If
you haven’t heard from me before, you will learn that I think the prophet
Jeremiah is one of the most important figures in the Bible. He came from the exiled priestly village in
Anathoth. It was said that it was common
for Jeremiah to go a Sabbath’s day walk to Jerusalem, going there in the
morning and returning back home in the afternoon. In total, a walking journey
of about three hours.
The
story is told of how when Israel was the number one superpower in the world, David,
on his deathbed, counseled his successor to the throne, his son Solomon, to
kill all his rivals before he took the throne.
Solomon does so but for one key figure, the priest Abiathar, who he
considers too morally powerful to assassinate.
Instead, he exiles Abiathar to Anathoth where Abiathar and the priests
of Anathoth watch as the nearby Jerusalem, over the course of 300 years,
descends into violence, graft, corruption, a love of power, militarism, ostentatious
display, and destruction of the poor. So
much so that rebellion takes place and Israel separates into two separate
nations, Israel to the north and Judah to the south, with Jerusalem located in
the southern kingdom of Judah.
The
book of Jeremiah begins with, “The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, of the
priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, 2 to
whom the word of the Ruler of the Universe came in the days of King
Josiah.” It is the Bible’s way of
saying, “Remember these guys of moral uprightness from the days of Abiathar? The chickens have come home to roost. And they are headed back to Jerusalem.”
The
graft, moral corruption, and violence against the poor continues under King
Josiah, and (as I detailed in a former sermon) the prophet Jeremiah takes his
Sabbath walk to rail against the royal aristocracy, priesthood, and prophets. Jeremiah believes once you undercut God’s
pillars of justice, your kingdom will necessarily fail.
For bringing this bad
news, Jeremiah is called unpatriotic, thrown down a well, and then deposited in
jail. Unfortunately for the nation of
Judah, Jeremiah’s truth-telling turns out to be correct and Judah and Jerusalem
fall to the Babylonian Empire—the leaders, the representatives of God, are executed
or taken off into Exile; the land, the symbol of God’s promise, salted and
ravaged; the Temple, the special place of God’s abiding, razed to the ground. The Jews ask in Exile, “How shall we sing the
songs of Zion in a foreign land?”
Several years ago,
Tracy and I served a church in rural Illinois that had been historic as a place
for freedom seekers to remain hidden on the Underground Railroad. That church had two safehouses in their small
community. One of their church leaders
actively broke federal law to hide out these freedom seekers needing a place of
refuge and sanctuary.
In that historic
church was a congregational member I knew it would never be a good idea to
cross or to be on the opposite side of . . . in an argument. Betsy remains a force of nature in that small
community. She has been a CASA volunteer
(a court appointed special advocate), a school board member, and part of the
town’s revitalization project. Betsy
didn’t suffer fools lightly. And so, if
she disagreed with you, you were in for a no-holds barred, Texas Cage Match. And Betsy did not intend to lose.
Her
husband, Doug, is also an attorney in town.
And that granted him some status as he also served on the school
board. But Betsy, when she had her
sights set on you, could make you feel itty-bitty. She did all this, was willing to be strongly
confrontational, to honor her family, her community, and her nation.
One
of her dearly loved sons is part of the LGBTQ+ community and, when I was there,
she loved that our church was actively making strides to become Open and
Affirming and that the nation seemed to be opening up more and more to the
LGBTQ+ community. She knew that that
meant a better life for her son.
So
when she heard the strong rhetoric coming from Christian churches who supported
the then candidate Donald Trump she consoled herself with the thought that he
couldn’t win, could he? And couldn’t
possibly win with rhetoric that made her quake in her boots for her son? The country couldn’t possibly backtrack on
these issues, right? Her own hometown
church in rural Illinois had gone from heated argument that had split the
church over the inclusion of the LGBTQ community to a church that voted
unanimously to become open and affirming.
So a way was being made, a path was being cleared, as her son went on to
a great career, began running in marathons, was carving out a path for
himself.
But then Donald Trump
did win that presidential election and there was nothing she could do about
it. And the language grew even stronger
as that Trump Administration sought to appease its Christian evangelical base
with critique of pronouns, talk of litter boxes in bathrooms, and people
reeling in fear that Trans people might be reading to children in
libraries. Finally, the removal of
protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender
identification were on the national chopping block. What would she do about it in the rural
Illinois hinterlands?
