How to Really Love Santa Cruz

Happy Labor Day weekend. It is so great to be back at TLC. My name is Rene, for those of you who have forgotten. I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. And another thing I would like to do, would you also join me in thanking Mark and Paul and Jessica, who spoke for me while I was away on vacation. They did a wonderful job. Thank you guys so much.

You know, people often send me emails full of funny church signs. Have you guys ever seen these? These are actual signs at actual churches. And I just got a new batch. I want to show you some of these. Like this one. "Now is a good time to visit. Our pastor is on vacation." You may have had this sign up last week. I don't know. I think this Methodist church really needs to invest in a new sign. First Congregational Meth Church. It's just sending the wrong message. And you know, you don't really want to make your sign guy angry. And you don't want him to put up your sign when he is mad, because he puts up things like this. "Whoever stole our AC units, keep one. It's hot where you're going." The fact this is in a whole sub-category of these, that I call these church signs "unwise evangelism." Because they're probably not going to draw people in like this one. "Life stinks. We have a pew for you." "Sounds good, sweetheart. Let's pack up the kids and the dog. Let's go to that church." "I'm going to the church. The kids and the dog. Let's go to that church." And here's a welcoming sign. "We are Baptist. No Protestant." What is that? "Me caveman pastor. Me Protestant. Me must change sign." And I don't understand that, but here's a subtler approach. "I find your lack of faith disturbing." Like, why quote Jesus when you can quote Darth Vader, right? In fact, there's a whole other sub-category of these things. It's what I would call "threatening" signs. Like, "If you think it's hot here, imagine hell. Choose the bread of life, or you are toast." "I'm not going to eat you, but I'm going to eat you." "I'm going to eat you." "Brought to you by," did you notice? "Grace Baptist Church." Very good.

And finally, "Surfer, skateboarders, musicians, artists, vegetarians, occupiers, activists, addicts, and fornicators are all going to hell. Repent now." I just kind of have a feeling this church isn't in Santa Cruz. Because with one or two exceptions on this list, that's our church staff right there. Obviously, we don't have skateboarders, but anyway, I, um... Now, some of these are pretty funny, right? But you can tell from these signs that these church people are feeling besieged, right? They feel like they're under attack by the worldliness of the world, and so they don't know what to do, and so they're kind of lashing out from their own little ivory tower. My thinking is there might be a better way to reach out to the city that you love and live in. So let's talk about how to really love Santa Cruz this morning. Are you guys ready for this? This is kind of a vision casting message for the fall as we move into this new season.

We're going to start with one of the most famous verses of the Bible, Jeremiah 29:11. I love this verse, and we're going to put this verse on the screen, and I'd love for us all to read this out loud together. Are you ready? Let me hear you read this with gusto. "For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." Now that's something that ought to be on our church sign, right? And there are some of you who you just needed to hear this this morning because you're facing an uncertain future, and you came in full of anxiety, and this is what you just need to soak in right now. And if we ended the message just right here with these words, that would be enough for you. God has plans for you, and there's hope for you. There's hope for you. You've got to hope.

But as inspiring as these words are, they really pop when you realize how completely hopeless was the situation that the original hearers of these words found themselves in. This is sort of like the moral at the end of a very interesting story in the Bible. So this morning I want to tell you the story behind these words. So picture this. It's 2,600 years ago, and the Babylonian army has invaded Jerusalem, and they've torn it down, and they've set it on fire, and they've taken as captives the cream of the crop in Jerusalem, and they're taking these Jewish exiles as hostages to the city of Babylon, which is in modern Iraq. In fact, I want to show you a picture actually made by the Babylonians of the Jews being taken into Babylon at that moment. Isn't this interesting? This is a picture made by the conquering army of this story from their perspective, a story that wound up in our Bible. These are men, women, and children that they're ripping out of their homes in Jerusalem and taking to Babylon.

