'Buy My Field'
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Proper 21C, September 30, 2007
A Sermon by Paul McLain
‘Buy my field.’
In the name of One God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
The year is 588 B. C. The Babylonian army surrounds the city of Jerusalem, just as the prophet Jeremiah had predicted. Jeremiah himself is arrested on a false charge by his own people of Judah.
He is beaten.
He is now in jail.
Things could not be bleaker for the nation of Judah.
Nor could they be bleaker for Jeremiah himself.
So, in the midst of all this doom, gloom, and utter despair, what does Jeremiah do?
He buys a field.
Why does he buy this particular field?
Partly because this field is in his home village of Anathoth.
This field has been in Jeremiah’s family for generations. It’s the old family farm. The field is now in the hands of Jeremiah’s cousin Hanamel who is probably down on his luck because the land is being ravaged by war.
The field may be about to be taken back by a creditor or may have to be sold outside the family.
But, according to the Jewish law laid down in Leviticus 25:25, ‘If anyone of your kin falls into difficulty and sells a piece of property, then the next of kin shall come and redeem what the relative has sold.’
This law was designed to keep property within the family. The bond between Jeremiah’s family and this field was a sacred one and it was not to be broken.
But what difference does this make now? The Babylonians are at the gate! In all likelihood, Babylonian troops are camping on this very field just a few miles outside Jerusalem.
And Jeremiah is now old, beaten, and in jail!
As Jeremiah himself prophesied, the field is under and will be under Babylonian occupation for a long, long time.
Under these dire circumstances, what does it matter who holds a worthless deed to a field that the family can no longer cultivate or enjoy, a field that Jeremiah will probably never set eyes on again?
It mattered because Jeremiah wants to make a symbolic act that says in this time in which his people have forgotten the laws God commanded them to live by, Jeremiah is going to buy this family field to put into action the words of the great leader Joshua, ‘as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’
But this command to buy the land is not just from the law. It is a direct message to Jeremiah from the voice of God.
Before Jeremiah buys the field, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying Hanamel son of your uncle Shallum is going to come to you and say, ‘Buy my field that is at Antatoth, for the right of redemption by purchase is yours.’
Jeremiah buys this field because he is obedient to the voice that has guided him throughout his life –the voice of God.
For Jeremiah, God is not some distant cosmic force. No, for Jeremiah, God is very close and very personal. So close and so personal as to be intimately involved in the family business of Jeremiah. God wants Jeremiah to buy this field. not only to keep the farm within the family, but to show to God’s people that even in this dark time of despair, God is still personally active in history. God still cares about God’s people. And, based on that, there is hope for the future.
As Christians, we inherit Jeremiah’s field of hope. Like Jeremiah, we know God to be very close and very personal. So close and so personal that God took on human flesh, and lived and breathed and taught among us. God the Son loved us so much to die an all too real and excruciatingly painful death upon a cross – to offer a gift of eternal hope and eternal life for us.
Then God arose and now God the Holy Spirit lives in our midst today and is here to guide our steps if we, like Jeremiah, take the time to listen to God’s voice, and, like Jeremiah, muster the courage to obey and act on God’s commands.
But it’s not just the law about family property and the personal voice of God that prompt Jeremiah to buy this field.
You see, he knows a secret about this field. The field never really belonged to Jeremiah’s family. And despite Jeremiah’s symbolic act with the deeds, it still doesn’t belong to him. And many years later, when the Babylonians no longer occupy the field, it will never really belong to his heirs. Because in Leviticus 25:23, God tells us, ‘The land is mine! With me, you are but aliens and tenants.’
Jeremiah acknowledges this in his prayer at verse 17. ‘Ah, Lord God! It is you who made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm!’
Jeremiah’s family members are tenants upon God’s land, just as we are all tenants on God’s property.
When the voice of the Lord works through Hanamel to say, ‘Buy my field.’
It’s really God saying to Jeremiah and to us, ‘Buy my field’ – God’s field.
The act of buying God’s field gives Jeremiah hope in a future in which God would once again entrust Jeremiah’s family to be good stewards of this field – God’s field. (pause)
Notice the sacred, ritual-like way Jeremiah handles this business.
He carefully weighs out the money, 17 shekels of silver.
He signs the deed and seals it before the witnesses.
He weighs the silver again on the scales.
He presents the sealed deed and the open deed, the copy, to Baruch, Jeremiah’s faithful secretary and companion.
He does this very publicly and ceremoniously so that all is seen by the witnesses present and by his fellow Judeans in the court of the guard, even and especially those holding Jeremiah in captivity.
Then in the presence of everyone, Jeremiah charges Baruch ‘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.
For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:
Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.’
Jeremiah leaves no doubt as to where he is investing the money and the life that God has given him.
He is investing it all in the only source of eternal hope – he is investing it all in the kingdom of God.
In this ceremony, Jeremiah teaches us that practical life, our Monday through Friday lives of working and selling and buying and living, are not separate from the sacred.
They can be and are called to be just as sacred as what we do here Saturday evening and Sunday morning.
Nothing expresses this better than one of the Eucharistic prayers in our Book of Common Prayer:
‘And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord,
our selves, our souls, and bodies,
to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.’
The offering each time we come to this table is not only the bread, the wine, and the money placed in the offering plate.
It is us!
Our whole lives – everything we are and everything we do.
Because, like Jeremiah’s field, our lives don’t belong to us.
They belong to God.
And we are called to be good stewards of them as well.
God desires us to step out in obedience and courage and invest ourselves in being good stewards of God’s fields – fields of mission, fields of sharing and caring, fields of hope.
As Father Jim and our vestry have candidly shared with us,this has been a tough year financially at Good Shepherd. While our situation is not nearly as bleak as Judah’s or Jeremiah’s, this challenging year has prompted all of us to think about ways we can be better stewards of the fields which God has entrusted to us.
Many of us recently received a letter from Father Jim and a pledge card calling for a response by Sunday, October 14th, two weeks from now.
I believe God is calling us to use these two weeks as a time of personal examination – a time when we each ask ourselves:
Is the practical integrated with the sacred in our lives?
The placing of these pledge cards in the offering plate is one of the most sacred things we do each year. It is the yearly act in which we acknowledge that all we are and all we have belong to God.
It is the ritual in which the practical and the sacred become one.
God’s very personal word is tied directly to how we live – how we invest our time, money, energy, and thoughts.
Are we investing what we have been entrusted by God in the eternal field of hope that is the kingdom of God?
Jeremiah made a courageous investment in tough times.
He bought God’s field.
Over the next two weeks, may we all listen to and obey the voice of eternal hope--the voice of the living, close and very personal God, who across the past, present and future, is calling to us,
“Buy my field.’
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
