Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 | Luke 17:11-19
Jeremy Richards
Audio recording: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/10-13-19-3-years-later-jeremy-richards/id1479727299?i=1000453370711
3 years ago, almost to the day, on Sunday, October 9th, 2016, I walked through the doors of this church as a pastoral candidate – wearing a suit and tie – which was cause for the only harsh criticism I got that day – and my stomach full of butterflies. As I walked through the doors on the far right side, wondering if those were the right doors to enter through – something I’m sure all of us wondered the first time we came here – I wondered how this huge building could ever become familiar to me. As I met new person after new person – people I hoped would soon be my congregation – I wondered how I’d ever remember all your names, how I’d ever be comfortable with the title “pastor,” and how I’d ever get you to trust me enough to invite me into your lives.
I remember very little of the service itself because all I could think about was the manuscript in my hand – the sermon I would preach before this congregation, Grant Park Baptist Church, asked me to step out of the room so they could vote and decide my future. Would this be my new home, these people my new community? Or had Brie and I prematurely moved out to Portland, Oregon and maybe we should’ve had some more definite plans before doing so.
Before I got up to preach, George Tipp, who was sitting behind me, told me that I should at least take off my jacket. “Look around,” he said, “do you see anyone else wearing a suit and tie?!” (For those of you who weren’t here that day, you’re probably shocked at the idea that I would ever be over dressed).
In the painstaking weeks leading up to that Sunday, I had agonized over what Scripture to preach on. Brie, in her infinite wisdom, looked up the lectionary passage for that Sunday, the eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, year C, and read out loud the very passages we heard today. She read Jeremiah’s directions for the Israelites exiled in 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.” What a beautiful mission statement for a church – to grow roots in the city, to pray for it, to seek it’s welfare; not to stand apart from the people and places that surround us, but to intertwine our lives with theirs. Of course, it was the perfect passage to preach on on my candidating Sunday.
I made a point then, as I will now, to acknowledge that our context is very different than Jeremiah’s and the exiles to whom he spoke. For us, to build houses and plant gardens in Portland seems pretty appealing. Most of us live here because we want to I’d guess. Some of us were born and raised here. Our roots have always been here.
The Israelites, on the other hand, were captives. They didn’t want to be in Babylon, and the people who inhabited the city Jeremiah told them to pray for, the people they were supposed to seek the welfare of, were not hip millennials, or old school, eccentric Portland weirdos, or new techy transplants from Silicon Valley. They were their enemies. Psalm 137 expresses, in gruesome detail, how most of the exiles felt about their Babylonian captors, “O daughter of Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!” I find this to be one of the most disturbing passages in all of the Bible. I’m hoping none of us feel that way about our Portland neighbors, no matter how eccentric they are.
So, it’s always important to note the way that our contexts differ from those who wrote scripture and the audience they were addressing, but, at the same time, there are points of resonance. Just because there are differences doesn’t mean there aren’t connections.
3 years ago, I said:
In this passage Jeremiah is acknowledging the importance of rootedness. The need to plant oneself in a community, and become part of that community. Equally importantly, he encourages the exiles to seek the peace – the welfare – of their community. Don’t circle the wagons. Don’t disengage. Don’t wait until your back in Jerusalem to begin living your life. Live your life now with the people around you, in the context you find yourself in.
This is where we can relate. This is where Jeremiah’s message reaches us as well. Jeremiah, presumably speaking for God, recognizes the need for all people to build community, to connect to specific places, to build a life that is dependent on others, but also reaches beyond its own wellbeing and seeks the wellbeing of its entire city – it’s entire eco system – people, yes, but also plants and animals and air and earth.
It’s not enough to simply hold out – God wants us, like the Israelites in Babylon, to thrive. To eat well, to celebrate marriages, to be joined with those who are like us and those who are not like us. To seek the welfare of our city and those in it, which means the rich and the poor, the young and the old, the black and the white, the indigenous and the foreigner, the gay and the straight, the cisgendered and the transgendered, the citizen and the refugee and the immigrant. To care about the Colombia and the Willamette and Forest Park.
Jeremiah is telling the Isrealites that their quality of life is tied up in the life of their city. Jeremiah is telling us that our wellbeing is directly tied to the wellbeing of Portland, Oregon.
3 years ago, I preached on this passage, and I celebrated the fact that Grant Park Baptist Church had been seeking the welfare of the city of Portland for 90 years before I came, and (assuming you’d call me to be your pastor, which you did, thanks be to God) I also encouraged us to look ahead to what it would mean to seek the welfare of Portland in 2016 and the years that would follow.
I love the idea that every three years, the lectionary will return to this passage, as a kind of touchstone – to look back since the last time we read these words, “seek the welfare of the city…and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare,” and to see how we’ve done that, and then to look forward and dream of what might happen in the next three years before we read it again.
As I reflect on the last 3 years, I’m really impressed by the ways we’ve taken Jeremiah’s words to heart. We have “multiplied.” Quite a few of you weren’t here on that first Sunday of mine, but as we’ve sought the peace of the city you’ve come alongside us and joined us. You’ve become part of us. We have, indeed, taken wives (and husbands!) and had sons and daughters. We’ve celebrated the marriages of Shelley and Yovanny, and Katie and Collin. We’ve been blessed with the births of Noah, Jac, and Esther.
We’ve also lost a few beloved members. We’ve mourned the death of Hal Hay, and more recently Jim Lang. We’ve had a few people leave because they disagreed with the direction we took at different times, and that hurts. We feel the absence of George and Shirley, and Anita, who are rarely able to make it to services anymore.
We’re preparing to lose two pillars of our church to the city of Indianapolis. Shelley and Yovanny have certainly been people who seek the peace of their city – Shelley serving as a chaplain at the VA and Yovanny gracing congregations throughout the city, ours included, with beautiful music. I think it’s safe to say that I would never have gotten to the doors of this church 3 years ago if Shelley hadn’t been the head of the search committee, and I’m not sure I’d have made it 3 years as a new pastor if she hadn’t led my pastoral relations committee. We can never replace the two of you, but we’ll do our best to make due in your absence. I have no doubt that you’ll continue to be instruments of peace in your new home. Indianapolis will be the better for it, and Portland the lesser.
And we have sought the welfare of our city over the past three years. We’ve continued to host numerous neighborhood organizations, something that was going on long before I came. Most recently we’ve welcomed the Portland Lesbian Choir to practice here every Wednesday evening. We’ve done our best to be gracious landlords and to care for the tenants who occupy our space and make it into a community that extends beyond just our congregation.
One of our most important and intentional steps in seeking the welfare of our city over the past three years was our unanimous decision to join the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists (AWAB), so that those of us who identify as LGBTQIA+ know that this is a safe place for you, that we value you, and that we don’t just tolerate you, we need you. We’re incomplete without you.
We also began to look outside our church and explore how we could go out and seek the welfare of the city, and not just invite others in. We committed to volunteering once a month with the Northwest Children’s Outreach. We regularly join Fremont UMC at the Northeast Emergency Food Pantry. We’ve hosted a Portland Backpack event in our fireside room and we’ve volunteered with L’Arche’s Christmas Tree lot. We created a benevolence fund to help people in need. Just this week I put up a family of 4 in a hotel for 2 nights.
We’re currently working on developing a more intentional children’s ministry so that we can raise young ones who seek the welfare of this city. We’re also in the midst of raising money for the Cupcake Girls and considering officially partnering with them, because we know that seeking the welfare of our city means caring for the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs of its residents, especially those who are marginalized or oppressed.
Three years ago, when I preached here for the first time with shaky hands and I’m sure a tremor in my voice, I never could have guessed what form “seeking the welfare of the city” would take over the following 3 years, and now that we stand on the other end of those three years, it seems clear that God has led us. We couldn’t have guessed how our path would unfold, but I think we can confidently say that we have, indeed, sought the welfare of our city.
I do want to be clear about one thing, I’m not saying look at all the things I’ve done since I became the pastor of Grant Park Church. These are things we’ve done together, and they never would have gotten done without all of you – from the Board to the worship committee to the AWAB discernment committee to the pastoral relations committee to Sunday volunteers – we are the church together.
As we continue to grow – and we are growing, in numbers, in spiritual depth, in community commitments – we’ll continue to need new people to step up, take ownership in the church, and lead us forward.
For example, a few Board members’ terms are ending at the end of this calendar year, and we may need replacements. We’re developing a new children’s ministry and that will require committed volunteers. We’re in the midst of forming a new ministry team that will help coordinate our various ministries: children and adult education, service projects, partnerships, worship planning – we need people on that team. It would be great if one day we had small groups who met throughout the city to do Bible studies or book studies and to pray together – but we’ll need small group leaders to do that.
Thinking back on all that God has done in the last 3 years really is incredible. I can’t believe all that’s happened, and I can’t wait to see what God does in the next 3 years through all of us working together, as we continue to seek the welfare of Portland, OR. Here’s to three more years, and three more years after that, and three more years after that, and three more years after that…