Jeremiah 32: 1-15
Charles J. Tomlin, June 27th, 2021
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Series: The Roots of God’s Justice 12/20
Jeremiah 32:1–15 (NRSV): The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the tenth year of King Zedekiah of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar. 2 At that time the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and the prophet Jeremiah was confined in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah, 3 where King Zedekiah of Judah had confined him. Zedekiah had said, “Why do you prophesy and say: Thus says the Lord: I am going to give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it; 4 King Zedekiah of Judah shall not escape out of the hands of the Chaldeans, but shall surely be given into the hands of the king of Babylon, and shall speak with him face to face and see him eye to eye; 5 and he shall take Zedekiah to Babylon, and there he shall remain until I attend to him, says the Lord; though you fight against the Chaldeans, you shall not succeed?”
6 Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came to me: 7 Hanamel son of your uncle Shallum is going to come to you and say, “Buy my field that is at Anathoth, for the right of redemption by purchase is yours.” 8 Then my cousin Hanamel came to me in the court of the guard, in accordance with the word of the Lord, and said to me, “Buy my field that is at Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, for the right of possession and redemption is yours; buy it for yourself.” Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord.
9 And I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel, and weighed out the money to him, seventeen shekels of silver. 10 I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales. 11 Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing the terms and conditions, and the open copy; 12 and I gave the deed of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel, in the presence of the witnesses who signed the deed of purchase, and in the presence of all the Judeans who were sitting in the court of the guard. 13 In their presence I charged Baruch, saying, 14 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: 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. 15 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.
This is a story about hope; that is ‘buying’ or ‘purchasing’ hope. What can that mean?
Of course, we live in a world where it you can buy almost anything. If you have the money, good credit, and the desire, you can buy all kinds of stuff; practically anything you want. And you don’t even have to leave your home. Just ‘click’ and a couple of days later, it will be on your door step. You can buy friends; many people you might call ‘friends’ can be bought with money. You can also buy power, prestige, sex too. We see too much of that, don’t we? You can even buy more money too. As my Dad always said, ‘If you’ve got money, you can make money.’
The sky’s the limit to what people can purchase and own today. But of course, there’s an illusion here too. As the Beatles used to sing, ‘Money can’t buy me love’, no, no, nooo! In other words, even in a ‘money, money, money, rich man’s world, there are still some very important things money can’t buy.
Besides, ‘true love’, money can’t buy things like time. You might extend your life by having resources that money can buy, but you still can’t extend your life by one single millisecond. Also, you can’t buy things like peace, talent, true friends, experiences, happiness or truth, and you can’t really buy hope either.
But, even though you can’t actually buy ‘hope’, you can, as the prophet Jeremiah is instructed to do, buy something that reminds you to have hope, points to hope, symbolizes hope, or gives you a hope for the future,
In fact, you might not actually get to have this future, as is what happened in Jeremiah’s case, but he still was able have hope, whether or not this hope was ever actually realized in his own life. Now listen to this: He might not get to have what he hoped for, but he could still have hope.
Now, I know that’s bit complicated, so let’s try to look closer. We must think about what this means, because if we ever need to know how to find anything, we need a way to find and have hope.
THE RIGHT?
Interestingly, this biblical story that teaches that a word of hopefulness came in a moment of great ‘hopeLESSness.
This ‘word’ came to the prophet during during the siege and eventual downfall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzer II had Jerusalem surrounded with his army and was going to invade and destroy the capital city, taking its key inhabitants into exile.
All this happened because the of Israel, King Zedekiah was preparing to align with Egypt, which the prophet of God had advised against.
It was in this period of impending doom, which took about three years to finally take place, God commanded the prophet Jeremiah to do a very strange thing. He was to go out and purchase the ‘deed’ to some of his relatives land in the countryside of the land of Benjamin, where Jerusalem was located.
Then, as a result of this transaction, probably made when property values were plummeting, Jeremiah would be able to take this deed with, when he was taken away into exile in Babylon.
This deed would be mean much more just a deed to land. This would become a constant reminder to him that one day, the people, his people would return. Life was falling apart now, but one day, ‘houses, fields, and vineyards’ would be ‘bought again, in the land’ .
Do you see what God was doing, through Hanamel, Jeremiah’s uncle? God was making this material deed to property, not only a deed to a piece of land, but this was to become a deed to hope.
We certainly all need ‘deeds’ to our hope, too, don’t we? Hope is the one thing that a human being has a hard time living without.
