Jeremiah 32:1-15
“Planting Hope”
September 26, 2010 - Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

         During the depression my grandfather owned the local feed and seed store in his town. He was a generous man and often sold to struggling farmers and ranchers on credit, and he often lost money on debts that could not be repaid.

         Once a man who owed Grandpa a lot of money offered him a tract of land in lieu of payment in cash. My grandfather wasn’t a great businessman, but even he recognized a bad deal. He said, “I don’t want that land. It hasn’t got any water on it.” So he didn’t take the land and our family doesn’t own it, or the feed and seed store for that matter, today.

         Every year I drive by that property my grandfather turned down. It’s now a substantial piece of the resort town of Sedona. Even after the real estate bubble popped it remains some of the highest priced land in Arizona. In hard times, with debts of his own, Grandpa didn’t see any value, any hope in that dry, high desert acreage. But he didn’t see far enough.

         In our text today, one of Jeremiah’s relatives came to offer him a really bad deal on some property near his hometown of Anathoth. By all sensible business practice, it was a ridiculous proposition.

         Our readings from Jeremiah the past few weeks lead up to this situation. Thirty years earlier Jeremiah began warning Judah of God’s judgment. Twenty years before, their last good king died in a foolish alliance with Egypt. Ten years previously Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian army had taken control of Jerusalem, captured the young wicked king Jehoiachin, and appointed his uncle Zedekiah as their own puppet ruler.

         Zedekiah learned nothing from his predecessors. He listened to false prophets saying things would turn around and all would be well. Down the same path as earlier kings, he rebelled against Babylon again by an alliance with Egypt. When Jeremiah preached against his course, saying it would lead to death and disaster, the king placed him under guard. When that didn’t silence him, he had Jeremiah thrown down a cistern.

         As our text opens in 588 B.C., Jeremiah’s predictions are coming true. The Babylonians have arrived for their final solution for a tiny rebel kingdom. They surround Jerusalem in a siege. They control all the countryside around the city. It’s only a matter of time until food runs out and the city gives up and throws the gates open to their invaders.

         Jeremiah was hauled out of the muddy cistern, and was again under guard in the palace courtyard. In the first few verses, wishing for good news from Jeremiah, Zedekiah questions him about his pessimistic message, a continuing prophesy that Babylon will win the siege, destroy the city, and take the king captive. Fighting will not do any good. Why does he keep saying this? Why keep demoralizing the people in the midst of a war?

         With verse 6, Jeremiah replied in a way that changed the direction of the conversation. He began to talk about a word from God that his cousin Hanamel would offer him a business deal, the purchase of property back in their home town of Anathoth. Verse 8 tells Hanamel did show up to ask Jeremiah to buy a field. It was an absurd offer.

         Buying Hanamel’s field made biblical sense. In Leviticus 25 God directed families to maintain their inheritance of land in Israel. If someone becomes poor and has to sell his land, then the nearest relative is to come and buy it so that it won’t pass out of the family. But in every other way buying a field in Judah in 588 B.C. made no sense at all.

         First, the Babylonian army currently occupied all the territory surrounding Jerusalem. That included Anathoth. Like most invading armies, they probably marched through the land burning and looting as they went. The field was a trampled ruin. Nobody would be planting barley there anytime soon.

         Second, in the middle of a war real estate prices had plummeted. The seventeen shekels of silver that Jeremiah paid was much less than other land transactions we read about in the Bible. It was probably still too much. With an invasion in progress, land was more or less worthless. The Babylonians were either already in possession or would take it all. Jeremiah’s deed wasn’t worth the clay or papyrus it was written on.

         Third, Jeremiah himself was in captivity in a city about to be overrun and destroyed. He was almost certainly going to die or be deported by the invaders and would never have an opportunity to take possession of his new property.

