Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time October 9, 2016
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Luke 17:11-19

Blooming Where We’re Planted

How many of you were born in Greensboro and have lived here all your lives? Almost all of us are transplants who have come here from somewhere else, and I would guess that most of you are here because this is where you have chosen and want to be. The people that Jeremiah addresses, in our reading from Hebrew Scripture, were not so fortunate.

Some time after the Babylonian army had conquered Judah, in the sixth century before Christ, the king of Judah led a rebellion against the Babylonian overlords. The Babylonians retaliated by destroying Jerusalem and taking some ten percent of the population into exile in Babylon. Deportation of part of a population, by a conquering power, was common in the Ancient Near East. Those who were deported to Babylon included the royal family, leading citizens, religious leaders, the military— all those who were most likely to cause problems for their foreign rulers if they stayed in Jerusalem.

The prophet Jeremiah remained in Jerusalem to help the people who were still there rebuild their lives. Meanwhile, some exiled Jewish prophets began to predict an early return from Babylon, and to incite the exiles to rebel. Jeremiah hears of this and sends a letter to the exiles, harshly criticizing these “false prophets.” He believes, correctly, that it will be a long time before the exiles will return. He’s afraid that any further rebellion will bring about national destruction, and so he counsels the exiles: hold fast to the faith of your ancestors, and don’t anger your Babylonian masters. Instead, speaking for God, he gives them a biblical equivalent of the modern-day catch-phrase, “Bloom where you’re planted”:

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.

Even though the Babylonians were the “enemy,” even though they were the “other”— different in what they wore, and what they ate, how they lived, and who they worshiped— Jeremiah understood that when people live in the same community their well-being is interdependent.

God calls on the exiles to seek the welfare of, and pray for, the whole community, not just their own people. This counsel is just as important today as it was in Jeremiah’s time. It asks us to consider how we seek the welfare of this community— both those who are like us and those who are different— and how this might help us to find our own welfare.

Some years ago, I read a book titled Deeply Woven Roots: Improving the Quality of Life in Your Community. It’s author, Gary Gunderson, was Director of Operations for the Interfaith Health Program, of the Carter Center in Atlanta. Gunderson’s work came out of the growing awareness of the interconnectedness between faith and health. There is a lot of research that points to congregations as stable, long-term, preventive resources for families, youth, and adults, he writes, but . . . little research has examined the specific features of congregations that facilitate this. In other words, we know that congregations are good for us and our communities, we’re just not sure why. Gunderson’s book is an attempt to identify “why”— what are the specific features that make congregations beneficial, not only to their members, but to the health and well-being of the communities of which they are a part?

Gunderson tells us that, by the very nature of our life together as a congregation, we embody eight unique strengths that can contribute to the well-being of our community. What are these strengths? Congregations accompany, convene, and connect. They give sanctuary and context. They bless, pray, and persist. These are the channels along which we can expect to find God breaking into our midst and nurturing our communities toward life.

The first basic strength of congregations is to accompany. Congregations are communities that accompany their members through the passages of life. Outside of our immediate families, this commitment to accompany— to be with one another through all the stages, and all the ups and downs, of our lives— is unique to congregations. But how do we extend this strength beyond the church, building patterns of accompaniment in our wider community?

Gunderson sees five ways in which this happens. We can see all five of these patterns of accompaniment in our gospel story about the healing of the ten lepers. At the time of Jesus, lepers didn’t just have to deal with the physical effects of their disease, they faced a terrible social isolation. They were forced to live outside the cities and towns, to wear torn and filthy clothing, and to warn people to stay away from them with the loud cry, “Unclean!” This is why the lepers kept their distance, even as they approached Jesus to ask for healing. They were cut off from human society, and they were also cut off from practicing their religion, not allowed inside the Temple or the synagogues.