As Victor Frankl, the famous Jewish psychiatrist, who survived the senseless horrors of the Holocaust wrote from his own experience, ‘The one who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’ In other words, when we have hope, we can withstand almost anything.
We need reminders that we can have hope, even in the midst of difficult times, that one day, this will all be over. We especially have needed this in times of this Coronavirus, haven’t we?
As we watch the end of life, as we have known it, we need to find hope that someway, some day, we will survive, and life will return to some kind of ‘normalcy’.
If you saw the play, “Hamilton” that last year, was released to stream on the Disney Channel, perhaps as a token of hope too, you will recall that in that musical, King George of England shows up a couple of times. Hearing that the colonies have decided to break away from with a Revolution, He sings a funny song. He sings, alone and straight to the audience;
‘You'll be back, soon you'll see, You'll remember you belong to me. You'll be back, time will tell, You'll remember that I served you well.’ Perhaps you saw it. It was hilarious.
Not long after that, during the beginning of the Pandemic, an Episcopal Priest in Deep South Georgia, watched the musical with his daughter. The talented pastor and priest got then wrote and performed a parody on this song, singing to the spiritual exile that he, and his own congregation at St. Ann’s Church in Tifton, we’re in, like we’ve were in.
He sang, “You’ll be back, soon you’ll see, Just remember how it used to be.You’ll be back, time will tell, when we’ve kicked this virus back to Hell!
You should go to YouTube and watch it. When Rev. Lonnie Lacy sings and even dances all dressed in his high, holy, Priestly garb it’s so ridiculously funny; it’s humorous, it’s hilarious, but most of all, it’s very, very, HOPEFUL.
I especially love one line he sings about the future: “When we finally open the door, and get back together, we’ll BE BETTER THAN WE EVER WERE BEFORE.
This is what Jeremiah’s ‘DEED to HOPE’ was all about. It’s was God’s way of pointing Jeremiah, and all the people, to the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of hope. This ‘pointer’ to hope comes across distinctly, not only as something we human’s can have, but hope is something we ‘must’ have; in words ever American would clearly understand, Jeremiah’s uncle tells Him, hope is a ‘right’; ‘the right of redemption by purchase is yours.’ (Jer. 32:7)
Did you catch that: ‘THE RIGHT…IS YOURS!. ‘Right’ is a special word, full of meaning for us.
Next Sunday is the 4th of July, when we celebrate our country’s independence. It was an unforgettable day of hope when our American forefather’s believed, risked their lives, and were willing to ‘pay’ for with their lives, if necessary, for what they believed was ‘THE RIGHT’ of a people to have FREEDOM. Freedom was their HOPE.
As we all know, Freedom is core value that the American Declaration of Independence and the US ‘Constitution’ is about. These great documents , along with the Bill if Rights, were their ‘deeds’ to hope, and are still deeds to hope for millions.
Interestingly, our American forefathers had different interpretations about their hope of freedom, just like we still do do, but they all shared the same basic, core deed of hope, which was based upon life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’
It was James Madison who especially wanted to underscore American freedom called, The Bill of Rights, which began with the right of religious liberty. This was especially important to him because early Baptists were being persecuted and jailed for their religious beliefs. Madison wanted to underscore that ‘right’ as primary among all others.
REDEMPTION
Like Jeremiah, we humans have a ‘right’ to hope. ForJeremiah this RIGHT was realized in Purchasing a DEED to family land, which could be redeemed or claimed when he returned from impending exile.
That word ‘Redemption’, is an word seldom heard in polite conversation, yet is is everywhere, especially in books, and the movies. In our minds, redemption is primarily a religious expression, going back to God redeeming Israel from slavery in Egypt or Jesus redeeming the world from our spiritual slavery to sin. But in an increasingly secular world, it’s also important for us to gain an even bigger picture of human redemption. In other words, redemption isn’t only religious idea, but it’s a human need, which is why it’s also part of religious hope.
We human beings are religious creatures because we find ourselves in constant need of ‘getting our best lives back’. That’s where the actual word ‘redeem ‘, comes from. It literally means ‘to buy back’, as in purchasing a human being from slavery and setting them free to be who they can and should be.
Speaking of redemption at the movies, which often refers to that fictional happy ending we often see, where everything gets back to normal after a crisis. Finding Altamira, is a recent movie, based on the life of 19th Spanish archeologist, Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola. While exploring a cave With his young daughter, she accidentally stumbled upon cave paintings that went back 30,000 years. But when he attempted to report the discovery to a anthropology conference in Portugal, he was discredited as fraudulent, mostly because of professional jealousy.
