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Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD in the tenth year of King Zedekiah of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar. 2 At that time the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and the prophet Jeremiah was confined in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah, 3awhere King Zedekiah of Judah had confined him.
6 Jeremiah said, The word of the LORD came to me: 7 Hanamel, son of your uncle Shallum is going to come to you and say, "Buy my field that is at Anathoth, for the right of redemption by purchase is yours." 8 Then my cousin Hanamel came to me in the court of the guard, in accordance with the word of the LORD, and said to me, "Buy my field that is at Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, for the right of possession and redemption is yours; buy it for yourself." Then I knew that this was the word of the LORD.
9 And I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel and weighed out the money to him, seventeen shekels of silver. 10 I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales. 11 Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing the terms and conditions, and the open copy; 12 and I gave the deed of purchase to Baruch's son of Neriah son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel, in the presence of the witnesses who signed the deed of purchase, and in the presence of all the Judeans who were sitting in the court of the guard. 13 In their presence I charged Baruch, saying, 14 Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these deeds, both this sealed deed of purchase and this open deed and put them in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last for a long time. 15 For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.
It says, in the first verse of today’s reading, that Jeremiah[1] is “confined in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah.”
What that means is that Jeremiah is in jail. Jeremiah has been imprisoned because he is an unpopular prophet. Although, it may be redundant to say that. Prophets were, generally, unpopular.
Prophets told people things that they didn’t want to hear.
Prophets shared visions people didn’t want to see.
Jeremiah was no exception to this rule.
Jeremiah was the one who set the rule—one of the major prophets from Before the Common Era, and one of the longest books in the Bible.
Jeremiah didn’t love being a prophet, in fact, he begged God to let him do something else. He begged God to give him a different mission, a different vision. He didn’t want to be hated and dismissed. Ignored and belittled.
Jeremiah didn’t love being a prophet, but Jeremiah did love God. He loved God’s people. And so he told them exactly what was going to happen to them. Exactly what God told him to say. Only…. Jeremiah had no level tone. He yelled. He demanded. He begged. He was very dramatic.
Jeremiah took a pottery jug and in front of the town leaders, he smashed it, to show them what God would do with their lives and their nation if they did not repent. If they did not change. Jeremiah walked around the town with a yoke on his neck to show the people that the yoke of another nation’s rule would be placed upon them as punishment for their disobedience. Because God asked him, Jeremiah refused to marry. He refused to mourn when people died. He refused to participate in feasts.
As you heard in the summer sermon series, because of the way he spoke and behaved, Jeremiah also spent some time stuck in the mud at the bottom of a cistern.
Jeremiah told the people the truth, God’s truth. Woe. Shame. Destruction. Turmoil. Servitude. Death. Those were the words of Jeremiah given to him by God. But these weren’t the words that landed him in jail.
The words that landed Jeremiah in jail were words telling the Judeans, the residents of Jerusalem, to give up. In many ways, defeated himself, Jeremiah told the people to admit defeat. To surrender to the sieging Babylonians, and maybe escape with the lives, giving up the current generation as lost, for maybe a future generation would be found.
Unpatriotic. Treason. That’s what they said about Jeremiah then, and it was then that he was placed under arrest.
Jerusalem couldn’t imagine a lower point. They had already been conquered; they were about to be scattered. A remnant had been left in the land, and even they were about to be removed.
Taken. Shipped into slavery. Exile.
And so. What does Jeremiah do? He’s in prison. About to be sent to Egypt. He buys land. The land he has no plans or hope of truly possessing or developing, nurturing, or being fed by.
It is money that he has no hope of recovering that could have been used in any number of ways. In the middle of a war zone, Jeremiah buys land. It was exactly what he was supposed to do.
The land comes to him through the cultural, familial, and legal expectations of the time. And… not only does Jeremiah agree to buy it, but he also does so publicly, which was not required. He closes the deal in front of everyone. So public, it would the equivalent of, today,
Announcing the purchase on social media.
Putting the closing documents up on a billboard.
Hiring a skywriter to put the words in the sky.
It has to be one of the most foolish investments in Biblical history, and I can only imagine what would have happened if Jeremiah had been the subject of one of Jesus’ parables.
It’s not smart. It’s not logical.
But…. it is faithful. And it is wise.
Remember how today’s passage is concluded: “For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”
Thus says the Lord.
In this land.
This land.
There is a difference between smart and wise.
There is a difference between optimism and hope.
The Judeans had no reason to be optimistic. There were no numbers or polls or statistics which indicate that brighter days were on the horizon. They were not. They had no reason to be optimistic.
But, Jeremiah says, when things are uncertain, invest. Love. Make a stake. Don’t withdraw. Engage with deep, faithful hope.
Where is Jeremiah investing in property?
It’s the equivalent of modern-day Ukraine.
Haiti moments after the earthquake.
It’s a home in Kentucky, filled to the countertops with water and mud.
It’s not optimism that leads you to call a real estate agent in the middle of a war, it is hope.
