Living in Exile
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
October 19, 2025
Roger Williams was the founder of what is now the state of Rhode Island and the first pastor of the First Baptist Church in America. Williams was one of many migrants in the 1600’s who fled his home country of England because of religious persecution. He served churches in the Plymouth colony but his strong opinions on the separation of church and state made him unpopular with the authorities. Four years after his arrival, church leaders warned the civil authorities that he was a threat to the unity to the colony. Williams was ordered to self-deport back to England within six weeks.
However, it was November and Williams was ill, so he was permitted to stay until the spring, on the condition that he would not share his opinions publicly. He agreed to that, but he did continue to meet with a small group in his home. For those private meetings, agents were sent to arrest him, but he fled into the wilderness and escaped. He found sanctuary with Native Americans he had befriended and whose language he had learned.
To sum this up, “Roger Williams was a migrant who left the oppression of his native land only to be rejected by his new land. He was banished and told to self-deport; then almost arrested and sent to a country where he faced almost certain death. To avoid this fate, he fled his adopted home, finding sanctuary among those who cared for him and who kept him alive.”[1]
Roger Williams has long been a hero for many members of this church, but I have only recently begun to see how his life experience overlaps with immigrants and those subject to or threatened with deportion.
The letter that Kathy read for us was written to people who had been deported out of their native land. Babylon had besieged Jerusalem, killing many people and when it was over, Babylon took many prisoners and carted them off to Babylon. So, from our point of view, it is a kind of backwards deportation or exile. In Babylon, they live as immigrants, probably facing many of the same challenges that immigrants living in this country do. There are language barriers and cultural differences. Probably Babylonians are reluctant to hire Judeans and if they do, they want to pay them less than Babylonian citizens. They have no rights, no expectation of due process. They are enemies.
There were 51.9 million immigrants living in the United States in June. That’s down from 53.3 million in January. They constitute 15% of the population and 19% of the workforce. We know that they are not being treated right. Even those who are here legally working their cases in our immigration courts are being grabbed off the streets, subjected to violence and abuse and separation from families and sometimes being sent to countries where they have never lived. You know all that.
But imagine if the letter from Jeremiah came to today’s immigrants. Imagine if those folks being actively rounded up and abused received this message – seek the welfare of America. Pray for your American neighbors, pray for ICE, pray for the well-being of this country whose government seems utterly unconcerned with your well-being.
Can we begin to see how hard this word from Jeremiah is? The people in exile want to know if they should try to run from Babylon or raze it to the ground. [2] Fight or flight. But Jeremiah’s unexpected answer is neither one. Instead, he says “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens. Settle down and raise a family. Seek good for Babylon. Help to make Babylon great. You won’t get any credit for it because immigrants rarely do, but do it anyway. Embrace the life you have now; live your best life in exile.”
It is a hard word, but Jeremiah is offering intentional pastoral care to the exiles. He tells the truth about what to expect. This is a long-haul situation. They’re not coming home for a couple of generations, and the sooner they accept that, the sooner they can adapt. There’s another prophet on the scene, a guy named Hananiah. Hananiah says that all those in Exile are coming home soon, within two years. He’s wrong, but people like what he has to say. It’s an easier word. But we see that Jeremiah’s hard word is kinder. It is not what the people want to hear, but it is what they need to know.
There are two Jewish communities now. One is in exile in Babylon; the other back home in Jerusalem. Since they believed that the exile was God’s will, it seems obvious that the people carried off to Babylon are being singled out for punishment. This is so obvious that the folks in Jerusalem felt proud of themselves and the ones in exile were in despair. So, it came as a surprise, back in chapter 24, when Jeremiah revealed that the exiles are the ones especially favored by God. They are the carriers of God’s future.[3]
Jeremiah’s first act of care is to inform them of the new reality. The world has shifted in radical, permanent ways and they have to live in the world they have, not the one they lost. But his second act of care is to bestow on this small vulnerable community a missional responsibility. He gives them a meaningful purpose, work to do.