In Gunderson’s first pattern of accompaniment, congregations include the frail in community
by creating relationships that are not dependent upon family ties or money. Jesus not only included the frail in the community of those he welcomed and cared for, he included the isolated and rejected, like the lepers in our story. There was no one who was beyond the pale of his concern.

Our second pattern of accompaniment is to create helping roles. As Gunderson notes, People who join a congregation don’t just come to receive; they come with the expectation of giving, and they expect to be changed by the giving. Jesus embodies the helping role, constantly giving to those who seek healing of any kind and encouraging his disciples to do the same.

Third, we build networks and helping systems in collaboration with other organizations. Under Jewish law, priests were the only ones who had the power to declare lepers unclean or clean. Jesus encouraged the ten lepers to go to the priests to have their healing confirmed. This wasn’t to advance his own reputation as a healer. He knew he needed to work with the religious authorities to restore these people to full membership in the community.

In the fourth pattern of accompaniment, we infuse other community structures with healthy social expectations. When we experience accompaniment within our congregation, we are encouraged to take the relationship patterns we nurture here out into the larger community. When Jesus commends the one leper who returns, he lifts up the healthy social expectation of giving thanks when we have been helped or given a blessing.

The final pattern of accompaniment, noted by Gunderson, is that we make otherwise invisible people visible to the community. Jesus was always doing this, recognizing and taking time for the very people, like the lepers, who were most invisible, most excluded and ignored, and saying, “These people are beloved of God.”

This congregation has a commendable history of outreach through giving for local, national, and international missions, and through the many volunteer hours members give to community organizations. But I have also heard a longing to do something more hands-on, to have the church be more directly involved in outreach to the wider Greensboro community. Through a member of the congregation, I became aware of some needs at Lakeview School. At the beginning of the summer, I met with Eric Erwin, the Lakeview School principal, who gave me a heart-breaking picture of the challenges facing many of the students there. Eric will be with us next Sunday, graciously giving us his Sunday morning to share with you what he has shared with me.

I took my notes from our meeting to the Church Council along with some ideas from both Eric and Sally Cochran, the School Counselor, about how the church could make a difference in the lives of Greensboro’s children. The Council has enthusiastically endorsed the idea of reaching out to help the school meet the needs of its students. The greatest need is for mentors, particularly for girls. This would involve meeting with a child weekly, for 45” to an hour, during the school year. They would also welcome more volunteer presence for activities like reading, playing chess, knitting, and cooking with the children. And they would love to have adults come in to share a particular enthusiasm or expertise.

There are also some material needs we can address. Sometimes a child’s family can’t afford a pair of winter boots or a backpack. I have given the school a donation from the Discretionary Fund to cover this sort of expense. There is also a need for new socks and underwear. The Pleasants Fund gave the school a grant, some time ago, to purchase a washer and dryer to wash clothes for kids who come in dirty or wet. The school tries to keep clean, dry clothes on hand. Kindergarten teacher, Cathy Pollard, has told me that they go through underwear at a fairly good clip.

There is a clothesline display, in Fellowship Hall, which invites you to take part in a socks and underwear drive to benefit the school. If you would like to take part, but shopping is an issue, I would be happy to help with that. In November, when most of us celebrate Thanksgiving with a more-than-generous feast, we will have the opportunity to contribute food to the backpack program at the school, which sends food home for the weekend for food-insecure families.

Through reaching out to the school, we can demonstrate the five patterns of accompaniment outlined by Gunderson. We can create relationships that include the most vulnerable members of the community within the circle of our care. We can create helping roles for ourselves, roles that may very well change us even as we hope for positive effects for the children. We can build helping networks with the school, and with other community organizations, like the recreation department, that are working to improve the lives of Greensboro’s kids. By our own caring behavior, we can model healthy social expectations and relationships. And we can make the children and their needs more visible within the community.

All of these possibilities give us the opportunity to bloom where we are planted. So I invite us to seek the welfare of this town, where perhaps God has sent you, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Amen.