The Work Before Us

Hopefully you made it through the Thanksgiving holiday and are still on speaking terms with family members. In the week leading up to the holiday, mental health professionals were busy proffering suggestions on how to keep your gathering from becoming an episode of Crossfire.  I spent some time trying to imagine how it might have gone if my mom and dad had been present at our house and the topic of the election came up.  With my mom a dedicated, outspoken democrat and my dad a committed conservative, I can tell you that before doling out turkey and stuffing, I would have made sure I had a first aid kit close by!

The divisions we face in our nation go right through families, neighborhoods, and churches. A vast gulf separates us from those we love who stand on the other side of the political spectrum.

And yet, for all the tension, anxiety, and disagreement we face in our times, what's happening now pales in comparison to the reality faced 2600 years ago by the Hebrews who had their families, neighborhoods and religious community split apart in ways we can't even begin to imagine. The cause of this schism wasn't an election, but an invasion.

In the year 598 BC, the people of Judah were living under a king named Jehoiachin who took over when his father died a year earlier. Unfortunately for Jehoiachin,  shortly before his dad died, his dad had disrespected the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. So Nebuchadnezzar invades Judah and carts off a significant portion of its citizens to Babylonia.

The entire national fabric of Judah gets torn in two. It's a time of unprecedented calamity for the Hebrew people.  And during that time, God speaks through a prophet named Jeremiah, who writes an extraordinary letter to the exiles who now find themselves living in a strange land.

In that letter, God tells the Hebrews:  "Build houses and settle down; marry and have sons and daughters. Also, 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" (Jeremiah 29:5-7).

This is to be your home, God says. And your task is to seek the welfare of the city. Invest your lives where I have placed you.

Notice God doesn't say, "Seek your own welfare," but the welfare of the entire city, a city that includes people you don't like, agree with, or even want to be with. Stop seeing it as "us vs. them," God says.  Your well-being is inextricably bound with those you consider as "other," as "not us."

Putting it in our vernacular, God is saying work across the divides.  Build bridges.  Seek common ground. Expand your vision from the ideologies that divide you.  All of you who call me God need to work together as a collective enterprise.

Through Jeremiah, God was challenging the Hebrews to move from a dualistic way of thinking that says, "what's good for them is bad for us" and vice versa to a non-dual way of thinking that understands we are all in this together.

This is certainly a message I have felt impressed upon me internally since the election. I am deeply convinced that while a national election is profoundly important, what we elect to do every day is even more important.  The welfare of our community, state, nation and even the world will be decided by people choosing daily to invest in its well being. In the normal events of life, community well being is enhanced or diminished. Our daily conversations, actions, and decisions either build up the community we all share or they help to tear it down.

My commitment is to take that truth even more seriously. Seeking the welfare of the city for me means seek the welfare of those who have been historically oppressed and marginalized in our culture. It means standing in solidarity with my Muslim brothers and sisters in opposition to Islamophobia and with people of color who continue to suffer under our culture's systemic racism. I am determined to become a more staunch advocate for racial justice and for providing a hospitable climate for people who feel stigmatized as being a threat or as being not us.

How you seek the welfare of our nation might look far different.  But the underlying principle will be the same.  We are all in this together and the God who formed us all has sent us out to be forces that seek the well being of all.

Bryan Smith

Pastor, Geneva Presbyterian Church