Christmas 2 Year B
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Salvation
By Rich Gamble
Through all of Advent we celebrated hope and anticipation. Last week we talked about the light of the Christmas story cast against the shadow of Herod’s slaughter of innocent children.
Today’s scripture from Jeremiah is a song of salvation to an exiled people. In that both the salvation and the exile are important, just as the light and shadow of the Christmas story.
The people who lived in exile in Babylon had little about which to be hopeful. They were the remnant of a non-existent nation. They were followers of a God who didn’t stand up for them. Without religion, nation or place to call their own, the people living in captivity were lost and without hope.
Then comes this song of promise. God promises the people home, security, and prosperity. They are going to participate in a giant homecoming parade, and this parade is not just for the young and strong but for the vulnerable and weak as well.
This homecoming and happy life comes to the people of the exile not because they are good people, or sufficiently chastised, it comes because that is the way God wants it. As such it is not tentative but an assured promise.
In our world exile is a good description of the place we find ourselves. If ever we think that we are running the show then something like our economic crisis happens to remind us that we are not. When our economy started to take a nose dive the first thing that happened was that citizens were taxed 700 billion dollars so that bankers could continue to live extremely well. Half of that 700 billion is spent and no one seems to be able to answer the question, what did we get for the money?
350 Billion dollars could have ended homelessness in America and fed all the hungry people in the world to boot. Instead it just disappeared. Investors got their dividends, managers got their bonuses but poor and working class people got zip.
The car makers who ignored the need to build economical and environmentally sound cars went into overwhelming debt and our government doesn’t want to bail them out so much that it gets in the way of those companies to use the power of the bankruptcy laws to reduce the benefits owed to the workers. Greedy and careless bankers get bonuses but rank and file car makers can’t be allowed to get decent retirement benefits.
More and more of the “boomer” generation is going to have to continue working into their 70’s because retirement is no longer an option.
Most of us want a meaningful job, a decent place to live, a safe community, good education for our children, safe food, clean water, decent healthcare. We want to have time to spend with our children, time to care for our parents, and time to enjoy a retirement. We want to leave the world better for our children. People all over the world hunger for these simple pleasures and instead most of us have few of these things and our children will have less.
Why?
We are told that the answers are complex. We are told that the forces in charge of things are creating the best of all possible worlds but the immigrants, the terrorists, the people of some other religion, the people of some other nation, the “evil doers” are gumming up the works. We are told that if we kill more evil people, work longer hours for less pay, give the wealthy people more money, pump oil in more pristine areas, tax our children even more (debt), we may not be happier but we will help secure ourselves against something worse happening.
In other words, we are not in charge. Not only can we not get what we want (healthcare, retirement etc…) but have to sacrifice more to hold onto what little we have. We are exiles.
To quote a professor at the University of Southern California:
The top 10% have 85% to 90% of stock, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.
If we are not part of that 10%, and I think it is safe to say that no one here is, we are exiles.
Being an exile and being defined by that experience are too distinctly different things and that is the point of today’s reading.
The people in exile in the empire of Babylon are even more exiles than we here in today’s empire and yet, Jeremiah’s proclamation calls on them to see themselves not a victims of forces beyond their control but as people on the threshold of a journey of liberation.
As bad as things are, and it is important to see clearly the suffering of the world, the light of love and not the shadow of greed and violence is what defines us.
We are children of the promise and we are made so, not because we are Christian or Americans but because we are children of God. Humanity is being called to a homecoming.
Salvation in this text is not for the dead but for the living and the yet unborn. Salvation is found in being at peace with our neighbors and in having an abundance of the good things we need to have a good life.
Salvation is about being at home in the world. It is about laughter and contentment and hope for the future based on the joy of today.
We are not to be defined by the ever shrinking horizon of helpless exiles in a world ruled by the 10%. We are to be defined by the boundless possibilities found in a God who seeks joy for the most marginalized among us.
Salvation for us is a community in which everyone invited to shed their identity as exile and be embraced by the love of God, expressed in the tangible terms of housing, food, healthcare, acceptance of our differences, and peace.
This image of a joyous celebration of inclusion and plenty is what defines us as we journey away from the shadow of domination.
And that is good news.