And when these Jews get to Babylon, they find a city that is completely alien to them. The city of Babylon is, well, it's socially completely fragmented, because the Babylonians had brought all these different exiles into their city from every country that they conquered. And so there's all these little different tribes, little subcultures, little languages, all kinds of different religions. And so in this city there is no moral consensus, because all these groups have their own ideas about what's right and what's wrong, so of course there's no agreement about what's right and what's wrong, and the religious and political elite in Babylon were hostile to the faith of these new Jewish exiles. Now, do you feel like this relates to our society just a little bit right now? I hear people tell me, "René, I sometimes feel like I'm an exile in my own country, especially as a person of faith, as a Christ follower. Sometimes I feel like I'm being besieged here, like I'm a minority here." Do you ever feel like that? Do you ever feel almost sometimes frustrated and confused at what you might call the worldliness of the world, right?

So how do you respond to that? What are you supposed to do when you feel like you're kind of the unwelcome minority at times? That was the question the Jews in Babylon had to answer. How do God's people, people of faith, live in a morally fragmented, hostile society where they were the minority? Well, as Tim Keller points out in a sermon on this passage I'm hugely indebted to this morning, there are three possible answers. And I want to invite you to grab your message notes out of your bulletins that look like this. As we talk about how to live in a socially fragmented culture where there's no moral consensus and you sometimes feel like you're the minority, there's three possible answers. They were the three possible answers for the Jews in Babylon 2,600 years ago, and really they're the same three possible answers for Christians living in Santa Cruz.

The Babylonian answer, and this was genius, was assimilate. This was genius because the Babylonians were a war machine. They were conquering all kinds of different territories and they had learned not to tell the people they conquered, "We're going to push you down." They've learned not to tell them, "We're going to push you out." Because people tend to resent repression, right? And they rise up against it and these insurrections are costly and they're messy for the conquering armies. And so the Babylonians figured out something very clever. They decided, "We're not going to push people out. We're not going to push people down. We're going to absorb them in." Kind of like, for you intellectuals here, the Borg in Star Trek. Quick show of hands, how many of you remember the Borg from Star Trek Next Generation? Fellow geeks here, and I want to know if you could finish these Borg sentences. What did they say? Resistance is what? Futile. How about this one? Prepare to be what? Assimilated. That's right. Forget your differences. And that was the Babylonians. That's exactly why the Babylonians took the cream of the crop of the nations they conquered and brought them into Babylon and gave them great Babylonian education, great Babylonian jobs, even Babylonian names, so that in a few years or maybe a generation or two, all the differences are gone. Their own distinctive ways of looking at the world are gone. They're no longer Jews or whatever they were. That's all absorbed. And they're Babylonian now.

You see, that's the Babylonian answer is assimilate. And then there's the religious answer. In Jeremiah 28, the chapter before the famous verse in Jeremiah 29 that we looked at, the religious leaders of the Jews, led by a self-proclaimed prophet named Hananiah, say, "God is going to come down and judge the Babylonians any minute now for their immorality and their bloodshed, and so let's just kind of all remain in our little tribe and let's huddle up in our ivory tower, and don't you dare venture out there because God's going to judge them." You could call this tribalism or isolation. Their answer was to isolate. And this is a common religious response to living in a secular world, isn't it? Huddle up. Distain the city. Look down on it. Judge it. Feel superior to it. Write little church signs that condemn it.

But in Jeremiah 29, God shows up, and he says through the prophet Jeremiah, "No, my answer is not assimilate. My answer is not isolate. God's answer is totally unique and must have taken these Jewish exiles totally by surprise." I mean, it must have blown their mind when God says in chapter 29 verse 4, "This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile." That's an interesting "I carried into exile" from Jerusalem to Babylon. And then there's four things God tells them to do that had to just explode their minds. And these are the things he's telling you and I to do, or anybody who finds themselves feeling a little bit like a minority in a socially fragmented sense.

And by the way, let me just point out, I think we're living in a time right now, see if you don't agree with me on this, in America where almost everybody I talk to feels like an exile. Have you noticed that? I mean, slice the pie every way you want. You talk to conservatives and they feel like they're exiles in their own country. You talk to liberals and they feel like that too. The whole country is going conservative. You talk to people from any kind of surfers kind of field. Everybody's, you know, besieging us with their seawalls. Everybody is feeling like an exile. And so this really applies to all of us. What's God's advice? Well, jot this down. First he says, "Stay in your city. Stay and live in your city. Don't flee even though you're tempted to do it." He says in verse 5, "Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat what they produce." Put down roots, literally. Why? Well, here's a formula for influence. Jot this down like a math equation almost. Somebody showed this to me. First proximity, right? If you want to influence people, you've got to be near the people that you want to influence.

