Jerusalem Presbyterian Church

Buy low.  Sell high.  That is the sum total of all that I know about the stock market.  There is someone living in my house right now who works in the investment business, not as a trader, but as a computer programmer.  He has learned things like what a “hedge fund” is.  Now to me when I hear those words, “hedge fund” I think of a savings account for the landscaping we need to do around our house in the next few years, but to many people that phrase means something else.  Perhaps it means something to some of you.

I think some people are just born to play the market.  I am not one of those people.  Give me a nice mutual fund somewhere, and I am happy.  I’m not much of a financial risk taker, mostly because I grew up being taught that I should only risk money I could afford to lose, and I’ve never had any of that kind of money.  But some people love to take risks, and hedge their bets, and lose a little in order to gain a lot.  To those people I say, “Have at it.”

Jeremiah is a prophet—that’s p-r-o-p-h-e-t, not p-r-o-f-i-t.  His stock and trade, if you will, is telling the truth— telling the truth about the present reality, and shining light on the past in order that the people might prepare for a future that Yahweh will bless.

The present reality of Jerusalem is that it is under siege by the Babylonians, and her prophet is in prison for telling the King that this would happen, that the king would be captured, and that Jerusalem would fall to the Babylonians.  The king did not want to hear this, and Jeremiah’s punishment was imprisonment for saying it out loud.

So, if you are a prophet in Jerusalem in 588 BC, and you have been thrown in jail for doing your job, and the city is under attack, what do you do? You buy property!  And why do you buy property?  Because God told you to!

Hanamel, Jeremiah’s cousin, visits him and offers him the opportunity to purchase the family land back in Anathoth.  And because Jeremiah believes that this is the will of Yahweh, Jeremiah does it.  And he does it up big: he makes a public display of having the legal documents drawn up, he counts out the seventeen shekels of silver, he has tow copies made—one sealed and one open—which was the tradition of those times, and he has those documents delivered to court, and he makes the speech where in he declares that these should be entered into public record and sealed away where they can be preserved for the future.

For the future.  Jeremiah probably knows that he won’t be coming back to get those documents any time soon, so those earthenware jars are probably a  really good idea. But what kind of future do you suppose anybody watching this public display of political correctness was expecting?  I imagine nobody else there besides Jeremiah was putting much hope in earthenware jars right at the time they were seeing this.  There didn’t seem to be much future in old Jerusalem at the moment. Picture someone taking out a lease on an office in the World Trade center on September 12, 2001.  That’s the logical equivalent of what Jeremiah has done, and done publicly!  If someone offered you the Brooklyn bridge, or swamp land in Florida as a great investment, would you take it?

What if they told you God wanted you to buy it?  What would you do then?  Chances are you would not only not take it, but if they pressed the issue, and even set up a public transaction for the purchase, you would be making a call to some mental health professionals on that person’s behalf, wouldn’t you?

For Jeremiah, maybe the purchase of this land, this field in Anathoth was a second chance—a chance to get something back that had been taken from his family.  Maybe it was for him a chance to hope for something beyond the present reality, and chance to invest in the future that he could not quite yet conceive. Or maybe he was just a crazy guy who listened to God and did what God told him to.

I spent a lot of time this past week planing for the future—the short-term future of this congregation.  I sat for many days surrounded by my books in my office downstairs, reading and planning and writing and dreaming.  It felt very luxurious to have this time—just time set aside to plan.  I really, really like having some sort of plan—some sort of handle on the future.  By Friday evening I had accomplished may of the things that I had planned to take care of last week, but still had a few things left on the to-do list.  But that didn’t matter, because I still had a few days left in which to accomplish many things.

Then late of Friday night—a week ago—the phone rang.  It was my sister.  When the phone rings and it is my sister at ten o-clock on Friday night, tat is not a good thing.  As soon as I heard her voice, my heart was in my throat and the question on my mind was this: “Who is it?”  as in “Who has had an accident, who is in the hospital, or the absolute worst: who is gone?”

My sister had something to break to me, alright.  But it had nothing to do with my parents, my brother, or any of my ailing aunts and uncles.  My forty-one-year-old sister, mother of two teenagers, and divorced for a dozen years, was getting married.  In 36 hours.  To a man I’d never met—had only heard about very briefly from my parents.  In 36 hours.  In Indiana.

My immediate future looked very different, suddenly, and so did hers.  After I scraped my jaw up off the floor, and told her that we could actually be there that Sunday morning, and had hung up in shock, I came to my senses and I got to thinking.  I’m her older sister.  She’s the baby of the family.  Should I be talking her out of this crazy idea?

My sister did something that some people might think a little illogical last Sunday.  She did something that speaks of a hope beyond her present reality.  A lot of weddings—maybe some of the weddings that you and I have witnessed are about making sure the marriage starts off with a perfect day—the perfect dress, the perfect church, the perfect flowers.   But what if it really is just all about the commitment, about making sure that God blesses the union? What if it really is bout two people standing up and publicly making a vow to be together despite the odds, and signing the paperwork, and taking it to the courthouse, and making it be known that there is a hope for the future?   That’s really all my sister had.  And I’ve seldom seen a more hopeful wedding couple.

Maybe that’s like the risk that God takes on us.   The truth telling that a prophet of Yahweh must do was a direct result of the behavior of the children of God.  Throughout the story of God with God’s people, the reversal of fortunes has been necessary because of the way that the people forgot who they were and to whom they belonged.  The people of God lived in a present reality because of it.  Despite those present realities, however, God kept certain covenants: to release the slave from bondage, to give the chosen people a name and homeland filled with descendants, that God would never forsake the earth.

In compelling Jeremiah to purchase the field at Anathoth, God was restating the covenant: even in a place under siege, a place utterly destroyed and taken over by the enemy, houses and fields and vineyard shall again be bought.  God kept the promise; God keeps God’s promises.  There is no place that is without value, there is no promise worth making and keeping that God will not honor.

What would it be like for us if we took God’s convenant-keeping seriously?  What if the promise that God has placed in us—which is a deed stored in an earthenware jar if ever there was one—was what we grasped onto when the trials of the present reality were overwhelming?  What if, with God’s help and the Spirit’s leading, we were able to fully comprehend the promise of salvation that is our through Christ—that deliciously surprising reversal of fortune we call grace— and live it out fully and freely in spite of the present realities of our lives?  What if we were able to live as children of the God who offers the hope of restoration and redemption as a down payment for our future?

It just might be a gamble worth taking!  Thanks be to God!