Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. – Jeremiah 29:5

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 14, 2014): Jeremiah 29

The events of the Trojan War seemed to catch the imagination of the ancient world. There is no single definitive text about the war. Instead, what we know of it is scattered through many documents, some of which we no longer have available to us for examination - we just know that they once existed because they are mentioned in the writings of others. We are not even sure that the war ever happened. And if it did happen, the events mentioned in the various documents about the conflict are most definitely exaggerated.

But the ancient Greeks definitely seemed to believe that the war was a historical fact. The war was based on the kidnapping of Helen of Sparta from her husband Menelaus, the King of Sparta, by Paris of Troy. According to the story, Paris and Helen had fallen in love with each other. So for the next decade the Greeks and the Trojan would be locked in battle.

The climax of the war was the siege of Troy. Essentially the siege was a deadlock. As long as the Trojans were able to stay behind their walls, there was very little that the Greeks could do. So, one night, the Greeks appeared to give up. They withdrew their armies from Troy and went home. In their place they left “The Trojan Horse.” There was a great debate within Troy concerning what to do with the horse. Some advocated its immediate destruction, but others within the city feared that because it was dedicated to the gods, its destruction would bring calamity to Troy. In the end, the Trojans moved the horse inside of the city walls. And that night, a small contingent of soldiers that had been hidden in the belly of the horse emerged - killing the guards and opening the city gates to the larger Greek Army which had not returned home after all, but rather, were waiting just off shore.

Whether or not the story is true, it does illustrate that sometimes the things that we want to believe are different from what the way that they really are. The story of war is filled with these moments – times when leaders convince themselves that something is true because they want it – and need it – to be true. And so they overlook the dangers and make decisions that should never have been made – such as bringing a huge wooden horse with soldiers hiding in its belly inside the gates of the city.   

At the time of the exile of Judah to Babylon, there was a conflict going on inside of Judah about what it all means. It is a conflict that Jeremiah documents well in his writings. The common message seemed to be that the Babylonian army would fail to take Judah or Jerusalem, but after that message proved to be false, the common message changed to the assertion that the resulting captivity would be short lived. Prophets shouted the message to any that would listen that the exiles would soon be on their way home. After all, they were prisoners of war in a conflict that God would not allow to last for long. If the Trojan Horse showed up in Judah, these were the people who would have welcomed the wooden statue into the city.

Often it seemed that Jeremiah was the lone voice giving the people a very different message (in actuality he wasn’t, Ezekiel and a few others also carried the dissenting message of God to the people of Judah during this period.) But after the city of Jerusalem fell and the exile had begun, Jeremiah writes a letter to the exiles. In the letter he tells them to build houses and plant gardens. His instructions stood against the fair weather prophets instructing the people not to bother, that they would not be in Babylon long enough to make it worthwhile. Why bother to plant a garden when you would be home long before the harvest.

But Jeremiah’s letter tells them something else. He had been right about the invasion armies of Babylon intruding on Judah and about the fall of Jerusalem. And now he was telling them that they would be in Babylon for a while, long enough that they needed to build their houses and plants their gardens. Ultimately, God had provided for them in Judah. And now, if they were obedient, God would provide for them in Babylon. What mattered had never been “the where” – it had always been “the who.”

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 50