Pray for the Shalom of the City: Reflections on Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

"Seek the shalom of the city where I have exiled you, and pray to YHWH on its behalf, because in its shalom you will find your shalom" (Jer. 29:7). Pray to YHWH for the shalom, the peace and welfare and soundness, of Babylon, the pagan center of all things we know as evil? What can Jeremiah mean by that astonishing request? Because YHWH is in fact God of Babylon, too, not the so-called mighty Marduk living at the top of the great building in the city, it means that YHWH has deep concern for Babylon, the place where YHWH's people now live and will live for many years. Rather than hold their noses in horror at the pagans who would taint them, YHWH says they must pray for them, because all are in the world of YHWH together. This is nothing less than a call for the exiled Judeans to open their lives and hearts to the people among whom they now have been forced to live. Rather than close their lives to the Babylonians, Jeremiah asks them to open up their lives and to learn and grow in the new reality of Babylon.

Jeremiah concludes this portion of his brief note by warning the exiles not to listen to other so-called prophets and diviners who speak a different word, words presumably that would urge them to keep to themselves, to insist on their own rightness and righteousness, to attack any who would dare to act and believe differently than they do (Jer. 29:8-9). YHWH did not send them, says Jeremiah, and if they prophesy in the name of YHWH, they are lying.

How current all of this sounds to my 21^st-century ears. In a world of increasing diversity where so many find themselves exiled from what they know, from what they have done, from their familiar actions in the world, how are we who are in power in these places to react to their presence among us? And how are they to live in their new place? In Dallas, TX 229 different first languages are spoken; exiles are living here in huge numbers. Jeremiah asks them to pray for the shalom of their new home, while I am asked to open up my lives to them. Only in these ways may we all discover the full shalom of the world of God.