In The Community For Good
Jeremiah 28: 4 – 7, 11
When the World Falls Apart
Imagine you lived in Israel 560 years before Jesus. The massive Babylonian army invades and conquers. Nearly every house, business, and place of worship reduced to rubble. Mass deportations drag you and thousands of others to Babylon (about an 800 mile journey). You stand stripped from everything familiar and comforting. You are not where you want to be.
The assignment on your heart is to speak to the situation. You and everyone else is depressed, unmoored. They lament, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” Bitterness overtakes hearts. So, what do you say? What word of hope and consolation can you bring? That’s what the prophet Jeremiah had to figure out.
The Prophet’s Dilemma
Maybe you go with the old “I told you so,” guilt and shame technique in hopes that the people will learn the lesson and not have to repeat it. It must have been a tempting option because he had warned that because of the corrupt and idolatrous leaders this was going to happen.
Another option: Maybe you lean into the anger. Tell people to resist the captors and circumvent everything they try to do. Make life miserable for them. Plan an insurrection. Meanwhile, take comfort in the thought that God will judge them. Warn your folks not to assimilate into their pagan culture; keep to yourselves instead.
If all else fails, you can toss them a few religious cliches. “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”
The Shocking Word
The prophet Jeremiah stood in this situation, and he declined those options. He told them to get busy doing good. Get on with life. Get jobs, build houses, plant gardens, get married, have children, and seek the welfare of the city.
What We Can Control
Sometimes life hurls us curveballs and throws all our plans and dreams out of whack. An illness, a job disruption, someone dies, a kid gets in trouble, a financial collapse, a pandemic, or a world war. You never know. So much of life is beyond our control.
Maybe your Babylon looks like a toddler meltdown on two hours of sleep, or the ache of being sandwiched between work deadlines and elder care.
Jeremiah’s wisdom is to focus on the things you can control. Don’t sit and stew, waiting for skies to turn blue. If you are relying on external circumstances to make you happy, I have bad news for you. That’s not the way it works.
I have a friend who was always scheming for his happiness. He was going to get out there and get a new job and make more money and get a girlfriend and all kinds of things. As soon as I do that, he told me, I will be happy. For some reason, he established that the first step to accomplishing all these things was to get healthy and lose weight. But every time I saw him, he devoured nachos and guzzled beer, telling me that he was going to start the next day. It wasn’t until he got right spiritually, and put himself out there, finding ways to do good for others, that he realized happiness and a sense of well-being are internal choices, not external conditions. Once he did, the other things started falling into place for him.
Do Your Best
So Jeremiah says to those feeling stuck: don’t give up—get unstuck. Don’t let the fact that things didn’t work out the way you planned and hoped be an excuse to curl up and feel sorry for yourself.
When I think of what Jeremiah told the people, the song “Love the One You’re With” comes to mind. It says, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” Jeremiah was saying, “If you can’t be in the place you love, love the place you are.” Do your best no matter your physical location or emotional condition.
We welcome the Boy Scouts here today. I’m an Eagle Scout. And that scout motto: “Do your best,” has always stuck with me.
In the series Breaking Bad, one of the characters, Jesse Pinkman, reflects on a time in shop class when he had made this little wooden box. He was a slacker, just threw it together without applying himself, because that was the way he was going through life. The shop teacher challenged him: was the box he made his best effort? He knew it wasn’t and did it over again, sanding it until the wood was as smooth as glass, something he could be proud of.
We may have some folks who will ask us if we have done our best. But it’s a question we should constantly ask ourselves. Not, “Was it perfect?” But did I give it my best shot? At night, we can review the day and our effort.
Life handed you a bad break? Do your best.
Things didn’t work out as you planned? Do your best.
You stumbled yesterday? Do your best today.
Seeking the Common Good
The surprising aspect of Jeremiah’s instruction was telling people to do their best and invest themselves in working toward the welfare (or common good) of the city. The Hebrew word for welfare is shalom, which evokes a sense of peace and wholeness amongst the people.
Shalom is more than peace. It’s justice, wholeness, and the healing of broken systems—not just broken hearts. It’s about fairness and making sure no one is being taken advantage of or abused.
Bay Shore Church has always understood that faith is not just about what we personally believe about God. It’s about elevating the common good, of looking out for others, of making a positive difference in the place we are. For one hundred years, this church proclaims that our experience of God leads us to help others, and in helping others, we grow closer to God. It’s the opposite of a vicious cycle. It’s a virtuous cycle.
In the Community for Good
Although we were legally incorporated as Bay Shore Congregational Church a century ago, we soon began incorporating the word ‘community’ into our name. The sign outside the church reads ‘Bay Shore Community Congregational Church.’ Until we did the history, I thought that was the official legal name. Nope. We never got it legally changed. It’s just our nickname and our signal to Belmont Shore that we are in the community for good, to do good, to do our best to elevate the quality of life for everyone. That has always been our thing.
Throughout the last year, Linda Sumpter has given us a decade-by-decade reminder of what this church has meant to its people and the community. The scouts who are here today remind us of that commitment, as we have been its sponsoring organization for decades.
It’s not just Scouts, we have always had the attitude that if you are trying to do good for our community, we want to partner with you and provide you a safe place. Every morning, afternoon, and evening, something is going on at Bay Shore Church. I asked our fantastic office manager, Heather Nelson, for a list of the groups that meet here and the missions we support. I said, “Put the stuff on it that we do and others do — everything from COA meals for the homeless to voting, yoga, the other church that meets here, Long Beach Meditation, and twelve-step groups, as well as Justin Rudd events.”
At first, I thought I would read the list to you, but we’d be here all day. Instead, I will show you this twenty-foot-long scroll of names.
So much positive influence in making a difference in people’s lives. This is our commitment to seeking the welfare and shalom of the city. And you make it happen. We only have a few hundred members, but the good we do is enormous. Like I said last week. “If Bay Shore Church didn’t exist, someone would need to invent it.”
And you don’t have to share our theology to share our mission.
The Real ROI
Several years ago, when we needed expensive repairs to the youth center, someone asked about the Return on Investment (ROI). We want to be good stewards of financial resources. Will we get the money back from what we charge for rent? Uh, no. But the return on investment isn’t something that can be quantified on a spreadsheet.
How can you put a price on our mission to do good? The return is about impact. The impact of a kid learning leadership skills in scouts, the effect of someone who goes to a meeting instead of going to the bar, and driving home drunk? What is the value of someone doing meditation or yoga and centering themselves so that they are calmer and more present to their family and work? What is the value of a kid learning to make music or art that can fulfill them for a lifetime? What is the impact of someone finding hope, meaning, and forgiveness? I don’t know, but I know it’s more important than anything you can put on a spreadsheet. We aren’t in the money-generating business. We are in the life-changing, community-bettering ministry. The rewards are out of this world.
I once talked to a consultant about how we could grow the church. She said we should sell the building, move out of the neighborhood, and relocate to some place with better parking. I said, “No thanks. We’re in the community for good.”
Call to Action: Let’s Get After It
Let’s not wait until the stars align. Let’s get after it today. Choose one act of goodness for our city. But here’s the Bay Shore way—choose the one that scares you a little. The one that requires you to stretch. The one that connects you to people unlike yourself.
What if your one act this week was checking on a neighbor? Or showing up for a community cleanup? Or writing one letter to a local official about housing?
Do your best—not for perfection, but for transformation.
Because when the city flourishes, we flourish. And that, my friends, is our sacred calling.