earth day 2015

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Seek the wellbeing of the city where I have sent you, for as it prospers, you too will prosper. Jeremiah 29:5,7


This is the original version of Bloom Where You Are Planted, and a perfect text for any celebration of Earth Day―maybe especially Earth Day 2015, since this is the second year of the #GreenCities initiative. Many people love to seize and claim verse 11, "I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord… to give you a future with hope." But holding onto that verse without the full context omits the condition of God's promise: obedience. As Walter Brueggemann points out in Out of Babylon, "this text urges coming to terms with the empire as the unavoidable matrix for Jewish well-being. [page 8] and "…it is Babylon that becomes (for now) a venue for shalom." [page 9] We know Jeremiah lived deeply informed by and responsive to the tradition of Deuteronomy with its demands of hospitality and care for all, of covenantal obedience—its emphasis on forgiveness, grace, and newness.

Our contemporary situation in the USA closely parallels the exiles in Babylon (faithful in Rome, Spain, Great Britain…) as accretions, outrages, attractions, and demands of empire surround and often seem to overwhelm us. Truly we cannot escape to some ideal oblivion, an unknown nowhere – remember erewhon? – and in the power of the Spirit we need to create local, covenantal life where we are—in spite of empire. And then, there's another condition: God's overwhelming response of grace when humans don't quite measure up to the standards of the commands.