Sing the Lord’s song in a strange land!

 12 October 2025

Readings

Jeremiah 29.1, 4-7

Psalm 111

Luke 17.11-19

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord our Rock and our Redeemer.

The universe is, of course, a very strange place - and people who live in it quite often feel bewildered and off balance. Nowhere is this unsurprising fact better illustrated than in the 1978 instant hit radio play cum novel, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, in which Earthling Arthur Dent is rescued by an undercover alien and whisked aboard a Vogon destructor starship moments before his planet is due to be demolished to make way for an intergalactic hyperspace bypass. Arthur, who had just stepped out of the shower, is thrust into the bewildering and fantastical cosmos wearing nothing but his dressing gown and carrying a bath towel - which actually turns out to be very useful - and he spends the rest of the story being very surprised and trying to catch up.

Apart from being a masterful comedic science fiction spoof, writer Douglas Adams’ yarn about a mild-mannered Englishman swept up in intergalactic politics is the story of all of us when we get caught up in the system, when we look around and realise that nothing makes sense any more and everything is unfamiliar. A situation many people find themselves in today, in the new realities of climate change and extreme weather events causing disruption and economic hardship across the globe - the rapid rise of far-right dictatorships and the politics of hate in what used to be stable democracies, and genocide masquerading as the right to self-defence. Are we heading into a time of unprecedented global turmoil - or are we there already? How can we as Christians sing the Lord’s song in a strange new landscape?

I’m referring, of course, to Psalm 137, which was set by the revised common lectionary for our reading in church last week. This was the passage made famous by Jamaican singer, Boney M., who sang “By the Rivers of Babylon’, pairing Psalm 137 with the words with which I prefaced this sermon, from Psalm 19. Boney M. wrote the song as a protest against the injustices being endured in his homeland. When we live in a world held captive by greed and violence and injustice, the psalmist reminds us that we are called back to be faithful, that the world is the Lord’s, and all that is contained within it. We are called to remember, and to repeat in our own hearts and lives, the goodness and the enduring love and goodness of God - and in a world grown darker and less hospitable that in itself is an act of courage and faith and protest.

But, enter the prophet Jeremiah. The context of Psalm 137, and the dark and frightening Book of Lamentations which was also on the lectionary menu for last week - was the invasion and destruction of Jerusalem by the army of Babylon in 587 BC. The city was reduced to starvation and cannibalism, the people of the land were scattered and the religious and political elites led off in chains to exile in Babylon. It seemed that God had rejected them. The temple which for Israel had been the house of God had been destroyed, and it must have seemed that they were no longer God’s people. 

But, enter Jeremiah. This prophet, it strikes me, gets a bad rap. Far from being a prophet of doom, it is Jeremiah who consistently calls the people back to the ground of hope. It was Jeremiah who, as the armies of Babylon surrounded Jerusalem, told the king that salvation could not come from making alliances with foreign nations who were fair-weather friends at best - but only by leading the people back to faithfulness in God. And now that the unthinkable had happened, the nation and the seat of worship had been destroyed, Jeremiah has another word for the grieving captives. “Live!”

Live in Babylon. Seek the good of Babylon, the pagan city-state that has destroyed your home and religion. Put down roots, build houses, intermarry, have children. So - what’s he doing? It’s kind of the opposite advice to that of Psalm 137 - which I don’t know how well you know your psalms, but actually ends in a fairly ugly call to vengeance - an ending that doesn’t generally get read in church! Jeremiah, it seems, was not always very popular - back in chapter 23 he has a go at the more popular prophets who fill the people’s heads with false hopes. But here, his advice is practical and hopeful. Choose life, live with hope and do good to those around you. Commit yourself to the reality, and the times, in which you do live rather than the daydream of where you would rather be. Seek the good of the community in which you live, and don’t be eaten up by grievances and regret. And then the common thread, that links Jeremiah back to the tradition - do all these things, and pray. Pray for the good of Babylon.

You see? This is one of those moments in the salvation history of God’s people where the understanding of who God is - and of who we are ourselves - suddenly is forced to get wider, more inclusive. You can maybe even hear a pre-echo of Jesus? Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.

Jeremiah’s advice is not a sell-out. Our faith does not get weakened or watered down when we are forced to navigate new realities, to speak in new cultural tones and accents, to address new concerns. Our faith isn’t watered down, for example, when we recognise the need to speak - and sing - in gender-inclusive language! Or to recognise the value of other religious traditions, other cultural practices. A good Aboriginal Christian friend once conducted a smoking ceremony in church for me, and explained to us all how the Nyungar people had recognised the presence of the Holy Spirit all around them for thousands of years. Our faith is definitely strengthened and enabled to grow when we use it as a lantern to navigate new and frightening circumstances, and recognise that our faith challenges us to grow in understanding and seek the good in difficult times.

Do sing the Lord’s song in a strange land! As history reveals, the 70 years of Baylonian exile recorded in Jeremiah turns out to have been one of the most fertile and creative periods of Jewish national and religious life. In fact it was only after return from Babylon that the people began calling themselves Jews. From Babylon emerged what would later become the synagogues and the rabbinic tradition, and the exilic scribes revisited and edited many of the writings that make up the Old Testament.

Jeremiah not only points the way forward to the radically new Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth - but he also points way back to the ground zero of faith in the God of wanderers and nomads, to the God of Abraham. Aboriginal theologians do us all a service by pointing to Abraham as a better model of encountering other cultures and traditions. When Abraham is first called by God out of Ur in Chaldea - Ur being the more ancient name for Babylon - he is told to travel into the land of Canaan, not to conquer or possess, but to be a blessing to all he encounters. And Abraham’s sojourn as a long-term visitor in the land around Salem, the location of the later city of Jerusalem, is a model of respectful co-existence with the pagan peoples of the land. A model of encounter that refuses to colonise or push others out. As Christians, we do find ourselves in places that seem hostile to our faith, and in circumstances that are challenging. But, Jeremiah’s teaching would suggest, the answer is not to withdraw from the world but to engage with it more fully and to work for its good.

A quick look at the Gospel, because after all, it is about Jesus. We are almost at the end of the liturgical cycle, the Year of Luke - I always feel a pang of regret because Luke is my deep-down favourite. This Gospel writer is a keen observer of life, and always notices those who are on the margins or excluded. Like women, like foreigners, like the poor, and certainly - like lepers who were basically shunned from ancient society. The parable of the ten lepers is often told as an example of how insiders are sometimes ungrateful for the blessings they have. But it is even more an example of how Jesus, the Incarnate generosity and love of God, sets aside the boundaries that dictate which humans are and are not acceptable. Shunned lepers are visited by divine favour. Outsider Samaritans are loved and healed. Jesus does not recognise the boundaries, and neither should we. Pray for all, and work for the good of Babylon, no matter how strange and unfamiliar it gets.

Amen