Their job is to wage peace in Babylon. In verse 7, peace is a task for the exiles.Verse 7: “But seek the shalom of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its shalom you will find your shalom.” Shalom is the word which we’ve heard translated today as welfare or peace and prosperity, but it really refers to a deep pervasive well-being.
Shalom is the task that God sets for the exiles. But also note in verse 11, shalom will be God’s gift to the exiles.[4] Their well-being is bound up with that of their enemies.
We have come to this verse which is a favorite for many Emmanuelites. “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. Plans for your shalom and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”
If we are going to claim this verse for ourselves, then we have to keep it in context. It comes after God tells them that they will be in exile for generations. No one who reads this letter will be alive in the future it describes. The plans for good are not for Jeremiah or any other individual.
We often read this as if it says that God has a plan, a blueprint for my individual life and yours and yours. The Bible comes to us from cultures where the individual was never the focus that we are in America. The Bible rarely speaks as if God has a script for each of our lives. It speaks as though God has one plan for all us, summed up by Jesus when he said “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.”
This verse is not written to any individuals but to a people, a crowd, a community, a nation. I know the plans I have for you all, God is saying. I know the plans for the long-term.
This plan is about being entrusted with God’s future. I wonder if we might hear it as being addressed to us, not as individuals, but as a community, as the church, the Body of Christ. I wonder if we are being called to the same kind of sacrifice as the exiles, to seek the shalom of the place where we are in exile?
As Americans, some of us may feel like we’re in exile in our own homeland. We do not recognize the nation that we have become and we are tempted to despair and numbness. What if this message is to us?
Andre Trocme was the pastor of a village church in Le Chambon, France in the lead-up to WWII and the occupation by the Nazis. The people of Le Chambon, under his leadership, hid and sheltered thousands of Jewish people, providing a future for them. He taught them to practice non-violent nonconformity saying “Nonconformity for reasons of conscience is the first duty of Christ’s followers.”
In his memoir, he wrote “From crisis to crisis, the political pendulum swings, from right to left, from left to right.The extremists always lead the way. They tear up the streets and smash the shop windows. The ‘politically neutral’ always close their eyes and ‘wait for it to pass.’ They get out while the getting is good. Meanwhile, the nonviolent, never neutral, never violent, maintain contact with their friends and enemies, correct falsehoods and join forces with all those fighting for justice, truth and peace.”
I wonder if God is calling us to actively seek the peace of America, not along partisan lines, but by loving God and our neighbors and enemies as ourselves.
As Christians, some of us may feel like we’re in exile. The world has shifted in radical, permanent ways. The church we have known and loved is crumbling, perhaps like Jeremiah watched the Temple crumble under assault from Babylon. But what if we are being given a new missional responsibility. What if we are the you all God wants to use for good? What if this time of exile, where Christianity suffers from the cancer of Christian nationalism, where the new forms of worship feels unsatisfying and alien, what if that is our sacrifice, our contribution to the deep well-being of a future generation?
Not everything in the Bible is about us. So I offer this tentatively, but I wonder . . . what if we could heard God saying “I know the plans I have for you all.” A future generation will arise, a generation shaped by you who are living through exile right now – that generation will sustain God’s dream. So stop waiting for exile to end and find ways to thrive. Embrace the life we have now. We’re in this together for the long haul. Don’t despair, don’t be passive, but follow God’s Spirit and keep adapting with wisdom and courage. And through it all, hope and pray relentlessly for a different future where everyone will participate in the abundance of life God intends.
Thanks be to God.
[1] https://baptistnews.com/article/the-attempted-deportation-of-baptist-hero-roger-williams/
[2] Jared E. Alcantara, in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year C, Volume 3 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2019), p. 375.
[3] Walter Brueggemann, A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 1998). p 255
[4] Walter Brueggemann p. 255