The Neighborhood Podcast

"Disicples Make the Best of Babylon" (October 12, 2025 Sermon)

• Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

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Preaching: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

Text: Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

What if the most faithful thing you can do in a hard season isn’t to escape, but to build right where you are? We open with Psalm 66’s arc from testing to rescue and move into Jeremiah’s letter to exiles—a bracing word for people who wanted quick deliverance and got practical instructions instead: build houses, plant gardens, multiply, and pray for the city’s welfare. It’s not surrender; it’s a strategy for resilient hope and shared flourishing.

We unpack the Babylonian exile as both a historical trauma and a living metaphor for moments when life feels foreign and control is thin. Rather than promise “help is on the way,” we tell the truth about slow arcs and real agency. That means naming what’s beyond us and then getting specific about what’s within reach: tending relationships, investing in neighborhoods, choosing generosity over grievance, and advocating for policies that widen the commons. Along the way, we explore how oppression impoverishes the whole community—using the shuttered public pools of the Jim Crow South as a stark example of zero-sum thinking that steals from everyone.

With a nod to Gandalf’s reminder that we don’t choose the times, only how we use them, we return to Jeremiah’s charge as a map for modern discipleship. If you feel like a stranger in your own city, this conversation offers grounded steps to re-engage: plant something that lasts, build something that serves, and pray in a way that propels you toward your neighbor. Join us, reflect on what you can control this week, and share one small act you’ll take. If this resonated, subscribe, leave a review, and pass it on to a friend who needs courage today.

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SPEAKER_00:

Let us pray. Sovereign God, though we are bound by many tethers. Your word is not changed. Set us free by this word, let loose in the world. By the power of your Holy Spirit. Make us worthy of your approval. Workers of the gospel, unashamed, unafraid, to share the truth made known to us. In Christ Jesus we pray. Amen. The first scripture is the book of Psalms, chapter 66, verses 1 through 12. We're going to read responsively. Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth. Sing the glory of his name. Give him glorious praise. Say to God, how awesome are your deeds. Because of your great power, your enemies cringe before you. All the earth worships you. They sing praises to you. Sing praises to your name. Come and see what God has done. He is awesome in his deeds among mortals. He turned the sea into dry land. They passed through the river on foot. There we rejoiced in him who rules by his might forever, whose eyes keep watch on the nations. Let the rebellious not exalt themselves. Bless our God, O peoples. Let the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept us among the living and has not let our feet slip. For you, O God, have tested us. You have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net. You laid burdens on our backs. You let people ride over our heads. We went through the fire and through water. Yet you have brought us out to a spacious place. Holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God.

SPEAKER_01:

So, yes, indeed, uh sometimes things do not work out the way that we plan. And speaking of, I was gonna have a really nice sermon for y'all today. But uh I I had a really crazy busy week, and I had really good intentions of waking up early this morning and finishing my sermon, and your pastor has completely slept through his alarm clock this morning. So, you all get to receive what I what I am referring to as uh hopefully not so random words from Pastor Stephen. So, this today's sermon is brought to you by the Holy Spirit and the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, and few sitters just like you. So bless what comes out of my mouth, and may I say nothing stupid. All right, so today's uh passage comes to us from the prophet Jeremiah. This is a continuation of our sermon series called What Disciples Do. And this passage comes to us from Jeremiah 29, verses 1 and then 4 through 7. Let us listen again for what God is saying to God's church. These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. 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. Friends, holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, O Lord. Our rock and our Redeemer. Amen. So, friends, it's it's really impossible to understand this passage without first understanding the context in which this letter was written. It was written in a time of tremendous trauma in the life of the Israelites, what we know of as the Babylonian captivity or the Babylonian exile. In the year five, I think it was 587 BC, the Babylonians conquered the Israelites under the leadership of their king Nebuchadnezzar. The Babylonians came in and they ransacked Jerusalem, they destroyed the temple, and almost, uhites, not all of them, but the lion's share, were taken into captivity as slaves and dispersed around the Babylonian territory. I say almost all of the Israelites, but not all, because Jeremiah, who was not a bullfrog, he was a prophet, uh stayed behind in Jerusalem. You see, when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem, they uh deported the Israelites that had you might consider marketable skills that would have helped uh fund the Babylonian Empire, your folks who were farmers or businessmen and women, and sent them off to help fund the Babylonian Empire, but uh prophets were not considered uh to be moneymakers. So Jeremiah stayed behind in Jerusalem with the remnants. So he sent this letter to his fellow Israelites who were taken from their homes and were living in a foreign land. You may remember the words of Psalm 137, by the waters of Babylon we wept. That's a story that comes to us that gives voice to the lament of those who had been taken from their home. So Jeremiah, back in Jerusalem, sent this letter to the Israelites. And my guess is that what the Israelites wanted to hear and what they ended up hearing were probably two very different things. I was thinking this week of the great movie uh Miss Doubtfire. Y'all ever seen the movie Miss Doubtfire? And towards the end of the movie is this really comical scene where Miss Doubtfire and Drag is in a restaurant and her family, or Miss Doubtfire's family doesn't know it, but they're on the other end of the restaurant, and Pierce Brosnan's character begins choking on something. And Miss Doubtfire is at the other end of the restaurant and sees that uh the person who is dating Robin Williams uh uh uh now ex is choking. So Miss Doubtfire begins to run across the restaurant in her British accent and says, Don't worry, dear, help is on the way. And I'm guessing that that's probably the message that the Israelites wanted to hear from Jeremiah is help is on the way. Don't worry, help is on the way. But that's not the message that Jeremiah sends. Instead, the message that Jeremiah sends in our southern vernacular may very well have been hunker down. It's gonna be a while. None of us in that situation ever want to hear that message. But Jeremiah says to them, let me pull it back up here on the screen, gives them some very concrete advice in captivity. He says to them, hunker down, that's the Stephen Fearing paraphrase of this passage. Build houses, live in them, plant gardens and eat what they produce. Build families, seek the welfare of your city, and in that, in your in this foreign context, in that city's welfare, you too will find your own welfare. So my curiosity this day is what this message says to us. My guess is that most of us in this room do not know the trauma of being physically displaced from our homes and forced elsewhere. There are those among us who know what that feels like. Tomorrow is Columbus Day, or as many have uh taken to celebrating Indigenous People's Day. So there are folks among us, our Native American friends, who know all too well what it feels like to be displaced from your home. My guess is that fortunately most of us don't know what that feels like. But we can use Babylon as disciples as a metaphor for any place where we feel like we are lost, any place that we can feel like we are abandoned or not wherever we want home to be. And I think that that metaphor can be applied in numerous circumstances. So I want us to be very clear about what this passage says and what this passage doesn't say. I don't think this passage is saying give up. I don't think this passage is saying if you can't beat them, join them. What I do think this passage is saying is that the moral arc of the universe is very long, but it bends towards justice. So my hope is that what you hear this day in this passage is that in whatever, in whatever Babylon that you feel that you are in in this moment, that you would know that we do have control over some things. I think what Jeremiah was saying to God's people, or what God was saying to God's people through Jeremiah, is that in times of disorientation, in times of anxiety, in times of fear, in times of violence, I think we are called as disciples to have the conversation inside of us to say, okay, what is it that I don't have control over? And what is it that I do have control over? And I think what Jeremiah was saying to God's people is, look, you all cannot make this horrible, traumatic experience come to an end like that. But you can choose to seek the welfare of yourself and the welfare of your enemies. That's a tricky topic. He's saying, build gardens, plant gardens, eat what they produce, build families, and seek the welfare of yourselves and your enemy. Y'all, I struggle with that. And I'm guessing you all do too. What it means in this polarized context in which we live to acknowledge that we are all in this together and that oppression hurts all of us together. You know, I was I was reading this last week a book called The Sum of Us, which is about systemic racism and how racism hurts all of us. Disproportionately our neighbors who are persons of color, absolutely, but all of us. And the and uh the metaphor that this book uses are public swimming pools. Back in the 50s, 60s, public swimming pools were the crown jewels of many southern cities, such as Greensboro, Atlanta, Birmingham. But when the federal government made the policy of integration, they the federal government said to these southern cities, including Greensboro, you have to integrate these public services such as swimming pools. And southern cities, many of them, rather than integrate these swimming pools, what do you think that these southern cities did? Closed them. In fact, they cemented them over and said, rather than integrate these public swimming pools, no one's gonna have them. So I think this is a really great example of how systems of oppression hurt all of us. And I think that's what Jeremiah was saying to the people is acknowledge what you don't have control over and acknowledge what you do have control over. Because disciples make the best of Babylon. So I hope that all of us together can be curious this week about what you don't have control over in this messed up, broken world in which we live, and think about what you do have control over. To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly in small ways. And I want to close today with this anecdote from the Lord of the Rings. When all else fails, and I don't know what to say from the pulpit, I just think, what would Jesus do and what would Gandalf do? And there's a moment in the Lord of the Rings when Frodo Baggins, that hobbit, is feeling totally overwhelmed by the brokenness of the world in which he finds himself. And he says something to the effect of Gandalf, I don't want to be here. I didn't sign up for this. I didn't sign up for the Babylonian captivity. That part is not in there, but I added that part. And Gandalf says something really prolific. He says something like, and so do all who find themselves in that position. None of us wish to be in broken systems and broken places, but he does say, what is ours to decide is what to do with the time that has been given to us. And I think that's the heart of this message from Jeremiah. Because disciples make the best of Babylon. So, friends, it may you may feel overwhelmed this week. If you do, guess what? You're in good company, your pastor feels that too. But know that we are called to make the best of Babylon and in ways big and small, to follow Christ in word and in deed, and to make the best of Babylon. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for that sermon and for that redeeming word for all of us, God's people. And may all of us, uh may all of us, God's beloved children, say Amen.