Our
Old Testament lesson is about a real estate deal.
You
might well wonder
why Jeremiah’s buying a plot of
ground
is important enough to
be in the Bible.
Well
the point depends on the context.
For
years and years, the Kingdom of Judah
had been doing well enough
economically,
but not so well morally.
They
had not treated the poor kindly
and they had not been faithful to
God.
So,
for decades, Jeremiah kept prophesying doom and judgment.
When
Babylon invaded Judah, Jeremiah said, “Give up.
Babylon is here as an agent of God’s
judgment.
So just give up.”
You can imagine how that
went over
with the Judean Department of Homeland Security.
Jeremiah found himself
behind bars charged with treason,
of which he was conspicuously guilty.
Things weren’t looking
good for Jeremiah’s personal life.
Things were looking even
worse for Judah.
The Babylonian army had
occupied the whole countryside
and had now laid siege to Jerusalem itself.
It was only a matter of
time – and not much time –
until the city would be overrun, the temple sacked,
and the people carried away in slavery to a far off land.
Jeremiah had been
predicting this all his life.
“Judah,” he said, “you are
going down.”
Now it was happening.
Judah was going down.
Then the word of the Lord
came to Jeremiah,
and said unto him.
“Jeremiah, buy land. Buy
agricultural real estate in Judah.”
It’s pretty obvious why
there was land for sale.
People wanted to liquidate
their assets and skip out to Egypt.
But what kind of a fool
would want to buy Judean real estate
with the Babylonian army at the gates?
Nonetheless, that’s what
God told Jeremiah to do,
so that’s what Jeremiah did.
Jeremiah, the lifelong
prophet of doom and gloom,
now at the moment when his dire predictions were coming
to pass,
invested in the future of his country.
He bought land.
What was he thinking?
Was Jeremiah trusting in
the mercy of the Babylonians?
They committed atrocities
against the Jews
that would have made Saddam Hussein weep for pity.
Was he relying on Egypt,
the only other world power
that
could possibly have resisted Babylonian might?
Jeremiah despised the
Egyptians and any pro-Egypt factions in Judah.
Egypt was being driven
back to its own borders
and
would soon be fighting for its own life.
Where did Jeremiah expect
help to come from?
Who was going to send the
cavalry?
40 years later it came
from Cyrus, King of the Persian Empire.
But at the time Jeremiah
bought the land,
Cyrus was five years old and the Persian Empire did not
yet exist.
So whom was Jeremiah
counting on to justify
his real estate investment?
God. Jeremiah, the
lifelong prophet of doom and gloom,
trusted God to turn disaster into joy.
So what might we learn
from
Jeremiah’s counter-intuitive investment strategy?
Our story tells us
something about God
and something about life.
Sometimes, when things
are going well,
we get a bit full of ourselves.
We think, “Look at us. We
got it going.”
We think we’ve done all
this
and we trust in our own strength
to hold on to what we’ve got.
But God keeps saying,
“Don’t get too high and mighty.
What goes up must come down.”
Our strongest fortress in
this transitory life is a house of cards.
When we are feeling strong,
that’s when we hear God’s voice reminding us to
“do justice, love mercy, walk humbly.”
But then when things get
hard, when fortune turns against us,
when we
see nothing but clouds on the horizon,
when everything we cherish is falling apart,
that’s when we hear God say,
“Rejoice. I reverse the
ways of the world.
I
overturn the judgments of the world.
In my grace, whatever goes down must
come up.
Fear not for I have redeemed you.”
These are hard times at
St. Timothy’s – uncertain times.
That’s why your wardens
asked me to come
and bring you some word from the Lord.
By his grace, I found it
right here in the Bible.
When we feel like the
Babylonians are at the gate,
that’s when the Lord invites us to trust in his grace.
Jeremiah also gave us
this word from the Lord,
“I know the plans I have for you,
plans to prosper you and not to harm you,
plans to give you hope and a future.”//
I don’t know how Mike’s
health is going to go.
But I know whatever
befalls, he will flourish in God’s hands.
I don’t know what
decisions you’ll make or how your part of God’s mission
will unfold in the coming years.
But I am confident that
God will see you through.
Keep your hearts engaged
in the Christ’s Mission.
That’s what it means to
buy real estate in the Kingdom.
Keep your hearts engaged
in the Mission
and trust in the immeasurable mercy and providence of
God.
We can’t see what form
that mercy will take
anymore than Jeremiah could have foreseen
that a little boy a thousand miles away in Persia,
a child worshiper of a foreign God called Ahura Mazda
would return the Jews to their homeland.
We can’t see what form
God’s mercy will take.
But we trust it anyway.
That’s why they call it
faith.