She couldn’t possibly
make a dent in federal policy. There was
no way she could turn the tide, nationally, against conservative Christian
pundits showing up every day to talk about her son in ways that were
mean-spirited and even scary. I remember
seeing Betsy, on social media, asking everyone what she was to do now.
I knew it would not
be long. Betsy got to work.
She knew she could
not do much about the national dialog.
She and people who agreed with her were not the ones in power. So what she decided to do was to strengthen
the local systems and structures which would support people like her son. She
formed the local group, “Moms for LGBTQ Equality,” and describes the founding
of the group this way, “As the mom of an out gay man, I started this work to
focus on the concerns of raising LGBTQ youth under a Trump/Pence
Administration.” In her small, rural
Illinois town of 3700 people, the Facebook page of the group has over 2500
followers. I recognized many of the
early followers as members of Betsy’s own church. Betsy also then radiated outwards forming
partnerships with the PFLAG (functionally, the parents, family, and friends of
the LGBTQ+ community)--the PFLAG chapter of the nearest city--and several other
solidarity groups on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community. All of this brought gravitas to her little
organization but also reminded everyone participating that they were not
alone. As a result, they were able to
share wisdom for their concurrent struggle and share resources.
Betsy, force of
nature, amplified her work to protect a vulnerable group, a group out of power,
a group near and dear to her heart, to become a protected force of nature their
own selves in doing necessary work of love and justice in their small
community. Though she may have been originally
disappointed at her lack of power to change things at a larger level, she
planned and organized a future that has now become a wider and wider circle of
protection and love. With yesterday
being National Coming Out Day it seemed like a good time to remind us of how
powerful we can be even when we are not the ones in power.
When the Jews were no
longer the people in power, the ones in charge to chart their own destiny, the
prophet Jeremiah’s work was not done.
And, in our Scripture verse today, the prophet Jeremiah reminded the
people that even though they now lived in Babylon, they were to plan for the
future. Plant gardens. Have children. Imagine what a faithful life might look like
in Babylon. Like so many Jews before
you, when you are no longer in charge of the nation, you must build these
smaller cocoons of goodness, protect your ability to love and flourish as you
can. That is then what it means to be
faithful.
I have seen that same
plan of action taking place in the national climate action group, the Sunrise
Movement. They were the originators of
the Green New Deal to move our whole nation to a more just and wholistic
economics and ecology. Realizing that
under the present administration they will no longer be able to advance national
initiatives, the Sunrise Movement has pivoted to trying to advance the Green
New Deal in schools and local communities.
It’s time for us to take over, classroom by classroom, school by school, city by city. If we build our own mass movement, if we demand power in our hometowns, we can take over the country we only know in our dreams. If we can remake our schools to take on the greatest crisis we’ve ever seen, we will pave the way for the rest of society to follow. If we organize everyday people to bring the Green New Deal to cities and towns across the country, we can win local Green New Deal policy that proves to our neighbors and our leaders that this is the solution we need. Day-by-day, door-to-door, hand-in-hand with our neighbors, we’ll sow the seeds of a Green New Deal from the bottom up.[1]
A statement cited on the NPR webpage
just broke this week, “For the first time, renewable energy has overtaken coal
as the primary source of electricity around the world, a new report says,
indicating a shift in the global reliance on environmentally harmful fossil
fuels.”[2]
And so the work of
the Sunrise Movement, these incredible young organizers who fasted outside our
nation’s capital , some of them almost at the loss of their own lives, to push
President Biden toward the Inflation Reduction Act, have become the prophets of
our time. They are now inviting us to
plant our own gardens, to teach our children well, that we might feed them on
our dreams, to follow where God is leading.
But to know that our children might also teach their parents well.
The prophet Jeremiah
reminds us that we do not have to be the ones who are running the nation to
lead the way of God, to provide and protect our communities, and to plant our
gardens. May we live out the lessons of Jeremiah
in this time. Amen.
[2]
Alana Wise, “Renewable energy outpaces coal for electricity generation in
historic first, report says,” NPR, October 9, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/10/09/nx-s1-5564746/renewable-energy-coal-electricity-first.
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