A Hopeful Farce
9th
Sunday after Pentecost
Jeremiah
32:1-2, 6-15
July
17, 2016
Rev.
John M. Caldwell, PhD
First
United Methodist Church
Decorah,
Iowa
Eventually
in Jerusalem Jeremiah’s warnings became fact: an enemy did indeed
come from the North, the armies of Babylon. They had been there
before, but Judah had promised to pay tribute money, so the armies
left. When Zedekiah suspended the tribute payments, Babylon’s
armies returned, surrounded Jerusalem, and laid siege to it. But
Zedekiah was optimistic.
There
is a difference between optimism and hope. Let me take a stab at
stating it. The pessimist sees the glass as half empty. The
optimist sees the glass as half full. The person with hope knows
where the well is. No, that’s not quite it. I’m not sure I can
put it simply, but I know it when I see it. I see it in our text.
Zedekiah
was an optimist. He walked along the city walls and he felt how firm
they were beneath his feet. Jerusalem had never fallen to an enemy
if there were men to defend its walls. He had an army at his
command. It wasn’t anything like the armies of King Nebuchadrezzar
who had besieged the city. There was no army in the world that was
like the armies of Nebuchadrezzar, at least not in Zedekiah’s
world. But the walls were strong.
All
Zedekiah had to do was to outlast Nebuchadrezzar. He had water,
plenty of it. He had food which, admittedly, was in short supply.
But for now there was enough.
Besides,
he had friends. Powerful friends. The Pharaoh of Egypt was his
friend. He had said so, many times. Many times Pharaoh had promised
that, if Zedekiah broke his treaty with Babylon and refused to pay
Nebuchdrezzar the tribute money he demanded, Egypt would come to
Judah’s aid. Zedekiah had sent his messengers to Egypt. Pharaoh
would come. Zedekiah had only to wait. Zedekiah was an optimist.
Jeremiah
was not. Jeremiah was a prophet. Jeremiah’s calling was to look
into the heart of the events of his day and into the heart of God and
to announce the path that God was calling the people to walk. There
are times when this calling is a delight. The winter of 587 was not
one of those times.
Jeremiah
looked out from the same walls as Zedekiah. He looked toward the
northeast, toward Anathoth, the town of his birth, the town where
his ancestors had settled, the town where his family had lived, at
least until the armies of Nebuchdrezzar had come. It was just three
and a half miles away. Jeremiah could see it clearly.
But
he could also see that the armies of Nebuchadrezzar swarmed over the
landscape between Jerusalem and Anathoth and, indeed, in every
direction, like ants whose hill has been disturbed. Nebuchadrezzar
was not going to go away. Pharaoh was not coming. As far as
Jeremiah could see, there was in the heart of God no hint of rescue
and no promise of a miracle. No, the path that God was calling
Jeremiah’s people to walk was the path of exile and the sooner they
surrendered to that path, the better for them.
Prophets
don’t just see the truth of a situation; they announce it. That’s
what Jeremiah did. In a besieged city Jeremiah went about calling on
the people to surrender. Jeremiah was not good for morale. Jeremiah
was a problem for Zedekiah the king.
So
Zedekiah had Jeremiah arrested and kept imprisoned in the courtyard
of his own guards where at least he wouldn’t have access to public
spaces and the frightened people who had taken shelter in the city.
Among
those frightened people was a cousin of Jeremiah’s named Hanamel.
Like hundreds of people, Hanamel had fled to Jerusalem at the first
news of Nebuchdrezzar’s invasion. He grabbed whatever he could
carry and sought refuge behind the strong walls of the city.
Hanamel,
like the other refugees, had a problem: he was hungry. The price of
bread kept rising and Hanamel’s purse kept getting lighter and
lighter. Like the other refugees, Hanamel was looking to liquidate
some of his other assets so that he could continue to eat.
Hanamel
owned a field at Anathoth. The field was pretty much useless to him,
what with the Babylonian army using it for a parking lot and all. He
could sell that field and have money for food. If he could sell the
field. If he could find a buyer willing to pay anything at all. As
any realtor will tell you, though, the three most important things
about real estate are...location, location, and location. Located as
it was under the chariot wheels of the Babylonian army, this field
was not going to be worth much. Who would be crazy enough to buy
Hanamel’s field at Anathoth?
As
soon as Hanamel asked the question, he had his answer: Of course!
Cousin Jeremiah! Jeremiah might buy the field. After all Jeremiah
was Hanamel’s cousin. Remember, land in those days was not quite
the commodity that it is now. You couldn’t just sell your land to
the highest bidder. Land was supposed to stay within extended
families. Family members were morally obligated to buy the land, if
they were able to do that, to keep the land from being alienated from
the family. Jeremiah was not only Hanamel’s cousin, and obliged
for that reason to buy the land if he could, he was also nuts.
Buying useless land was just the sort of gesture that Jeremiah did
all the time!
So
Hanamel went to crazy Jeremiah who was confined in courtyard of the
royal guard. He offered him the field at Anathoth. Even though
Hanamel had thought all this through, I still think he was surprised
when Jeremiah said yes. He not only said yes, but gave him a fair
price for it: seventeen shekels, a fair price under normal
circumstances and circumstances were far from normal.
But
you couldn’t have figured that out by watching Jeremiah. Jeremiah
observed all the niceties of a real estate transaction: Jeremiah got
his secretary Baruch son of Neriah and grandson of Mahseiah—a very
formal way of referring to Baruch—to make out the deeds setting out
the terms and conditions of the sale. There were two copies: one
deed was left unsealed so that it could be consulted and the other
deed was sealed so that it could not be tampered with and could be
available as a comparison in case there were ever a doubt about the
open deed. Jeremiah weighed out the seventeen shekels in front of
witnesses—bored, off-duty guards I suppose.
Everyone
was waiting for what came next. Jeremiah had a way of turning the
most normal of acts into an Event. Jeremiah was always bringing God
into things. He did not disappoint. Jeremiah gave his secretary
instructions: “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. For this is what Yahweh of the
Armies, the God of Israel, says: Houses and fields and vineyards
shall again be bought in this land.”
There
is the difference between optimism and hope. Jeremiah is no
optimist. Jeremiah does not look on the bright side of things.
Jeremiah does not work to keep his own or anyone else’s spirits up.
Jeremiah knows nothing of that optimism that seems to be a part of
the American character. Jeremiah never faces disappointment with
Scarlet O’Hara’s famous line: “Tomorrow is another day!”
What
Jeremiah does instead is to stake himself on God’s future even as
he lives in the midst of a present that is broken or even disastrous.
He places himself in the gap between the world as it is and the
world as God longs for it to be and entrusts himself to the world as
God longs for it to be. This is what it means to hope.
This
shouldn’t be too hard to understand. We do the same thing every
time we pray the prayer that Jesus taught us. Jesus, too, was a
prophet and he taught us a prophet’s prayer. In the midst of a
reality that does little to render God’s name holy, we pray for
God’s name to be hallowed. In the midst of self-serving empires we
pray for God’s reign instead. In the midst of egos competing for
scarce resources, we pray for God’s will to be done. In a world of
hunger we pray for daily bread for all of us. In a world that
keeps score and holds grudges we forgive and ask forgiveness. In a
world of hard testing we pray not to be tested to destruction. In a
world where evil seems to run rampant, we pray that no one would
become evil’s victim.
When
we pray as Jesus taught us, we pray a prophet’s prayer. But when
we move from simply saying the words, to living this prayer that
Jesus taught us, something profound happens. We, with Jeremiah and
Jesus, place ourselves between the world as it is and the world that
God longs for. With Jeremiah and Jesus we stake ourselves on the
world that God longs for even as we live in the world as it is.
This
is the beauty and the tension of a life lived in covenant with the
God of Jeremiah and Jesus. And this is the life offered to the
people who are called the church:
We
are the people who commit ourselves to peace even in the face of war.
We
are the people who commit ourselves to generosity even in the face of
scarcity.
We
are the people who commit ourselves to justice even in the face of
privilege.
We
are the people who commit ourselves to resurrection even in the face
of death.
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