Now, I'll be honest. I did not always get this. Far from it. I will never forget the day that my friend Brian King, when he was president over here next door at Cabrillo College and he was also a new church board member here at Twin Lakes Church, he came up to me and he said, "Renee, why aren't you out in the community?" I said, "Well, what do you mean? We do outreaches with the church." He goes, "Yeah, a little probe's out into the community, but why aren't you out there with people who aren't in your church community? Why aren't you at the Rotary Club meetings or at the Chamber of Commerce meetings or at the Second Harvest food bank outreach meetings?" I mumbled some sorry excuse about being busy and he said, "You know what? I'll tell you what, Renee." He goes, "You come along this week and you can be my guest at Rotary, be my guest at the Chamber." He took me to those places and to Second Harvest and his little kick in the backside to me has changed my life and has changed my ministry because I realized he was right. Ninety-nine percent, I would say a hundred percent of my friends and acquaintances were from within these four walls. And now I know so many people who are outside these walls and it's wonderful because we're naturally, as friends, influencing one another in positive ways because of the proximity factor. More on that later.

Another part of the equation is longevity. Honestly, I don't think people in Santa Cruz really trust you unless you've been here for at least a decade. Have you noticed that? They all want you to be a what? Local. They have little window stickers. Local. So you've got to have proximity and longevity and you have to have integrity. You've got to have integrity. You can have proximity and longevity and just develop a reputation as a real jerk. Right? So there's proximity plus longevity plus integrity equals influence. God says don't assimilate and lose all your unique Christian distinctives and don't isolate and hang out only with your tribe. Stay orthodox. Stay in the bedrock of your soul devoted to Christ. But get out there. Stay. Put down roots. Get in the mix.

Now some of you already do this and you could do this with maybe a thousand people here. You could do it a thousand different ways. What are some ways you could do this? You could join a service group like Rotary. You could get involved with a business group like the Chamber. Or you could get involved with a community orchestra or a community garden or a parent-teacher association or just getting to know your neighbors better. I know somebody who's in the ukulele club. I know somebody else who's in a local hula dance club. Alright, it's me. But still it's a way that I'm... No, that's not me. But it's another friend of mine. But the point is be in the mix. Stay in your city. Second, grow in your city. Grow there. Next verse. Marry and have sons and daughters. Find wives for your sons. Give your daughters in marriage so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there. Do not decrease. I want you to circle a very intriguing phrase there. Increase in number.

Sometimes religious people faced with increasing worldliness think it's holy to say we're just going to get purer and purer and purer and smaller and smaller and smaller until we purify ourselves out of existence. But God's saying here it is not an ungodly, unspiritual goal to want to increase in number. I make no apology the fact that I do pray for our church to increase in number and not decrease like this verse says. I pray for our school to increase in number. I pray for our camp to increase in number. I pray for the other churches here in Santa Cruz to be healthy and thrive and increase in number because I think growth itself is a vibrant, positive testimony. And now of course part of growth is sons and daughters, right? And teaching your children well. And that is a huge part of the reason that we are doing our 2020 vision. Please keep praying about this. As you heard in the announcements, this Tuesday night is our meeting with the water board. That is at the Capitola City Hall if you're looking for a hot date on Tuesday night, incidentally. But pray about it because our hope is that we'll get that permit from them and break ground in about two weeks here at Twin Lakes Church. This is our new children's building we're talking about. We have a new artist's rendering of it. It's a beautiful facility. But really the 2020 vision is not about buildings, is it? It's about families. It's about the next generation. It's about what this verse is talking about. Sons and daughters and growing in our city.

And then third, God says, "Help out your city." He says, "I want you to root for it, not against it." In verse 7, and I'd love for us to read this out loud together. Look at your screen or in your notes. Let me hear you. "And also seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile." I want you to take your pen or pencil and circle the word peace. Because we need to talk about the dimensions of this word. In English, what do you think of when you think of peace? You probably think of inner serenity or you think of the peace sign or cessation of hostilities in a war, right? Well, of course, this is the Hebrew word shalom, which has many more dimensions than our English word for peace. It means a total flourishing in every aspect of your being. The economic dimension, the relational dimension, the spiritual dimension, a total flourishing. Isn't that an awesome word? God wants to bring shalom. Listen, I want Aptos to prosper. I want Santa Cruz to prosper, to flourish in every way. Spiritually, that's why we're here as a church. That's why we preach the gospel. And in every way. That's why we have Serve the Bay coming up in just a few weeks. This is a video of last year. We painted and gardened and weeded at schools and the homeless services center and other spots all over the county. There's an insert in your bulletins with some of the projects we're doing this year. We're going to be doing some work in beach flats this year. Stay tuned for more ways you can get involved.

And I've got a very cool announcement to make. We just got this confirmed. We are going to have what we call love grants available to small groups or groups of youth group or your family. If you think of some ways you can serve our city, our county, or you can help out a neighbor, but you don't have the funds to cover that. You can apply for a grant and we're going to underwrite many of those projects. Details on that coming soon. But we do all of this. Why? Because we want to live out this verse and serve the city and seek the prosperity and shalom of our city. Really, it's what Jesus said to do in Matthew 5 in the Sermon on the Mount. And I'd love for us to read this verse out loud together too. This is a long verse, but it's so good. He's talking about you. He says what? Say it out loud. You are the light of the world. Like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. Let your what? Good deeds shine out for all to see so that everyone will praise your heavenly father.

Tell you about a fascinating book. A sociologist named Rodney Stark has written a book called The Rise of Christianity. And this is not a Christian book. In fact, it's used as a textbook now in some college classes published by Princeton Press. But he poses a simple question. He says, how did Christianity go from being a minority faith, believed by very few people in the Roman empire, and become the dominant worldview of Roman culture in two or three centuries without a war, without any political power, without their people getting elected to leadership? How did this happen? Well, he looks back at the actual history and concludes it's because Christians cared. They cared about orphans. They cared about widows. They cared about the sick. And when this really came through was the two plagues that swept through Roman society. There were two plagues, two hot on the heels of each other, where a third of the population of the Roman empire died during these epidemics. Can you imagine that? A third. What happened? Well, we know what happened because there's a lot of surviving accounts written by pagan Romans. They all fled the city, but the Christians stayed and nursed the dying people. And a lot of these sick people, when they got better, had kind of an attachment to the Christians who had taken care of them. And by the beginning of the fourth century, Christianity had captured the imagination of most of the people in the Roman empire, not because they had tried to wrest power from somebody, not even because they'd elected the right people, but because they cared. They loved. And this sociologist who wrote this book, Rodney Stark, says this is the way you capture the hearts of a society. You tell them about a God who loves as you love. With no strings attached, you just love and help them out.

And then fourth, you pray for your city. You pray for your city. In the rest of verse 7, he says, "Pray to the Lord for it, because if it" what? "prospers, you too will" what? Prosper. Don't pray against it. Pray for it, to be prosperous. Pray for politicians. You know, I was convicted that I was just cynical about politicians. This verse is saying, don't be cynical about them. Pray for them. Root for them to do a good job. I want our church to actually apply this. So what we've done is on an insert, it's on the other side of the grief share insert. At the very top it says, "How can I pray for the city?" And there's some names there of our mayors, city council people. Of course, some of these names are likely to change during elections or whatever. But I would love for you to take this and put it up somewhere where you're going to see it. And instead of being cynical, every day praying for these community leaders. Pray for them to succeed in their jobs. Pray for them to help the city prosper and have peace in our city. Please take this and put it somewhere where you'll see it and you'll use it.

