Jeremiah’s call to build, invest, transform, and work for the peace and prosperity of the city is a powerful undermining of the people of God’s understanding of their exile. Instead of God offering to end their exile, Jeremiah offers another vision: settle in, learn to become the people of God again, where you are, just as you are by recognizing that there is no “Us vs. Them.” This call builds on the scripture’s view of recognizing the human dignity of the other, seeing the other as sharing in your own humanity, invoking the Southern African concept of Ubuntu. This is what theologians call the shalom of God, recognizing and identifying with the suffering of the other as if it is your own. To become a church that seeks the peace and prosperity of the city requires the same reorientation that the exiled people of God received in Jeremiah 29. As churches, we are invited to see and trust that God has called us to be the people of God in a particular community at a particular time inviting us to practice a theology of incarnation.
When God calls us, it is a call to a place and time and our first step in seeking the peace and prosperity of that place begins with a period of discovery. Uncovering and discovering those who have been systematically excluded from thriving because of their legal status, criminal status, socio-economic status, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or race. This call can be disorienting because it causes us as the church to embrace the suffering of the other as an aspect of our own well-being. This is the biblical idea of shalom. Simply put, this is the realization of “love your neighbor as yourself,” or even, “love your enemy as yourself.” While Jeremiah is not as explicit in his call to the exiled people, Jeremiah does lay the foundation on which Jesus will call his disciples and his church to follow him through the narrow gate into life2 by starting to see the other as ourselves. This is our biblical mandate as churches that seek the peace and prosperity of the city.
As we engage this work and discover the systematic exclusion of others, we are invited to respond through the biblical call to lament. As lament allows us to see the places of deep pain, suffering, and injustice, which compel us to call out to God for help. There is a danger in acting before engaging in lament. The peace we seek may be shallow, and consequently the church inadvertently perpetuates the system of oppression. By minimizing and trying to contain the sorrow and suffering that the church seeks to upend, the church confuses its action and work with prosperity or progress at the expense of those at the margins.
The full paper is attached to this post.