         Altogether, it was absolutely crazy for the prophet to buy his cousin’s field. Yet he did. Verses 9 to 12 are the most detailed record we have of such a transaction in ancient times. Silver is weighed because this is before the use of coins in Palestine. Two copies of the deed are made so one can be left open for easy access and reference and one is sealed so it can be checked in case there is any question of changes to the open copy. There are witnesses who sign the deed. And in verse 14 the copies are sealed in a clay jar much like those in which the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

         Even though he was imprisoned, Jeremiah made every effort to make his business with Hanamel a public affair. He wanted everyone to notice and know about his stupid business deal. He wanted the whole city gossiping about crazy Jeremiah getting ripped off by his clever cousin. It was a prophetic publicity stunt.

         God ordered that the deeds be sealed in a clay jar, verse 14 says, “so they will last a long time.” My grandfather didn’t have anyone to tell him that a few acres of rock and sagebrush would be worth millions seventy years later. But God showed Jeremiah that the flattened, enemy-occupied field near his hometown would one day be worth owning again. Verse 15 tells us, “For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says: Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.”

         In other words, the Babylonians would not have the last word. Disaster would come. The Jews would become exiles across the desert in Babylon. That field would lie deserted for nearly fifty years. But the time would come. God would bring them back. Someone would plow and plant that field again. There was hope.

         This little story about a real estate transaction is the central message of the whole book of Jeremiah. It’s the center of the center of the book. As I said a few weeks ago, chapters 30 to 33 of Jeremiah are the “Little Book of Consolation,” or “Comfort.” Right in the middle of judgment, warning, and dire prediction of doom, God promised to bring His people out the other side and redeem them. Buying his cousin’s field, Jeremiah proved he believed his own message. He lived the hope he was preaching, trusting God for the future.

         As followers of Jesus Christ, you and I are called to act like Jeremiah in hard times. Yes, the effects of recession are still with us. Many if not most of us have reduced incomes. Some of us don’t even have jobs. If you own a house, you are painfully aware that it’s valued at tens of thousands of dollars less than it was two years ago. We buy and sell like Jeremiah did, in bad times. Yet in Christ we have the kind of hope he had, hope that trusts in God for a future we cannot see.

         That hope is expressed in our other texts this morning. Psalm 91 is a hymn of confidence in God’s protection and care. In our Gospel reading from Luke 16, Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus, is the simple assertion that the poor man who received bad things all his life is now comforted in the presence of God. In I Timothy 6 Paul asks us to be content with what we have. Instead of loving money, look forward to “the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which God will bring about in his own time.”

         Just like Jeremiah we are asked to look ahead, even far ahead, for hope and blessing we cannot see. Yet the hope of Christian faith is not just an idle dream about a life after this world. Like Jeremiah’s faith, it’s a hope that guides the way we live right now, that demonstrates a lively and world-changing trust in God in the present.

         Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who conspired against Hitler during World War II. He was caught and imprisoned. From his prison cell he wrote dozens of letters and papers. Some of those letters were written to his fiancé, Maria von Wedemeyer. Even when the prospects for his release grew hopeless, they maintained their engagement. Bonhoeffer compared their on-going engagement to Jeremiah’s act of faith in buying a field with Jerusalem surrounded. He wrote Maria these words:

When I also think about the situation of the world, the complete darkness over our personal fate and my present imprisonment, then I believe that our union can only be a sign of God’s grace and kindness, which calls us to faith… And I do not mean the faith which flees the world but the one that endures the world and which loves and remains true to the world in spite of all the suffering which it contains for us. Our marriage shall be a yes to God’s earth; it shall strengthen our courage to act and accomplish something on the earth. I fear that Christians who stand with only one leg upon earth also stand with only one leg in heaven.

         Bonhoeffer understood that real Christian faith is not just about going to heaven. It’s a way of life completely committed to living for God here and now in this world, no matter how bleak the circumstances. Like Jeremiah speaking God’s message of hope through a land purchase, Dietrich and Maria let their love be a testimony of faith in difficult times.

         We put our faith in God’s kingdom by living in this world in the best and most beautiful and hopeful ways we can. In the process, like Jeremiah, our lives becomes signposts for people around who look for hope. We raise children and send them off to college, trusting their future to God. We start churches, trusting their future to God. We buy and build homes, dig and plant gardens, learn and use new skills, and plan and begin new ministries, leaving the future of them all to God.

