“Jeremiah’s Letter to Exiles” Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14

 I’ll let you in on a secret that I have learned after more than a decade in the pulpit and planning worship. Church folks love preparing for Christmas. We love to decorate the sanctuary and sing the Christmas carols. We like the special events and the Christmas pagents. But I’m not so sure that we love Advent.

Now yes, do we do all of those things during the season of Advent. Yes, we do. But that isn’t what the season of Advent is actually about. It’s not about decorating or signing our favorite hymns or even the Christmas pagents. It’s not about preparing the outer world or even the sanctuary. It’s about preparing our hearts. 

And that - that is hard work. Hence, why it may not be our favorite thing. 

Have you ever noticed what color we use to denote this part of our Christian calendar? Purple. Do you know what other season in the Church year is also purple? Lent. That’s because they are similar in more ways then just preparing us for the big holidays to come - Christmas and Easter. They are actually both a season of prayer, penance, and sacrifice. The last two words - not our favorite words. 

Yet, prayer, penance, and sacrifice are critical to this season that literally means coming and arrival. I want you to think about a long road trip that you have taken. What did you do to prepare? You probably planned out a route. Before the days of GPS there was MapQuest. Before their was MapQuest you got out the atlas and asked folks for a good set of directions. But you have to prepare what way you will go.

What happens if you don’t prepare? Well, in my own life, when my brothers and I were in elementary school, my parents thought it would be a good idea to load up a mini-van with six people and drive to Disney World. Friends, I do not even think we made it out of the state with those coveted, hand-written directions given by a friend, before we got lost. And ended up on someone’s buffalo farm. When we do not prepare, we will not get where we want to go. We may have all of the best intentions in the world, but intentions do not take us the destination alone. We  intended to get to Disney World, but we had to get back to a main road and try again. 

Advent and Lent are the place where our intentions get some more behind them. These are the seasons that invite us to deeply examine our faith lives and get the places where maybe we’ve veered a little off the road, back on track. 

And that means even if it isn’t our favorite season, friends, it is always worth it.

Along with that list of things we lovingly impose about Advent are our favorite scriptures. We love to hear the story of Jesus being born - but not so much the writings of the Hebrew Scriptures that remind us why we needed a Savior to come in the first place. 

And just like it is worth it to examine our lives, it is worth it to enter into the season of Advent with these sacred scriptures, even if they are not always the ones that we associate with our favorite parts of the season. 

With that in mind - let us turn to the scripture before us, from the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah was one of the major prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures. We know a little more about Jeremiah than some of the other prophets, because he tells bits and pieces of his story throughout his writings. 

After King Solomon died, Israel as a kingdom becomes split. You have what becomes known as the northern Kingdom, sometimes referred to as Israel, and then Judah in the south. But the northern kingdom was captured by Assyria. As Assyria started to decline in its power, the king of Judah, Josiah, tried to move into the Northern Kingdom and bring reform. But when he died, the people, including Judah, ended up being captured by Babylonia. And eventually, Babylonia even took the city of Jerusalem. 

Jeremiah was the prophet during this heartbreaking time in history. And he had to give up a lot in order to do so. He didn’t have a wife. He never had children. The people he was sent to hated him. He was threatened. All because he had some really hard words to say to folks who really didn’t want to hear any of it. 

And part of that message that the exiles didn’t want to hear was this. Settle in. This isn’t going to be a short time. Make a home for yourselves in a place that both doesn’t feel like your home and literally isn’t your home. Marry, have children - just like when you were slaves in Egypt long ago. And seek the well being of Babylon - because this is where you are for the time being. 

You can understand why it would have been much more appealing to the false prophets and magicians, right? They brought a message that this really wasn’t going to last much longer. But Jeremiah brought the true message of God. 

Also, Jeremiah tells folks that this would be a really good time to reflect on their relationship with God. They can no longer do the things that they made important as a way to express their faith, but instead have to get to the heart of what faith really means. In other words, faith isn’t tied to a specific place, rather a relationship to God. 

Friends, as counter intuitive as it may seem, Jeremiah was bringing the people a word of hope. Sometimes, we like the exiles, think that hope means that anything uncomfortable that we experience will end quickly. But really, hope is a feeling of expectation. Hope is rooted in trust. And Jeremiah brings the message of hope that this time will not last forever, but they can expect that this experience will radically shift their relationship to God and dependance upon him. 

That is what this first Sunday of Advent is marked by, dear brothers and sisters. Hope. Not a false hope, but the true hope of God. We are expectantly waiting for our Savior to return, yet as we wait, we know that this time is going to shape and form us. It will draw us closer in our relationship with God.

If we let it. 

Like the exiles, we may want to rush through this season of waiting. But, this is the moment, right here and right now, where God will meet us. If only we open up our hearts.

Will you pray with me….