life, and it’s worth noting that the two prophets who had preached about the imminent downfall of Babylon had been executed. Such treason was dangerous.

Plant gardens, take wives, have children…translation: get ready for the long haul.

All this said, and I’m still struck by what Jeremiah says next. These people are captives in a foreign land, and yet Jeremiah encourages them to pray to the Lord on behalf of the city in which they are exiled, “because its shalom is your shalom.” Don’t attack your opponents, don’t bad mouth them, instead pray for their well-being.

That strikes me as a very applicable message to us, to our country. We’re not exiles, but we have created a political system that is so partisan that half of our country always seems to feel held hostage by the government and the decisions it makes. I think it’s fair to say that we, like the exiles, have no sense of shalom, and we don’t have much hope that it’s possible for us ever again. Perhaps like the exiles, we feel like we’ve lost our “land,” or we’ve lost our “church.” We view our political opponents as enemies, or captors, depending on who’s got a majority of seats in Congress or the Senate. We live in a climate of contempt where messages of hope are delivered as sarcastic or scathing remarks against the stupidity of those with whom we disagree. They’re wrong, you’re right. Take heart and stand firm. I know we feel good when we hear a joke or a jab against someone with whom we disagree. But this divisiveness functions in much the same way as the words of the false prophets whom Jeremiah criticized.

Attempting to establish confidence in the false hope that we’re never going to have to get along. We’re in this for the long haul. And there will be no shalom, no welfare, no peace, apart from the shalom of our neighbor. We’ve got to learn to pray for one another.

There was a prevalent attitude towards the poor, the sick, and the disabled in Jesus time that we see time and again demonstrated by the Pharisees and other religious leaders. It was an attitude of dismissal based on the belief that their poverty, illness, or disability was the result of their sinfulness. They were considered unclean and treated as untouchable. This was the case for the ten lepers whom Jesus encountered on his way to Jerusalem. It was largely believed that their uncleanness threatened the health of the community. But Jesus saw their exclusion as threatening the shalom of the community, the wholeness, the completeness of the community. When Jesus healed them, he didn’t simply cure their skin disease, he restored their ability to fully participate in the life of the community. But more importantly, what this healing represents, and what Jesus represents for all of us, is the capacity for full relationship with God.

Society doesn’t determine our shalom. Our shalom begins with God, and learning that we are loved. The shalom, the welfare, of our community begins with God. The welfare of our nation, and our world, begins with God. We must remember that God loves the world so much that God sacrificed his son to restore our capacity for full relationship with God. “God loves the world” doesn’t mean that God agrees with all that’s going on in it, but it means that God still sees goodness in it. We’ve got to stop buying into the hype that hatred is going to get us anywhere. We can’t hate our way into a better world.

In many ways, this world is held hostage by the powers of sin, and we who have accepted the grace of God given in Jesus Christ are living in this world as exiles, anticipating our return to the Kingdom of God, the new Jerusalem. Jesus, just as Jeremiah did, paved the road back to Jerusalem with reconciled relationships, with concern for the welfare of all. For Jesus, the Kingdom was near when love of God and love of neighbor were recognized as the most important commandments. Friends, let us oppose the false prophets calling us to hate our enemies and realize that we’re in this for the long haul, until God’s Kingdom comes.

Let us pray to the Lord on behalf of a world held captive by sin, because in its welfare you will find your welfare. Amen.