Jeremiah 32:1-16

32The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the tenth year of King Zedekiah of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar. ²At 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, ³where 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; ⁴King 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; ⁵and 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?” ⁶Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came to me: ⁷Hanamel 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.” ⁸Then 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. ⁹And I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel, and weighed out the money to him, seventeen shekels of silver. ¹⁰I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales. ¹¹Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing the terms and conditions, and the open copy; ¹²and 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. ¹³In their presence I charged Baruch, saying, ¹⁴Thus 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. ¹⁵For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.

To begin, a quick summary of the passage from an outsiders view: Jeremiah has been locked up for speaking the truth of what he saw coming. Jerusalem was going to fall, the king would be taken into captivity. The armies of Babylon have surrounded the city and has been under siege for many months. One of Jeremiah's relatives comes to Jeremiah in jail and offers to sell him land that that is currently being occupied by the enemy. Upon completion of the legal transaction, Jeremiah utters words of a world not hoped for, "Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land."

The previous passage that we looked at was a lamentation that was written in the same time frame. It is no coincidence that lamentation and promised hope are so close together. As we talked about last week, God's presence and participation in the lament meant that lamentation would not be the last word. This week we hear that promise, the mercy that God holds out to the Israelites and to us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian during the 1930s and first part of World War II. During the war he was made aware of what was happening in the concentration camps. Because of this knowledge he became involved in a plot to kill Hitler that was unsuccessful. Once the German authorities discovered that he had been involved in that plot, he was thrown into a concentration camp and was killed a week before it was liberated. Bonhoeffer never pretended that his role in the attempted assassination was a "good" thing, only that it was a lesser evil than doing nothing.

A few months before he was killed he wrote to his fiancee about the passage that we have this week. He writes, "When Jeremiah said, in his people's hour of direst need, that 'houses and fields and [vineyards] shall again be bought in this land,' it was a token of confidence in the future. That requires faith, and may God grant us it daily. I don't mean the faith that flees the world, but the faith that endures in the world and loves and remains true to the world in spite of all the hardships it brings us. Our marriage must be a 'yes' to God's earth. It must strengthen our resolve to do and accomplish something on earth. I fear that Christians who venture to stand on earth on only one leg will stand in heaven on only one leg too."

How do we prevent from being one legged-Christians? By not tying ourselves to those things that cannot save us. Paul’s letter to Hebrews speaks at great length about wealth and how it can chain us to those things that take up space but do not satisfy. But more importantly it speaks of wealth as a gift from God to become rich in good works. “Take hold of the life that really is life”: This phrase from Timothy one that pushes us beyond the expectations of what God can do in our lives. Real life is not made up of riches, but is open and vulnerable to the world around us.

Just as Jeremiah spoke of a time of peace and “normalcy” in a time when it could not be
imagined, just as Bonhoeffer speaks of God’s "yes" in a time when humanity’s "no" was so deafening, we are called to listen closely to God’s word of unexpected hope that will push us outside of our own narrow vision of what is possible into the vision of God’s future. This doesn’t mean we ignore the reality of the pain in the world around us. On the contrary we are called to
approach that pain embrace it and allow the hope that God gives us through Christ change it into
something new. By encountering the pain, but responding out of hope we bear witness to the kingdom of God and help bring it into existence in the here and now.