“Welfare of the City” based on Psalm 66:1-12 and Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

Jeremiah is the prophet of doom. His ministry was in the time immediately before the exile and he spends a whole lot of time telling people that unless they turn things around TERRIBLE things are going to happen. And then they do.

Jerusalem is besieged. Jerusalem falls. The temple is destroyed. There are mass casualties. There is extensive looting. The walls and gates are destroyed. The wealthy, the literate, the educated, and the powerful are taken captive and marched to Babylon and those who are left behind have nothing except tears and hunger.

Those who are taken to Babylon say:

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? (Psalm 137:1-4)

But the prophet Jeremiah is not done being a prophet. His work didn’t end with destruction and despair. He writes to the captives in Babylon and tells them what he hears God saying to them. And I believe that what he wrote is not what anyone expected to hear:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 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. 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 29:5-7)

That is, as one commentator puts it, “the exiles are enjoined to find their life now in this new and difficult place, assured by the command of God that life is possible, that home and family, food and shelter, the things that support and keep human beings human are possible – and over the long haul.”1 Those very same people who couldn’t find it in their hearts to sing the songs of God, are told to settle in. They’re told, explicitly, to LIVE. To live in the face of death. To live despite death. To keep alive the visions and promises of God in the midst EVEN when many of them thought they were in exile as punishment from God.

To make it worse, they’re told to seek the welfare of the city. The city of BABYLON. The capital city of the people who had defeated them, killed their beloveds, destroyed their temple, and ransacked their city. “Seek the welfare of the city.”

I can imagine the exiles reading the letter and muttering in response. “Seek the welfare of the city? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Why would I want to help them? And, wait a minute, we’re going to be here so long we’re supposed to build houses and get married???? I want to go HOME, I don’t want to settle in. And I sure as all get out don’t want to use my life to help THEM.”

I do not think the response of the exiles is unreasonable. It does seem important to note that the exiles were CAPTIVES but not slaves. They were not free to go home, but they were not owned by someone else. They couldn’t go home, but they could do other things. Right? They could build homes, they could plant gardens, they had enough freedom to live and make choices to thrive. This is a hard ask that God made, but it is NOT an impossible one. (That is, this isn’t the same as if God had told those who had been ripped from their homes and enslaved in our country to work for the well-being of our country.)

The people are told, literally “in its welfare shall be your welfare.”2 But we can still miss something with that literal translation, because the “welfare” is really shalom. Shalom is sometimes translated “peace” but is about common well-being. Shalom is simultaneously communal and individual, it is physical and spiritual, it is well-being and wholeness, it is peace and hope.

They are told, “Jews in exile are to work for the well-being (shalom) of the empire and its capital city. The well-being (shalom) of Judah is dependent upon and derivative of that of Babylon.”3 They weren’t given space to abdicate responsibility, they weren’t permitted to just sit tight and dream of going home. They were asked to include the city of their captors in their experience of communal wellbeing/shalom. They were asked to expand the definition of who mattered. Because if shalom is communal, then you work for your siblings well being because it is inter-related with your well-being. The ancient Jews knew that. But now they’re asked to inter-relate beyond their community, to include the people around them EVEN when they REALLY don’t want to for GOOD reason.

There is, of course, truth in this commandment. The people were living in the cities of Babylon. They were interconnected with their neighbors, as the people did better or worse, that applies to the Babylonians and the exiles in equal measure. For the people in exile to survive long enough to go home, this was good advice that kept them alive. But it was really hard.

I’m pretty sure a whole lot of them weren’t sure they wanted to on living. “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” Or, at most, they wanted to go through the motions of eating and sleeping and surviving day to day, but not really commit. Not plan for the future. Not sign contracts, or invest in building materials, or envision the next generation. They just wanted to make it through the day and hope the next day was the day they got to go home.

I can relate. I just want to go back to a time when my nation was imperfect and unjust but seemed like it was trying to get better. I want to go back to immigration policies that didn’t feel particularly humane, but didn’t choke me with their disregard for human dignity. I want to go back to SNAP benefits that didn’t make it through the month, but made it through at least 3 weeks for those who are hungry. I want to go back to debates over if people have to make wedding cakes for weddings they judge instead of debates over conversation therapy. I want to close my eyes and open them and be back in the world I knew, where there was SO MUCH to do and so many issues at stake but at least we weren’t racing backwards on justice.

And I hear these words of Jeremiah to the people in exile,

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.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. 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 29:5-7)

LIVE, says God. See what is going on, and work for it to be better, but LIVE. Don’t stick your head in the sand, don’t wait for things to be better before you engage. Engage NOW. Life NOW. I hear God saying, “my work hasn’t stopped.”

The exile was, for those who lived it, a nightmare.

The exile was also the time when the Hebrew Bible was written down. It was a time when Jewish identity solidified. It was a time when cultures influenced each other. It was a time when Judaism expanded, permanently, from its homeland into the world. It was TERRIBLE for those who lived it, and the ways the people responded have been a gift to the world ever since. The exiles were still an imperative part of God’s work in the world, and of the future of the Jewish faith. In ways they could never have imagined, “The Exile is the place where God’s faithful promises work a profound newness.”4

We are living in a hard time, and day by day things get harder. To be honest, all the injustices we see now are harder version of things that have always been in our society. There have always been ways that people have been treated as expendable. There has always been colonialism, particularly with regard to Native Americans. Racism is built into the roots of our country. There has always been xenophobia. There has always been transphobia. The same brokenness is just enlarging.

And in the midst of it, in the midst of our exile, God calls on us anyway. We are to hold on to the dreams of the kindom. We are to work together for common good. We are to bring people together. We are to follow the leadership of people who are most impacted by injustice. We are to hold on to hope. We are to believe that something else is possible, that God wants a different way of being, and that we are able to be a part of making it happen together.

We are to build houses and live in them, to plant gardens and eat their fruit, to celebrate love and welcome new life, to remember that we are all interconnected. And for us today, like for the exiles Jeremiah wrote to, that means seeking the well-being (shalom) of those who got us in this mess. Justice is for everyone, for everyone, for everyone, and justice isn’t justice if anyone is left out.

And we may be like those exiles. We may not see the difference it makes to keep the faith, to work together, to care. But it mattered what they did, and it matters what we do, and God was with them, and God is with us, and by the grace of God this too shall pass. When it passes, may the work we do to build communal shalom be a part of creating a better world for all of God’s children. Amen

1Patrick D. Miller “Jeremiah” in New Interpreter’s Bible Vol. 6, ed. Leander E. Keck et al (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), p. 792.

2John Bright, “Jeremiah” a book in The Anchor Bible series, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1965), p. 208.`W

3Walter Brueggemann, Jeremiah 26-32: To Build, to Plant, (International-Theological Commentary) ed. Federick Carlson Holmgren and George A. F. Knight, (Grand Rapids: Wm E. Eerdman Publishing, 1991), p. 32.

4Brueggemann, 30.

Rev. Sara E. Baron 
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 
Pronouns: she/her/hers 
http://fumcschenectady.org/ 
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

October 12, 2025