Hope born of faith, faith in the God who created all things redeems all things, and sustains all things.
Hope doesn’t say we have to have the answers. Jeremiah doesn’t know exactly what the path will be like towards the time when “Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.” He buys the land anyway. Because he has faithful hope.
Hope born of faith, faith in the God who creates all things redeems all things, and sustains all things.
Jeremiah says, when things are uncertain, invest. Love. Make a stake. Don’t withdraw. Engage with deep, faithful hope.
And friends, engaging and investing is exactly the phase I believe we are in right now.
The world has been turned upside down in the last few years. Church. School. Work. Economy. Political divides do not seem to be abating. And as I consider where we are and pray about where God is calling us to go, I think it is a wonderful time to ask the question that church consultant Susan Beaumont raised recently, “What longs to emerge here.”[2]
When the pandemic started there was a piece of art that made its way through social media – by artist Jen Bloomer, founder of Radici Studios[3], who put this sentiment into a piece of art,
“May we grow back not to what was, but instead towards what we can become.”
I’ve had this print in my office for the last two and a half years, but I think I bought it too early because I don’t think we were ready to grow back before. I think it’s only just now that we are beginning to really ask what’s ahead and how we move forward.
And will we insist on moving forward differently? To ask bigger questions and wonder with faithful hearts what longs to emerge here? A different question from what has grown here before, but what longs to emerge here?
The first church that I served was in Arthurdale, West Virginia. Preston County. It was the very first homestead community in the United States, founded by the United States Government under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt. Over a few years, 165 homesteads were built: 2 – 5 acres each, and on each a home with electricity, plumbing, a barn, and a root cellar. And into them moved unemployed coal miners. They were built for unemployed coal miners and their families.
It came to be because of what conditions were like in coal mining communities during the depression. “When the stock market crashed in 1929 and the whole United States sank into a depression, other job opportunities for fired miners disappeared. Unemployed miners were stranded in the mountains with no money to leave and barely enough to survive.”[4]
How bad were they? Jeremiah bad. Lorena Hickok went to Scott’s Run, near Morgantown, and this is what she saw. It, she wrote, “was the worst place I'd ever seen. In a gutter, along the main street throughout the town, there was stagnant, filthy water, which the inhabitants used for drinking, cooking, washing, and everything else imaginable. On either side of the street were ramshackle houses, black with coal dust, which most Americans would not have considered fit for pigs. And in those houses, every night children went to sleep hungry, on piles of bug-infested rags, spread out on the floor. There were rats in those houses.”[5]
Arthurdale was the response to such utter despair.[6]
A desire to bring new eyes and new possibilities to an age-old problem.
Of people who set aside questions of return on investment or earning potential and were willing to ask, “what longs to emerge here?”
Eleanor Roosevelt, with the help of many, led the creation of Arthurdale, as a way to embody hope where there was no justifiable reason for hope. Many people have debated the success of Arthurdale in the years since it was created. But not the people who lived there. The people who moved there. As Arthurdale resident Glenna Williams said about the day when she moved, as a child, from Scott’s Run to Arthurdale, “My life went from black and white to color in one day.”[7]
And I love this story because it came out of a desire to let something new emerge. Instead of asking- what has grown here before, ask what can grow in this land. Because of faithful hope. Hope born of faith, faith in the God who creates all things, redeems all things, and sustains all things.
When things are uncertain, Jeremiah says, invest. Love. Make a stake. Don’t withdraw. Engage with deep, faithful hope.
It’s a great question for church, but it’s also a question for our lives. For our relationships. For our vocations. For our world. What longs to emerge here?
And then are we willing to engage and take risks to nurture that longing into being?
Are we willing to take the risk of hope?
Hope born of faith, faith in the God who creates all things, redeems all things, and sustains all things.
When we look around here - around First Presbyterian Church. Around New Bern. Around the world.
What is longing to emerge?
Where you are. Who you are.
What Longs to Emerge here?
I invite you to ask that with me – today and in the months ahead. For God is in our midst. And God has a vision for the road ahead of you, ahead of us.
And because hope is stubborn. And persistent. Often in denial of facts. And deeply, deeply faithful.
“For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”
Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God.
Amen.
[1] For a basic introduction to the book of Jeremiah: http://www.biblica.com/niv/studybible/jeremiah.php
[2] https://susanbeaumont.com/2022/09/07/hoping-for-a-robust-return/
[3] https://radicistudios.com/store/what-we-can-become-color-print
[4] https://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/157arthurdale/157facts1.htm
[5] Hickok, Lorena A. Reluctant First Lady. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1962, pp. 136-137.
https://bfparker.wordpress.com/2006/05/22/2-of-2-parts-arthurdale-west-virginia-1933-historic-first-fdr-new-deal-homestead-community-2/
[6] https://arthurdaleheritage.org/
[7] http://www.hudsonrivervalley.org/review/pdfs/hrvr26pt1_full.pdf
https://arthurdaleheritage.org/ahi/volunteers-2/
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