Now, before we get to page two, I was writing all of this and I thought to myself, "Okay, I can tell everybody how I think that we ought to help out the city and do all this." But you know, I've learned if you want to help somebody, it's a really good idea to ask them, "How can I help you?" Right? Have you discovered this? And so I asked one of our community leaders to be here today to give us her response to this question. How can we really love and help Santa Cruz? And I am so excited that she is here. Hillary Bryant served as the mayor of Santa Cruz last year during one of the darkest times in the history of our city. It's when we lost the two police officers in that tragic double homicide. And I have to tell you, this is my personal heart on this. Hillary's poise and intelligence and leadership that was demonstrated during that time was amazing as she successfully led our city through that. And I cannot think of a better person to answer this question for us, partly because Hillary announced a couple of weeks ago that she's not going to seek reelection. I mean, I think there's never been a more beloved politician in Santa Cruz than she is right now. And she just announced, "You know what? I got young kids and I want to be a mom and I want to be with them when I grow up. So that's what I'm going to do for the next few years. Thank you very much." I mean, there's so much I love about this woman and I want us as a church to acknowledge a job well done for her. So would you please join me in welcoming Hillary Bryant here to our auditorium.

Hillary, it is so great to have you here. Thanks for being here on such a beautiful weekend, the Begonia Festival and all kinds of other things going on. It is a beautiful day. How are you doing? I'm doing well. First of all, tell me about this decision. Tell me more about why you decided to just kind of stop a very promising, burgeoning career.

It was an incredibly hard decision for me. And it was--but at the end of the day, it really wasn't a decision. I have two young kids. My daughter, Maddie, is nine and my son, Quentin, is about to be 11. And I love my job. I love what I do. I love working for our community. I really love the city of Santa Cruz. It's an exciting career in the sense that every day is different. There's always something new and different happening at City Hall and a new challenge and I like to be challenged. And I'm a pretty competitive person, so it seemed like a good fit. But really, my job is to be a parent to my children. And I did not raise my kids to have them raised by somebody else. I had kids because I wanted to be with them.

And I've always worked. It takes two incomes for most of us to make it in Santa Cruz. And that's just a reality. But my job takes me away from my kids every afternoon, every evening. I can't tell you how many times I've had to say no. You can't play on that little league team. You can't do this surf competition. You can't do that because I can't be there. I can't get you there. And the reality is my son will be 15 if I run again at the end of my second term. And at 15, he's not going to be saying, "Mama, will you come to my baseball game?" He's going to be saying, "Mama, drop me at the curb and I'll see you later." And so that really was the last moment of discussion for our family. I can always do it again, but right now I need to be with my kids.

Well, I think that's a profound role model, actually. Thank you for that tough decision, and I hope you've gotten a lot of support for that as well. Both. Both. In my world, it comes with there's not always a good job.

Well, let's talk about that. You've heard this message now twice, being with us here this morning. What's your response to this, just candidly? I love this because you're not running for reelection. You can say anything you want. So just be candid. How can we both as individuals and as a church get involved and help our community?

So one of the--when I got the email from Pastor Renee, I said, "You know, of course I'll be there." Because I really love this message. It really means a lot to me. When I ran for office, I ran because I wanted to fix the big things. I think that's usually--you either think it's going to be a glamorous job or you have an agenda, or there's a reason why people get into office, and I ran because I was frustrated with the city closing the Beach Flats Community Center and felt like, "Why is my community doing this? I can do better. I don't know that I've done any better. I don't know that I've fixed any of the big things." But what I have learned is that oftentimes, even though we're trying to fix the big things, it's the small things that really matter. And it's the small things that most of you do--I think probably everyone in this community does something, especially within the confines of the church. But going out and participating in the broader community just because you want to, need to, think that there's something that needs to be fixed, it matters. I tell this to my kids all the time, you have to participate in whatever way you can. It doesn't mean that you have to run for office. I wouldn't advise any of you to do that, actually. But you can participate on commissions, you can do beach cleanups, you can do a million things with nonprofits in this community. If there's one thing that Santa Cruz County has, it's a lot of nonprofits doing a lot of amazing work, and you can get involved in that.

