“These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem
to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all
the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
4 Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent
into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens
and eat what they produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives
for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and
daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 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.” Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Looking around our world just now with wars continuing to rage in too many places,
fast changing weather conditions, and increasing violence on our streets and
transport links, it would be easy to be overwhelmed by doom and gloom. And it seems
just now that many people are just plain ’angry.’ Indeed, I heard a colleague quoted
as saying. “Yes, some of my folk are pretty ‘hair on fire’ right now… though
interestingly, they’re not the ones most directly affected by what’s going on.”
In pursuing that thought, my colleague went on to say, “When you are going through
hell, keep going.” People who are trying to survive, she mused, don’t often have the
mental bandwidth to let themselves pause and wallow in how awful things really are.
“Folks who are more ‘hair on fire’ seem to have the luxury of watching things from a
(somewhat) safer distance,” she went on.
If Jeremiah’s hair is on fire, it’s in a different sense than my colleague is
describing. Jeremiah isn’t panicking; he’s incandescent with holy resolve. It’s the
6th century BC, the capital city of Jerusalem has fallen, and the people have been
forced into exile in Babylon. What does this mean for the people of Israel? What
are they to do in this new, foreign place? His answer is clear and surprising: “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.”
Jeremiah exhorts the people to get busy living, right where they are. In other
words, we receive what life offer us, even if we never would have chosen it, and
build on it in some peace-building way. This is a hopeful message. Rabbi Jonathan
Sack surely had Jeremiah in mind when he drew his own distinction between
optimism and hope: “Optimism is a passive virtue, hope an active one. It needs no
courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to hope. The
Hebrew Bible is not an optimistic book. It is, however, one of the great literatures
of hope.”
Sometimes hope can feel like a lofty ideal. And yet it is relentlessly practical –
Jeremiah tells us to build, plant, marry, live. And then in his next breath to “seek
the welfare of others, because in so doing, you will find your own welfare.”
Such words are truly prophetic and very apt as we move into the season of Advent,
one of whose principal themes is of HOPE. So as 2025 draws to a close, with so
much hair on fire, I’m also hearing Jeremiah’s call as having an emotional benefit.
There’s no time for doom-scrolling when you are measuring plasterboard. It’s
harder to succumb to despair when you’re focused on pulling weeds.
So our work continues as Christians: to love others and to alleviate suffering.
Jeremiah invites us to live as people of shalom, because he remains a God of
shalom – for individuals, communities and our world.