Sautuola went home broken, but was able to prove his finding was not a fraud, but it was too late. It was only after his death that the Anthropological society came to ‘redeem’ him and his discovery as one of the archeological discoveries in Spanish history.
Redemption was too late in Jeremiah’s life too. But on the eve of Jerusalem’s destruction, God promises that someday, in the future, redemption will come. God instructed Jeremiah to buy ‘hope’ through the purchase of deed of trust that one day, after time in exile; because Jeremiah has purchased ‘rights’ to this land, he can return, and will get back to his homeland again.
To those who have faith in Jesus Christ, we too gain the ‘right’ to hope. It is a ‘deed’ or right to hope that one day, in God’s future, we can fully redeem. And as Paul calls it in his letters, we have a ‘down payment’, a guarantee. When we receive the Spirit in our hearts, as we come to know God’s love, we have obtained the promise of new life and renewed hope.
IS YOURS
Finally, by purchasing a deed to family land at Anaototh, Jeremiah is told that now, in his own hands, he holds the ‘deed to hope’. The ‘right’ of ‘redemption’ belongs to him.
We too, must do our own part in purchasing hope for ourselves, making sure that it happens in our hearts even when it’s not happening in the world around us.
We certainly can’t always change our circumstances, can we? Sometimes we have to live in a kind of spiritual exile, away what we should have a right too. Think about it. When we become sick, we can’t wait to be ourselves again. We are in ‘exile’ away from our best selves. It also happens when our worlds are turned upside down, for whatever the reason.
Whether it the illness of a loved one, a job loss, a problem in the life of a child—-for many reasons, the stability of our lives can be threatened and it can feel as if we are living another life, away from what we had hoped or expect. We live in exile, but we have to find a way to have hope, that one day, we can return to life we need or have dreamed about.
But to participate in this hope, we must find ways to hold on to hope, to keep hope alive, or make hope happen, like cooking ‘from scratch’ rather than only living from a ready-made recipe.
Going back to the story of the life of Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, the archeologist from Altimara, Spain, it’s what he did after he came home devastated that was most important. The grounds for rejecting Marcelino’s findings was that there were no candle light smoke stains in the cave. Had the paintings been genuine, it was argued, ancient people’s would have had left evidence of candle fire on the dark cave ceilings. When this doubt was raised, Marcelino had no reasonable counter response. But when he got home, he didn’t give up on his belief, and finally found a proof, when he realized than animal fat used candle oil would not had left any smoke detectable stains.
While it was too late to prove these findings to the Anthropological Society, it became a proof in his heart. He believed in his heart that this was one of the greatest findings in the world, whether the Society accepted them or not. Interestingly, after a similar finding surfaced in Southern France, not far away, the head of the Anthropological Society finally came to validate Marcelino’s claim, but unfortunately, Marcelino’s wife had to receive the acknowledgement. Marcelino had already died. But he didn’t die in defeat. He lived the remainder of his days knowing in his heart that his discovery and his life’s work was not in vain.
We too must find ways to connect the hope we have, which we aren’t always able to validate in this world, except by faith, and through the proofs we have in our hearts. This doesn’t mean we can find hope in just anything, or that it doesn’t matter what we believe, as long as we believe in something. True hope is validated, not only by what’s in our heads or hearts, but also through the greatness of the faith, the community, and the truth that we are connected to.
In January of 1943, three months before he was arrested and subsequently killed by the Nazis, the Lutheran Pastor and young professor of theology, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote these words about Christian hope and faith when times are dark. He wrote:"...There remains for us only the very narrow way, often extremely difficult to find, of living every day as if it were our last, and yet living in faith and responsibility as though there were to be a great future. It is not easy to be brave and keep that spirit alive, but it is imperative."
Bonhoeffer wrote these words some 67 years ago. They were written in response to a dark and tragic moment in his own life, and in human history too. Bonhoeffer wrote a deed to hope, even Ashe faced certain death in a Nazi concentration camp, still challenges us buy a deed to hope too. Even in difficult and dark times of disappointment, we must still dare to trust and believe that God’s love will one day overcome the darkness, no matter how devastating is the darkness is, which we now may face. Like Jeremiah, it signing this deed of hope in the dark, that can sustains us and give us the promise of our hope. Amen.
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