Real Estate Theology

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

October 7, 2007

Text: Jeremiah 32: 1-3a and 6-15

(This sermon is an expanded version of the one preached on October 7.)

Jeremiah buys land in Anathoth. He makes quite a big deal out of it. (Even real estate transactions became a show and tell for this prophet.) The price, the details of the deed, the weighing of the shekels, the signing in front of many witnesses, instructions to his secretary, the storage of the deeds in earthenware vessels---it is a 6th century version of a “closing.” I have never found closings inspiring, but Jeremiah wants to make a statement by his purchase of land--- to reveal what God has told him.

So, aside from an interest in ancient real estate transactions, this is why we must pause and look at this story more closely.

Jeremiah had become, by his own description, a laughingstock already. Here is icing on the cake. He has been preaching doom and gloom to the people of Jerusalem: King Zedekiah of Judah had rebelled against Babylon, which ruled over them. This was the second time in ten years. Kind Nebuchadnezzar was out for blood this time. He laid siege to Jerusalem, to starve the people into submission and to destroy this monarchy forever. Jeremiah had told the King that their only hope was to surrender and to repent from their evil ways; then they would have a new future. This was not a popular message! He was often beaten and thrown in jails and into a cistern. He was in anguish for his people and what was happening to them. But he was an honest man. He would not promise “peace, peace,” as the other prophets did.  There would be a price to pay for Judah’s idolatry.

And then, at the request of his uncle and cousin, he buys a plot of land in Anathoth, land which would be lost to the family unless he, the most senior male family member, bought it. The trouble was, the land was already occupied by the Babylonian army. The city would soon fall. (No wonder his cousin wanted to sell it!) “It could be of no benefit to Jeremiah. He could not work the land. He could not sell the land, either, unless he someone else in the family agreed to buy it. He gives good money for worthless land.” (James D. Newsome, Proper 21, Year C, Texts for Preaching) (I know it is hard for us to imagine any land being worthless!)

Ray Steadman was on a troop transport ship in World War II, on the way to Hawaii from San Francisco. He writes, “We were convoyed by two American destroyers, guarding against attack by Japanese submarines. Sure enough, about three-quarters of the way across, the general alarm sounded one morning. All passengers aboard were put down in the hold. The destroyers dropped depth charges, and they did indeed sink a submarine. We heard the terrible clang as these depth charges exploded and the concussion banged against the side of our vessel. About a thousand men were gathered in the hold where I was, and we wondered what was going to happen. It was a very tense and quiet time, until suddenly the tension was broken by a voice that cried out, "Does anybody want to buy a good watch?" I thought of that when I read this account of Hanamel wanting to sell his property to Jeremiah. That is how ridiculous it was. But God was in it. And faith is willing to look ridiculous, because it is based upon a higher knowledge.” (www.pbc.org/library) Jeremiah was demonstrating and proclaiming a word of hope. Yes, there was judgment, and the consequences would be severe. But there was hope, too. Not a hope based on the ingenuity of the Kings, but on the compassion of God for his people.

In the knowledge of God’s effective, meaningful involvement in the very substance of human history, Jeremiah and Jesus regard as indivisible, as faces of the same coin, God’s love and wrath, God’s grace and judgment….and redemption involves both peace and anguish….peace is always beyond, and only beyond, anguish.” (B. Davie Napier, Song of the Vineyard, page 264)

The word of the Lord which had been given by God to Jeremiah was a harsh critique. Listen to some of the sins of Judah.

The basic sin was idolatry: when they needed help, “they did not say, ‘where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt?’” Instead, they went upon the high places and offered sacrifices to the “Queen of Heaven,” Ishtar. They had even introduced child sacrifices to appease the false gods. They began to dabble in astrology, seeing their lives under the sway of the stars. They would build their own god. From chapter 10, this description: “They cut a tree down, deck it with silver and gold, fasten it with a hammer so it cannot move….It looks like a scarecrow in a cucumber field....” Jeremiah says to them more than once, “Where are the gods that you made for yourself? Let them arise, if they can save you in your time of trouble?”

In their interpersonal and social and political life, they were greedy for unjust gain, they dealt falsely with each other, they have not judged with justice the cause of the fatherless and have no defended the rights of the needy.

In these poignant summaries, Jeremiah describes the result of their disobedience to the Torah, to God:

“You have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters and hewed out cisterns for yourselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. You have changed the glory of God for that which does not profit. And you have forgotten how to blush about any of this!” (Mark Twain wrote, “Human beings are the only animals that blush---or need to.”)

So, how do they interpret what is happening to them? Jeremiah is clear: they are reaping what they have sown. Babylon----a corrupt and idolatrous nation in its own right---is being used as an instrument of God wrath.

Judah does not repent. They do not remove the pagan shrines, they do not recognize God’s exclusive claim, they do not cleanse their hearts, they do not execute justice for the alien, for the fatherless, the widow; they continue to shed innocent blood.

The result is severe. People taken into exile in Babylonia, the King’s family brutally killed, the King blinded and led off in chains—they does come a long pause in the people of God in the Holy city.

BEYOND JUDGMENT

Nevertheless, judgment will not be the final word.  Beyond judgment and God’s justice, they will be “restoration, mercy and salvation. Compassion prevails.” In buying the land, Jeremiah, by faith, invests in the future. He trusts that there is a future for God’s people. In the public transaction of a land purchase, “he has played the role of God, performing the same task in a small way that God would perform on a larger stage.” (Newsome)

Jeremiah buys the land, and then seems to have his own doubts. “Whatever you say, God, will come to pass, but….can you really redeem this situation?” God says to him, “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh; is anything too hard for me?”

On a personal scale, we know what it is to worship other gods, to trust for our happiness and security in things which cannot deliver. There is a price to pay for such folly, sooner or later. We experience what H. Richard Niebuhr called the “twilight of the gods.” We may have a pantheon of gods we give ourselves to: youth, wealth, family, our nation, ideologies or the right or left, success, fame---the list can be long. (No wonder we get so exhausted!)As important as each of these may be in their ways, they cannot fill the god-shaped void within us. One by one they disappoint, they fail us. Our investments do not pan out. And we pay the price. There is a kind of destruction in our lives, a falling of the edifice we have built to protect ourselves. (Monotheism and Radical Faith) 

My friend Norman Roe says that we must have the “Whereases” in order to have the “Therefores.” Whereas we have worshipped the false gods, whereas we have ruined our health by pursuing success, and made fools of ourselves by trusting in our own shiny objects to satisfy us….therefore, we are guilty, and there is a debt to pay.

But there is a codicil to this document. The codicil is God’s “nevertheless.” “It shall come to pass that I will break the yoke from off your neck and burst the bonds, and strangers shall no more make slaves of you….” (30:8-9) God will “put his law within you…in your hearts, and I will be [your] God, and [you] shall be my [child].” (31:31-33) God himself shall be your shepherd.

If this sounds familiar, it should: Jesus is the presence of God coming to us in the messes we make of our lives. And though there is judgment, there is redemption. In the power of God’s outreaching love, there can be repentance and a new future.

On a local church level, I have seen Jeremiah’s truth play out. Churches can get to where they worship their buildings, their sacred spaces. They can turn in on themselves and turn cold shoulders to their neighbors in need. They can refuse to see their own opportunities for witness and service, instead trying to be like the flashier successful churches farther out. And there is a price to pay. They look for someone to blame---the hierarchy, the preachers, the developers, the governments. Their little fellowship gets smaller and smaller. They see themselves as under siege by the equivalent of the Babylonians. They are more and more unhappy with themselves. Unwittingly, they can drive away newcomers. They look for a solution which will rescue them without any change or risk on their part.

But then it can happen that a Jeremiah-like person comes along and does the equivalent of buying land. And slowly, step by step, the people of God in that locale find hope. Leonard Sweet puts it this way: “God still takes churches that are so cold you could skate down the center aisle, and makes them into churches so warm you could get steam cleaned.” (Quantum Spirituality)

Jeremiah speaks of national life. For him, the nation and the church were one. For us, the nation and the church are separated, though we are each influenced by the other. We cannot equate our nation with Israel. But God can still bring nations to judgment, too. For God is the God of all flesh. God’s judgments are yet in effect on the core issues:

Fair dealings in matters of justice, the care given for those without power who are the most vulnerable (such as children, the poor, the disabled, the elderly poor, resident aliens); leaders who are dedicated to looking after the common good instead of their own profit; not shedding innocent blood; citizens who see themselves as  community and practice looking after each other instead of each person only out for their own advantage.

There is judgment on nations which go against these basic expectations (summarized pretty well in the Ten Commandments).
The church in every place is called to speak Jeremiah-like when it sees their nation veering way off-course. This is one of the reasons we United Methodist have the Social Principles, laying out  food for thought in our discernment of the ways of God as applied to our situations.

In the midst of judgment for our failing, we must look for foolish investments like Jeremiah did, with confidence in the God of all nations. Clifton Taulbert, African American author, said that, in the grim days of growing up in the segregated South, “Even in bad times, good people stepped out of the shadows and did what was right.” (Speech at The Victoria College, February 15, 2004)

In the darkest times, can we see God’s hand at work, in love---which may include wrath as well as redemption. God is always at work, “shattering old worlds and forming new worlds.” (Walter Brueggemann, Interpretation, 1983) This is true on personal, church community and national levels.

We are invited to be realistic about the predicaments we get ourselves into, and our inclination to idolatries and folly. Repentance is a life-long process of self-examination and reformation. This is made possible only by confidence in the God who brings life out of death, victory out of defeat, over and over again.
 
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “For most people, not to plan for the future means to live irresponsibly and frivolously, to live just for the moment, while few continue to dream of better times to come. But we cannot take either of these courses. We are still left with only the narrow way, a way often hardly to be found, of living every day as if it were our last, yet in faith and responsibility living as though a splendid future still lay before us. ‘Houses and fields and vineyards shall yet again be bought in this land,’ cried Jeremiah just as the Holy City is about to be destroyed….It is a divine sign of better things to come, just when all seems [darkest]….

“Some men regard it as frivolous, and some Christians think it is irreligious to hope and prepare oneself for better things to come in this life. They believe in chaos, disorder and catastrophe. That, they think, is the meaning of present events, and in sheer resignation or pious escapism they surrender all responsibility for the preservation of life and for the generations yet unborn. Tomorrow may be the day of judgement. If it is, we shall gladly give up working for a better future, but not before.” (Letters and Papers from Prison, pages 32-33)

With Jeremiah, we confess that the “Chaldeans are at the gates” of our besieged lives, churches and nation. There is judgment, experienced in many ways. But we trust God for the future. After all, “Is anything impossible for [God]?”

Eugene Peterson incisively captures the courage and faith of Jeremiah in these words:

“The Secret”
“Jeremiah did not resolve to stick it out for twenty-three years, no matter what; he got up every morning with the sun. The day was God’s day, not the peoples. He didn’t get up to face rejection, he got up to meet with God. He didn’t rise to put up with another round of mockery, he rose to be with his Lord. That is the secret of his preserving pilgrimage – not thinking with dread about the long road ahead but greeting the present moment, every present moment, with obedient delight, with expectant hope: “My heart is ready!”
Psalm 108:1-2
I’m ready God, so ready,
ready from head to toe.
Ready to sing,
reading to raise a God-song,
“Wake, soul! Wake, lute!
Wake up, you sleepyhead sun!”

Eugene Peterson
Living The Message