We are a culture obsessed with identity. We struggle to find our place, our titles, our preferences, and our personality types. Renee was not immune to this struggle and we’ve reflected on her struggle to make space. But early in Renee’s life she settled on the short letter a tearful prophet Jeremiah scripted to the exiles in Babylon. They also longed to find themselves in a place that “truly understood them”. They also felt misunderstood, underrepresented, cast aside. But Renee took these words as her life verse.  Let me read us a small selection: (Jeremiah 29:4-7)

4 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.

And this was the verse that Renee had inscribed in a ring which she cherished:

 7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” 

Seek the peace and prosperity, the shalom, of the city. Renee loved the cities she lived in. Some of them she was even fond of. But all of them received her dedicated service: her prayer walks (often with some of us in tow), her food-bank, block-party, movie-night, immigrant-support, Bible-study shalom-seeking. Her Babylons were Minneapolis, Denver, Washington DC, and Brooklyn, NY. Indeed she sought out peace for many people, many people that religious people like me at times overlook. Renee sometime stirred up us religious folk. She didn’t always let me off the hook when it seemed polite or discreet. But when it came to an active seeking of actual peace for situations easier to step over than to address: She never let me look away.

There was another prophet who stirred up religious folk. Jesus of course told us not to seek what the world seeks. He also refused to just step over those who were inconvenient, those hard to love, those with little to offer.  His words were, “if you seek life (as the world does), you will loose it.” (Matt 10:39, 16:5). Jesus asked us to, “seek first his kingdom,” (Matt 6:33) the place where his peace rests and replaces our restless selfishness. This only costs you everything you’ve been chasing after. One early follower of Jesus exclaimed, “I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him,” (Phil 3:8)

Can you imagine the shalom, the peace of Jesus resting in you and granting you a peace and a fullness that quenches your soul’s thirst? Perhaps you, like Renee can imagine it. Imagine God’s peace working it’s way through your body and your soul, working it’s way out to your neighbor, your grocer, your fellow passenger, your student, your boss, your parent. That’s what seeking the shalom can become. And our cities, our Babylon, becomes pocketed by small kingdoms of God’s peace and mercy.

That is what Renee asked me to share with you.  She asked me to ask you this specifically:  Who will take on this calling, this mission: to seek the peace and wellness of the city, to pray for it, to serve it?  So I suppose there are two questions before you.  Two inconvenient truths that Renee and I won’t let you look away from just yet. First: Will you give up your search for your self and relinquish your life to God? Second: Will you seek Jesus and his peace for the city that surrounds you?  If you would, after the service concludes, I would like to speak with you and commission you in Jesus’ name, for the sake of our cities, with Renee’s blessing, and for the glory of God.