You have an interesting idea that you do with your kids. Tell us a little bit about that. I talked this morning, one of the things that I do, I try to, at least with my kids, I try to really role model how I want them to move in the world. And one of the things that we do that we do every week, many of you participate in CSAs, you know, that's what we do in Santa Cruz. Tell us what a CSA is. Community supported agriculture, so you get your fresh organic produce from a local farm. And most of the time with these CSAs, you go to a spot and you pick up the bag of produce and you go off and about your day and you've got this wonderful, amazing produce. Our CSA is a little different. You can do that, but you can also pick the produce. It's the Homeless Garden Project CSA. And so my daughter and I, usually it's my daughter because she has a little more patience. My son's like in the strawberries eating them all and getting himself sick. My daughter will come and go to all the different plants and identify them and we'll pick what we need to pick. And the other reason that we go to the CSA is because in my world, especially in the city of Santa Cruz, there's a huge conversation around the homeless population. Huge. It comes up all the time in every meeting. Can't tell you how many emails I get about it. It is a real challenge for our community. But in most of those conversations, my kids are having, it's an us and them conversation. Because they hear, they know more about desalination and public safety than any children of that age should. Because that's just what we talk about. But I want them to have a different conversation about homeless population than us and them. I want them to understand that it's all of us. These are people that you may be really surprised don't have a home. And that's what the Homeless Garden Project does for them because they're talking about plants and they're talking about the ducks and they're talking about the chickens. With the homeless people who work there. And with the people that are volunteering and getting, it's an employment program. And it changes that conversation for them. And it's just one of the amazing things that's happening in Santa Cruz. But it's part of those small things make a difference. If we can do these little things that change the bigger things, our community will be transformed. I absolutely believe that. And I think that everyone in this room has the capacity to do that in some way, shape, or form.

You know this may be an awkward analogy, but I was thinking about this. We were talking about how your kids are talking to homeless people at the Homeless Garden Project. And it helps them because they know them by name, and they've never known a homeless person before. Now they know some. And so the project is personal and there's compassion and sympathy that develops from that. And honestly, Hillary, people have told me the same thing when I've been at the Aptos Chamber or whatever. I've lost track of the amount of times people have come up to me and said, "Hey, listen, you know what? You're actually the only Christian I know. You're the only religious person I know." But that's one of the benefits of all of us from all our different tribes, so to speak, getting out there and rubbing shoulders. Because it's hard for hostility to develop when you're rubbing shoulders with people from these different groups that make up what we love about Santa Cruz.

Finally, how do we pray for people who are in public service? I gave everybody a list. You know, Lynn Robinson's name is on there, your name's on there. How do we pray for people in public service? This is really part of the reason that I wanted to be here today and know that I'm not running for anything, not expecting anyone to vote for me. But I wanted to come and thank all of you because I know what you did for me personally last year and what you did for our city when we lost our two officers. I know, I know in my heart of hearts that this community was praying for us. I know what Pastor Rene did for us and I will be eternally grateful. But I know that each and every one of you in your own way, you were thinking about us. We were in your hearts. And in those moments, you can't imagine how much that matters to the people that are in the spotlight, elected, having to manage these situations. I have never in my life had to deal with something so difficult. And at plenty of moments, I didn't think that I could do the job. I just wanted to crawl under my desk and say somebody else can be mayor this year. This is not for me. But knowing that people in this congregation community were being supportive and thinking about me made all the difference in the world. In my world, I receive hundreds and hundreds of emails a week, if not a day. And I joke with Supervisor Friend, we talk about how 80% is really negative, complaining something's wrong, fix it, you're doing a terrible job. And the other 20% is, will you come to this event, please? We'd really like to see you. And that's it. It's either a complaint or an invitation. And on occasion, I get an email, a call, somebody in the grocery store stopping me and just saying, thank you, you're doing a good job. We appreciate you. We're praying for you. And that makes all the difference in the world.

And it really does matter when things are happening in Ferguson. I call the mayor or I email the mayor. When the earthquake happened in Napa, I did that. Santa Barbara, when they had that horrific shooting, I called the mayor. And I am now going down to visit her this week and we'll spend time with her because I just wanted to say, I don't know if I can do anything for you, but I'm feeling for you in this moment and I'm thinking about you. So I know you all do that, but continue to do it because it matters.

Hey, be sincere and honest about this here. I know, in church, be honest about this. But how many of you last year when we were going through that horrible crisis, how many of you raised your hands if you prayed for our city leadership, including Hillary? This congregation did lift you up in prayer. And again, I just think you did a really good job. And I want to thank you. And thanks for being here. Thank you so much, Hillary, for being here. Hillary needs to join her son at a birthday party right now, but she still made time for us to be here, too. So once again, let's thank her for doing a wonderful job.

Well, let me wrap up with this because this is really the big question, right? It's one thing for us in Santa Cruz, beautiful, sunny Santa Cruz, to hear this and go, "Okay, I can see what Hillary's talking about. Okay, I'll rub shoulders and I'll do all this." But the first people to hear this, they were the Jewish exiles in Babylon. And they must have thought, "What? How can I pray for Babylon, for prosperity for them?" It must have been completely astounding to hear this from God. I mean, picture it. The city of Babylon was filled with idols and false gods. The leader's hands were dripping with blood. And God says, "Okay, I want you to root for it." What? Pray for it, not against it. What? How could this be? How do I make sense of that? How can I live like that? How can you stay and love and pray and help people who don't like you and actually try to repress you?

Well, check this out. Back in Jeremiah 29, God says, "Do all these great things." Why? Well, that's where that famous verse comes in. Jeremiah 29:11. Here's why. "For I know the plans I have for you." Plans for good. Plans to give you hope. "Oh, I've got great future plans for you." You see what God is saying here? He's saying your future is amazing. So you don't have to go around mad at everybody oppressing you. You don't have to feel like you're on the defensive all the time. You don't have to feel like I better blunt every blow and every strategy, otherwise I'm going to disappear. God's saying, "Oh, you have such a great future in store." And that means you can go into a world that may not even know you exist or may think that they dislike you and you don't have to go with this posture. You can go with this posture because you're confident of this future.

Now, in context, what specifically is this verse about? God's plans to bring the Jewish exiles home back to Jerusalem. And for a lot of the rest of the book of Jeremiah, it paints this amazing picture about God bringing the people home. And I want you to just let your mind's eye imagine the texture and the imagery that Jeremiah is poetically describing here as he quotes the Lord God saying, and these are all verses from chapter 31, "I will gather them from the ends of the earth." A great throng will gather there. Their souls shall be like a well-watered garden and they shall sorrow no more at all. Now, wait a minute. No more sorrow? But there was a lot of sorrow in Jerusalem after this was written. This is a clue. Keep reading. Verse 32, he says, "I will make a new covenant. I will put my law on their minds and write it on their hearts. I'll be their God. They'll be my people." What does that mean? Keep reading. "Behold, the days are coming," says the Lord, "that the city shall be rebuilt. It shall not be captured or destroyed anymore forever." But Jerusalem was captured and destroyed lots of times after this. Will all these clues add up? That's how we know. This is talking about something else other than the restoration 70 years after this was written of the city of Jerusalem. When will there be a city like this? Well, check this out. Very end of the Bible. Finally, here it comes. I saw the holy city coming down out of heaven from God. And I heard a loud voice saying, "Behold, God's dwelling is now among his people. God himself will live with them and they will be his people. He will wipe every tear from their eyes and there'll be no more death, no more sorrow, no more crying, no more pain. All those things are gone forever." See, hallelujah, right? And when this captures your heart, when you know this will happen, that helps you reach out in love to people. When this captures your imagination, that makes you eager to love your city because you want to share this good news.

Really, this is the second half of what you need to really love Santa Cruz. The first half is the first page of your notes and you can write the word "care" across that because God is telling you to care about and care for your city. But you also need the second half, the rest of Jeremiah 29, and you could write the word "hope" across that second page because you cannot care without hope. Care and love die without hope. You know, sometimes it's so easy to think, "Man, you know what? I don't know if God is there for me. I don't know if he cares for me anymore." I didn't show you this. This is one other church sign. I love the context of this. "The Lord is good and his love endures forever." Hours, 9 to 4. Not a good juxtaposition there. And sometimes you kind of feel like your God's off duty. No, he's right there with you. And just a quick preview. This is why you'll notice on the fall preview postcard in your bulletin we're doing a series "40 Days in the Word" combined with Wednesday night classes, small groups, starts in a month. I tell you, this may be the most important series we ever do here at Twin Lakes Church. Because this will teach you how to truly understand the Bible for yourself so you have this never-ending source of hope that starts in a month.

But for now, I want you to ask yourself, "Am I living for..." and write down the name of your city in that blank. Santa Cruz, Aptos, the way God told his people to live in Babylon. Don't live disdainfully. Everybody's so disdainful these days of everybody else who's not in their worldview. Christians disdainful of atheists, atheists disdainful of Christians, and on and on. But the Bible shows you how to love and respect people who don't even like your worldview. Now maybe you're thinking, "I don't know. This is hard. Santa Cruz is so weird. It's too hard to love Santa Cruz like this." Let me close with an amazing story. Talk about a tough city to love. The city of Ariel is located 40 miles north of Jerusalem. Very tough place to live. It's in what is often called the occupied territories. Pastor David Ortiz leads a church there full of mostly Palestinian Christ followers. And he and his wife Leah there and his son Ammi are their own little family. And in 2008 on the Jewish holiday of Purim, which is right around our Easter time, somebody ding dong rang the doorbell at the Ortiz household and left, as is traditional, a basket of holiday goodies on their front porch and left. And the only one at home at the time was their then 15-year-old son Ammi. And he opened the door and reached down to pick up the basket, expecting some candy or some other little toys. And that's when the bomb went off. And shrapnel and nails and screws and nuts and bolts tore into his body. He was blinded. He was severely burned. Both eardrums were punctured. Several toes had to be amputated. Ammi spent a year in recovery in the hospital.

Now, nobody would blame Ammi or the whole Ortiz family for not wanting to stay or grow or help out or pray for their city. There's all kinds of people in their city where they are a distinct minority who hate them. But they have stayed and they do help and pray and grow there. How? In an interview on Israeli TV a year after the bomb went off, that teenage boy, Ammi, was asked by a reporter, "Why don't you hate all the people who hate you here?" And here's his answer. "I don't feel hate. I don't see a reason for it. I could say they're blinded by their hate and you don't blame a blind person for running over you. So I don't see how I could blame them. I don't know how to explain it, but it's just not there. No hate at all." Instead, the whole Ortiz family, mom and dad and the now recovered 20-year-old Ammi, stays and grows and helps and prays for their city. For example, every Thursday night they help out together at a soup kitchen that also provides a medical clinic and clothes to the poor. Listen to this. Ammi's mom, Leah, says, "We do this because this is an important work being done in the name of Jesus." You see what motivates them to do this? When I believe that God loved me so much that He gave Himself for me when I was a sinner. When I deeply differed from Him, He loved me. When I really believe that, then I have a resource for deeply loving people who deeply differ from me. For loving people who do not believe what I believe. I have a motivation to love those who practice things I even find offensive. Because, you know, Jesus Christ did that for me. And it's when I really have internalized this and I really believe it. That's when I want to reach out to people because that's what God did for me at moments in my life when I was opposed to Him and running from Him. And it's His kindness that brings me to repent.

As Tim Keller says, and I love this quote, "Think of how God won you over. Not by taking power, but by serving you. Not with a sword in His hands, but nails in His hands. Not coming to bring judgment, but to bear judgment." That's how God so loves the world. So that's how I can love the world. See, that's our resource. That's the pool of energy we get for reaching out to Santa Cruz. When it seems like they're doing things that offend me and are opposed to me, well, that's what God did for you. See, the bottom line is this. I might feel like a refugee sometimes in my own city, in my own country. But I'm an ambassador of God's country. I'm a little outpost of the future city of God in the way I love my city. That's our purpose here in Santa Cruz, so let's go do it. Let's pray.

Lord, help me, help us to really love this beautiful place you made, including the beautiful people that you love. Direct each one of us to get in the mix in the unique way you made us. And may this church be a place of shalom that ripples out and spreads to our whole community. And bring your peace to each heart here today because we know you've got a plan and so we have hope. And in this moment, may each one of us receive your love from Jesus. And then may we love others as you first loved us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.