Stephan Zweig was an early 20th century German poet. Although he was Jewish by background, he was not a religious person. As a young man, he served in the German military, where he witnessed first-hand the horrors of the First World War.

The trauma of this experience threw him back on the faith of his ancestors —
at least as a source of poetic inspiration
and as a resource for resisting the violence of German nationalism.

He was drawn in particular to the prophet Jeremiah.
In 1917 Zweig wrote a dramatic poem entitled, Jeremiah: A Drama in Nine Scenes. The central themes of the play were derived from the 29th chapter of the prophetic book — the very same verses we read just a few moments ago. This text, or at least the sentiment behind it might be familiar to some of you: seek the peace of the city, build houses, plant gardens, etc.

But in the context of the book of Jeremiah, this was anything but a quaint notion about being a good citizen. The people of God had just suffered a massive and humiliating defeat at the hands of the more powerful pagan empire of Babylon.
With the destruction of the monarchy and the temple, it left the political and religious future of Jerusalem in profound jeopardy.
After militarily defeating the nation of Judah, the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, had begun a process of deporting God’s people from their homes in Judah — to Babylon.

This deportation process was still underway when the book of Jeremiah was written. Thus, there would have been a significant number of Israelites still living in Jerusalem as well as a significant number who had already been deported to Babylon.
As you can imagine, the traumatic effect of this defeat would have left the people of Israel with a serious identity crisis.
Who was Israel without it’s land (without the promised land!)
And what was Israel’s faith without a king and a temple?
Those who remained in Judah and those who were sent to Babylon would have each been wrestling with this reality.

We could imagine that those who remained in Judah would have seen themselves as the true remnant who were to rebuild and continue to live as God’s people.
While those sent into exile would have longed for a return to their home — to Zion.

Psalm 137 gives voice to precisely this longing:
By the rivers of Babylon—
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
…
How could we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.

***

Jeremiah 29 is composed as a kind of “pastoral letter” that the prophet writes to the people of Judah. But he writes it not to those still living in Jerusalem, but to those living in the pagan land of Babylon.

seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, [Jeremiah says] and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare

The welfare (the shalom) that Jeremiah is calling God’s people to seek is not the shalom of Jerusalem. It is not the Shalom of Israel alone, but the peace and well-being of the cities of their conquering enemies. It was in the well-being of the pagan cities of Babylon that the people of God were to find their well-being.

God’s people were still called to be a holy people, a people set apart. But they were not to find their distinctiveness through a national identity, the power of a military, or the building of a temple. They were instead to be a source of hope and justice within their cities and neighbourhoods. To be set apart as a source of blessing within and for — the world.

This is the message that Stephan Zweig found so compelling in Jeremiah. He saw Jeremiah’s pastoral advice to the exiled population of Judah as the opportunity to witness to an extraordinary peace that a people could inhabit, even amidst exile and displacement.

One of the key scenes in the play depicts the Babylonians gazing confusedly at the conquered people of Israel — who somehow did not act as though they were a conquered people.

We are the victors, they the defeated...
an invisible force must sustain them
What sustains them is their faith in the invisible God

See how they are walking to meet the sun.
His light shines on their foreheads,
and they themselves
shine with the strength of the sun.
Mighty must their God be!

“They themselves shine with the strength of the sun.” According to Zweig, this is what the Babylonian neighbours of the exiled Judaens were saying about them. Their faces appeared to glow: as though, like Moses, they were seeing God face to face. But this brightness of the sun that was reflected in their faces was seen even as they tended their gardens, built their houses, shopped for their produce, walked to work, looked after their children.
In these small acts of every day life their witness was as bright as the sun. See how they go with their faces to the sun. Mighty must be their God!

Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder sees Zweig as one of the most faithful and insightful interpreters of the book of Jeremiah. For, in Zweig’s interpretation, what we encounter is not just the description of an unfortunate detour that God’s people must follow on their way towards redemption, but a description of the new and normative context for faithful existence.

What I mean by that is, instead of seeing exile as a punishment, it can more appropriately be seen as a matter of grace — the Judeans are freed of the trappings of power and the temptations of established religion. They are enabled to see what obedience to God looks like without such distractions. Obedience to God, in other words, was not about maintaining an elaborate system of worship or a royal political ideology. It was about being a presence of hope and blessing right where they were — in a foreign land, without political power.

Exile was an opportunity for God’s people to be God’s people.

The move to Babylon was not a two-generation parenthesis, [says Yoder,] after which the Davidic or Solomonic project was supposed to take up again where it had left off. It was rather the beginning, under a firm fresh prophetic mandate, of a new phase of the Mosaic project.

The failure of Israel as a military and political force, Yoder is saying, is not the same thing as the failure of the plan God had set into motion during the Exodus from Egypt. Out of the ashes of the Israelite State came the possibility of something new — out of exile came the possibility of another exodus.

To live in exile, on the model of Jeremiah, is not to cease to the people of God. It is to cease to exercise political power. It is a matter of living without sovereignty, and without force. Exile in this way has become the new context of faithful existence. To live this existence, to quote Yoder again,

will sometimes mean humbly building a grassroots culture, with Jeremiah. Sometimes (as with Joseph.; and Daniel) it will mean helping the pagan king solve one problem at a time. Sometimes (again as with Daniel and his friends) it will mean disobeying the King's imperative of idolatry, refusing to be bamboozled by the claims made for the Emperor's new robe or his fiery furnace.

The kind of post-Christendom Christianity that the Jeremiah Community is called to, then, is not completely new. It is part of a subversive legacy which our exiled fore bearers have left to us. This epoch of decreased political power for the church, and the increased secularization of culture, along with the general sense that faithful existence needs to be rethought — this can be a hopeful time if we remain resilient enough, imaginative enough to embrace it.

And so, as we seek the peace of this city — beginning in Parkdale
Let it not be said of us: “They are noble,”
But that, like the exiles in Babylon, that there is an invisible force that sustains them.
May it be said of us:
They go with their faces to the sun.”
As we plant garden beds and help to build organizations that support the security, health, and well-being of this neighbourhood.
Let it not be said of us: “They are wise”
May it be said of us:
“They go with their faces to the sun.”
As we dwell deeper with one another in hospitality and contemplation
Let it not be said of us: “They are religious”
But that they are drawn by a force that is drawing the whole world toward redemption.
May it be said of us:
“They go with their faces to the sun.”
And as we embrace the reality of exile, of a Christianity without Christendom,
Let it not be said of us: “They are innovators”
But that they are prayerful listeners to one and the same Spirit that inspires the whole church.
May it be said of us:
“They go with their faces to the sun”
Amen.