         Our own congregation here has a record of putting up buildings and then struggling through bad times. This building in which we worship this morning was finished in 1986 just as the spotted owl rules caused a huge downturn in the local timber industry. Instead of the expected growth of this area and this church, people in our communities and in our church lost their jobs and moved away. Those who were left couldn’t afford our mortgage. By the time I came in 1993, our denomination was about ready to close this church down.

         God surprised us all by bringing good times our church. This building grew full to overflowing with children and youth. So full, in fact, that six years ago we made plans to put up another building and we did. It was completed in 2006, just in time for us to get hit with the double whammy of some internal conflicts and then a recession. Now there are hardly any kids in these buildings and once again we’re struggling to pay the mortgage and other bills and keep our doors open.

         We might wonder why, might wonder if God was really leading us in these ventures that we truly believed were acts of faith. Jeremiah wondered too about buying that field. If you follow on down in chapter 32 to verse 24, you can read him praying to God and reciting the situation, “See how the siege ramps are built up to take the city. Because of the sword, famine and plague, the city will be given into the hands of the Babylonians…” Then in verse 25 he makes a statement that is a question, “And though the city will be given into the hands of the Babylonians, you, Lord, say to me, “Buy the field…”

         In other words, Jeremiah himself is saying, “I don’t get it.” Why buy a field when it all seems hopeless, when it feels like there’s no future in it? And why should we build and keep trying to pay for church buildings when we can’t see the future in it?

         God answered Jeremiah, and I think He answers us, starting in verse 27, “I am the Lord, the God of the whole human race. Is anything too hard for me?” Then skip down and read verse 37, “I will surely gather them [that is, Israel] from all the lands where I banish them… I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety,” and read verses 41 to 43, “I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul…As I have brought all this calamity on this people, so I will give them all the prosperity I have promised them. Once more fields will be bought in this land…”

         It may be a long time. Jeremiah had to seal his deed in a clay jar. But I believe God will fill this sanctuary again. He will fill our Sunday School rooms with children. He will have teenagers lounging on those couches in the youth room once again. We don’t see how. We may not even be here when it happens. But God asks us to be faithful, to buy the field, to build His church. The future is in His hands.

         Thursday night our stewardship ministry team sat down to discuss our financial situation. We’re at least $9,000 in the red, spending more than our income. Our reserves are almost depleted. We really don’t know how we’re going to pay all our obligations in the next few months. It was a depressing picture.

         Yet you know what our stewardship team came up with? Yes, they will encourage us in all the usual: consider giving more, encourage tithing, live up to our Lord’s teaching to be generous. But you know what their big idea was? I was so proud of those four people. Their big idea was to take on a new project of compassion, to do something that would meet a need outside of our congregation, something like paying for a well in a village that needs clean water. They plan to research and share that project with you later this year.

         I was so proud. That’s Jeremiah faith. That’s buying a field when the Babylonians are knocking on the door. That’s leaving the future in God’s hands and investing in a field where God wants to plant the love of Jesus for people who haven’t felt it yet.

         I have no idea how it’s all going to turn out. Just like Jeremiah, I can’t see what is coming for us and for this congregation. If it were left up to me, I would say, “Dig a well for somebody else? We can’t even pay our own water bill here.” But we believe in a God who says, “Is anything too hard for me?” who says, “Houses, fields, and vineyards will again be bought in this land.”

         Our future is held by the Lord who did not let even death on a Cross defeat Him. Nothing is too hard for Him. He planted His own Son’s dead body in a field and then raised Him up again. Let’s put our faith in the power that raised Jesus from the dead. Let’s buy some fields for God, new fields in which to plant the hope which He grows in our hearts. There is hope in those fields for everyone. There is hope there for you. Let’s plant that hope deep in our lives and in the world around us and then trust Him for the future.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2010 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj