Buy the Field

 

                It’s good to see everyone here today, I guess no one got raptured…

For those of you who weren’t following the young people on TikTok, there was a Rapture Panic this last week
—As your Pastor, I’m your Theologian in Residence, so it is worth naming that the Rapture is a modern misreading of 1^st Thessalonians chapter 4, invented by a Long Islander named Scoffield during the First World War, popularized by some Baptist Texans at Dallas Theological during the second.

                At any rate, folks were behaving atypically this week, with the assumption that the world as they knew it was coming to an end…

                We’ve seen this sort of thing before
—Harold Camping in 2012,
the Left Behind series in the ‘90s,
The Late Great Planet Earth in the ‘70s…

                And these impulses don’t come out of nowhere
—both revival and eschatological speculation
—speculating about the end of the world
—are often signs that something ain’t right in society…
that to a critical mass of people,
it feels like the end of the world.

                And to all that, I would point you all to a saying attributed to Luther, “If the world was to end tomorrow, I would still plant a tree.”

                Or, thinking about Jeremiah’s actions we read about in the first lesson today: “If your world is coming to an end, still redeem that property, buy that field.”

Prayer

 

                Jeremiah, and many of his fellow prophets as well, are known for something called Sign prophecy—I think about it as similar to what I do with the Children’s message—they play with props. Sometimes its big deal stuff, distressingly weird even…

                For example, Jeremiah once threw fresh underwear into a stream and left them there until they got moldy, slimy, and disgusting, then he marched them around Jerusalem telling the people that they were just like moldy underwear…

Or right before today’s reading, he shackled himself to a yoke and wandered the streets warning everyone to shackle themselves to the Babylonian yoke or face God’s wrath…

Imagine that—the Babylonians seen as the vile pagan enemy, an empire threatening to overawe and overpower Judah and their coalition partners…
                Imagine that—the city besieged, the enemy at the gate, and Jeremiah out there blubbering about the Babylonian Yoke being God’s will—it was treasonous…
prophets…
so often their words sound like treason, because they love only God…

 

                And then Jeremiah calls his lawyer
—poor Baruch, always pulled into these situations on account of his friend, the Prophet Jeremiah
—Baruch, Jeremiah’s Right-hand-man is called over to complete another sign prophecy—in this case called over to make something nice and legal; a land deal even as it became clear that the land was no longer any Judahite’s to control… Jeremiah buying and selling property at a time when it was obvious all property was going to belong to the invaders…

                Such prophetic audacity… doesn’t it draw you in?
What the heck is he up to,
God’s city and Jeremiah’s country collapsing…
and he writes a deed of sale! Don’t you want to know why?

 

                Besieged and everything collapsing…
It reminds me of a story from Sarajevo, during the Civil War there… during the 4 year siege there a man found himself in a bombed out building, alone there with nothing but a goat, and hear heard in the distance the cry of a child.

It reminds me of the families of those murdered after the shooting at Mother Emmanuel, of Erika Kirk in the wake of the assassination of her husband…

                But also, those smaller collapses, that are much closer to home.

-A terminal diagnosis and a rapidly contracting future.

-The loss of a job, or even its threat
—the brittleness of vocation and uncertainty of meaning that it brings.

-Hitting rock bottom and recognizing that you’re an addict and can’t get out on your own…

 

                What is Jeremiah up to, “Write me up a deed of sale.”

                In the face of famine, and the crushing power of the most powerful nation in his world—overcoming armies, occupying land, pressing against the capital city’s walls so hard they start to bow inward.

In the face of Jeremiah’s own prophecies of “doom, doom, Doom!”

He redeems a relative’s field… fulfilling a law of God, doing right by his kin.

He did the right thing when it was hard, impossibly so… if you only have ethics when it is easy, you don’t have an ethic, but a hobby… He does the right thing…

But much more than that, he did the right thing, even at a time that was hopeless and the property was worthless. He did the right thing and it became more than an action, it became a sign of something more—a message from God.

 “God says “Take these deeds, both sealed and open, and put them in earthenware jars, so that they’ll last a good while, for thus says the LORD, the House and Fields and Vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”

In the face of immense evil, a couple of legal documents, sealed in a jar, buried in the back yard.

A small thing that proclaimed God’s Word:
“All is going to go to hell, but have hope!
“I will bring them back to this place and I will settle them in safety!
I brought disaster, so I will later bring good fortune!
Fields shall be bought in this land and deeds signed and sealed again, for God is the restorer of fortunes!”

 

That man in Sarajevo, milked that goat for weeks and months and years on end, bringing the milk to neighbors who could feed their little child.

Erika Kirk, and the families of the Emmanuel 9, did the impossible, they forgave their spouses murders.

I think of a strange wedding and funeral I once did—a marriage in the face of a quick killing cancer—and a funeral just days later. Certainly, there was something of Jeremiah’s deed of sale in that.

Those smaller, more personal, collapses too—unemployment and holding on to your core self. Hitting rock bottom and reaching out for help.

It might be an end, but it is not THE end. When the world is roiled all around you, redeem the field.

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