It’s a blessing to hear each of you publicly profess
your faith in Jesus and take the faith step of accepting the
responsibility of full membership in the church. It’s been a joy and honour to
get to know you better over the past few months as we had faith and life-oriented
conversations and discussions. Most of our conversations were shaped by the
theme found in this passage, “to seek the peace and
prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord
for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” This call comes
from the Lord through Jeremiah, and in many ways, it's simple wisdom.
Israel’s in the early days of their exile to Babylon. God allowed Babylon to defeat Israel and take many of
her people into exile, but prophets soon appeared, saying that they would soon
be going home. Now the Lord moves through Jeremiah to send the exiles a hard
wake-up call, “Build houses and settle down; plant
gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find
wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may
have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.”
This is their new reality, a long-term, new way of understanding their life now:
exiles in a foreign land. They have to figure out how God wants them to live in
Babylon. It may be a foreign city, but God is God of all cities, all nations,
all peoples.
The apostle Peter picks up on this in his first letter, “Peter,
an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the
provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.” Tiya
Thomas-Alexander, in an article for the Gospel Coalition, writes, “Peter called them
“God’s elect, exiles scattered” …. When these
Christians chose to follow Christ, they were persecuted. By naming their
identity as exiles, Peter was comforting them. Our Christian identity of exiles
gives us a boldness to bear through harsh days of suffering. It gives us a
glimpse of the horizon—a sign that this land ends somewhere, and gives way to
another place…. In exile, we participate in mending work as God himself
prepares a new city by redeeming old things.” We look forward to Jesus’ return
and the coming of heaven to earth, but until that happens, we’re called to live
lives of meaning as blessings as Abraham was called to be a blessing. We can
fight against the culture, we can hide from the culture, we can embrace the
culture, but God calls Israel and us to instead walk in his way to bless the
culture through our presence; to be a gift.
Dr Stephen Grabill of the Acton Institute sees the
church’s mission as being God’s
blessing to the world. He defines the church as “the Body of Christ given
as a gift for the life of the world.” We’re the hope of God scattered
across the world, called to pray and work for the peace, shalom, and prosperity
of the communities we’re a part of. We often believe that if we’re a blessing
to our community, they should be really happy to have us here, yet that’s not
always true. In the Babylonian empire there were a number of times its rulers
saw the Jewish people as a threat and tried to get rid of them, or silence them.
Paul addresses this in his first letter to the church in Corinth, “We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we
bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer
kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world—right up
to this moment.” And yet, even when the empire saw the Jews as a threat,
the Jews left an impact on the Babylonians and empires that followed them. The
Magi who came to find Jesus at his birth come from this area, searching for a
special king from God whose birth is revealed in the skies, traveling to
Bethlehem in search of this king predicted by people like Daniel and other
Jewish scholars and leaders. There’s something about Israel’s faith, something
about how the Jews in positions of influence contributed to the empire and its
culture that stayed with and impacted them.
As we talked about having a vision for living out our
faith, we were challenged by Stephan Grabill, “Living faithfully
in exile and seeking the shalom of our cities are two big ideas that
the church needs to embrace in order to recover a robust “in-but-not-of”
theology of culture…. At its core, it means living missionally and
intentionally in light of God’s economy of all things…. We don’t just exist for
ourselves; we exist to bring life to the world. But how does our gift-giving
lead to flourishing? Living in the land according to God’s law leads to
flourishing for everyone. When we live as God wants us to live—as a light to
the nations—we flourish in every imaginable way, and that flourishing spreads
around the communities to which we belong. In other words, living according to
God’s big-picture, oikonomic purpose for the world illumines and
applies shalom in all of the economies of life—family, work,
governing institutions, education, the arts, and so on.” This is
big-picture, kingdom of heaven ways of thinking and living. This is what Jesus
is getting at in Matthew 6:33, “But seek first his kingdom and his
righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
We’re each called to work in large or small ways to
bless our city. We build houses, families,
businesses. We plant gardens, we plant peace through hospitality, we plant
seeds of the gospel of Jesus through faithful living and sharing our faith
alongside living it out. We raise families, we have jobs, we create beauty and
marvel at the beauty found all around us in both creation and the people we
encounter, and we have opportunities to take on different roles in each of our
communities to help make it a better place. One of fascinating things for me
has been looking back and seeing the variety of roles the Lord has asked me to
play to be a blessing; from being a son, a husband, a father, friend, sailor,
baker, helping in a Christian community center, pastor, various roles in
different communities, and more. My parents taught us that God calls us to
serve each other, our church, and the community because God loves them with a
deep love and so should we. We were taught to celebrate the achievements of
others instead of being jealous, helping others become more who God calls them
to be, even if they don’t believe in God.
Our lives glorify God as our roles and gifts point to the working out of his grace and blessing as
we live faithfully in exile and seek the shalom of the cities because they’re
God’s cities.
Jesus came as a gift to the world, a gift who suffered greatly on our behalf;
taking all our sin to the cross so that we can experience reconciliation with
God and an outflow of his blessings. As Jesus came as a gift to the world to
reveal God, so Jesus calls us to live as his gift to the world as his Body, giving
the world a glimpse of what the kingdom of heaven looks like through our lives;
the already not-yet kingdom that will be completely realised when Jesus returns
to claim his bride. When we pour out our lives, using our gifts to bless
others, we’re also blessed. When we invest in other people, we experience
blessings as we see them become blessings to even more people, creating a
spirit of abundance and health.
Our lives glorify God in how we carry out our roles, using our gifts to point to his grace and blessing
as we live faithfully in exile, seeking the shalom of our cities. Just as Jesus
came as a gift to the world to take our sin to the cross and reveal God’s
amazing grace and faithfulness and forgiveness, so we come as gifts to reveal
the already not-yet kingdom of God here. Stephan Grabill writes, “This faithful
living is a leading issue of our time. And this point brings us back to the
big picture. Things operate out of sense of purpose and toward a specific end
in God’s economy. But we need eyes to see this new world picture and patience
to take the long view.” As you journey through life, see the wonder of the
world around us, look for the image of God in others, and explore how your
gifts can bring peace and prosperity.
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