Hope in a Watertight Jar

Hope in a Watertight Jar--November 7, 2016

"Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came to me; Hanmel 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.' 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 know that this was that this was the word of the Lord. And I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel, and weighed out the money to him, seventeen shekels of silver. I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weight the money on scales. Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing the terms and conditions, and the open copy; and I gave my 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. In their presence I charged Baruch, saying, 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 32:6-15]

Nothing more heartwarming than an obscure accounting of a real estate transaction, right?

Well, this is, honestly, one of the most hope-filled stories in all of the Bible.  If that's hard to tell at first, it's because we may be missing some of the context.

This scene was from just about the darkest time in the history of the nation of Judah (the southern kingdom that had continued on independently after the northern tribes of Israel were conquered by the Assyrians).  Judah was surrounded by the latest empire of the day--the forces of Babylon, and their capital, besieged by the invading armies, was slowly starving to death.  It got bad--people will do horrible, unspeakable, things when their food supply is cut off.  And there came a point at which everybody inside the city walls realized that this was not going to end well.  Babylon was going to win.

The king, of course, did not want to hear that.  Ol' King Zedekiah didn't want to hear any of the doom and gloom and was mad at the local prophet Jeremiah (who was stuck inside the besieged city, too) for being so honest.  Zedekiah wanted to hear, "Rah, rah, God will come back and save the day for us," and he complained to the prophet, "God can't let us be conquered--God owes us!  Don't be such a downer, Jerry!"  But Jeremiah was still convinced God was letting the siege, the conquest, and the defeat happen.  Jeremiah knew, and so did everybody else, that there was soon coming a day when the Babylonians would finally breach the wall, destroy the city, and occupy the whole nation, ending anybody's property rights in Judah as the invaders plundered and re-settled their land.

And at that precise moment, Jeremiah goes to buy a field.

At exactly the time when the whole country was about to go under.  Yep.  You got it.

To any outside observer, this is utter nonsense.  This is like buying stock in the company that has just announced it is going bankrupt.  It's like buying all your Christmas gifts as gift cards for the store in the mall that is closing next week.  It's wasting money on something that everybody knows is going to be worthless very, very soon.

And Jeremiah does it anyway--because he has hope. 

Not hope that disaster will be averted by wishful thinking.  That is not Biblical hope.  No, Jeremiah's hope is of a future on the other side of disaster.  His hope is of a national resurrection on the other side of a national death.  His hope is not that the Babylonians will all magically go away if he ignores them and just carries on with business as usual--but rather that after the Babylonians have come and gone, there will come a day again when God's people will come back to their land, and when the deed he has just purchased will mean something again.  For Jeremiah, the purchase of the field in Anathoth is not a biblical boondoggle of epic proportions, but a defiant act of hope in a future restoration. 

And most amazingly of all, Jeremiah buys the field with the full awareness that even if the restoration comes and his deed is one day a meaningful legal document again, Jeremiah himself will not live to see it.  Jeremiah's book of visions and oracles includes the announcement that the coming exile in Babylon would last for 70 years--and by that time, Jeremiah himself was no spring chicken.  He was buying the field, not as his own future retirement nest egg, but simply as a symbolic act of hope.  He dared to trust the promise of the living God, that there would come a day when his people would come home, even if he didn't live to see that day himself.  The deed, sealed up in a water-tight jar, was a symbol for everybody there living in the darkest days of the siege--it was a promise that after the dust had settled, there was indeed coming a time when grace would win in the end, and God's people would come home even though they had been stinkers.

This is the kind of radical hope we are called to...right now.  To be a part of the people of God now is to reach for the symbols that will speak to hearts around us now, and to offer them up.  To be a part of the people of God now is to look for fields in Anathoth to buy right now, as acts of defiant hope that the gloating, blustery Nebuchadnezzars of the day will not get the last word.  To be a part of the people of God is to choose to stay in towns, or city neighborhoods,  or communities that everybody else has written off as "dying."  It is to choose to love people who have given up.  It is to choose to look for symbolic actions, ones that might not benefit us directly, but which will say to others looking for hope, "Restoration will come." It is to choose to plant the apple tree today, even if you know the world is going to end tomorrow.

If we dare to believe that grace really wins in the end, and that at the last, the way of Jesus really will turn out to have been the way of life, then we are called to live hopefully now and to practice hope now for others to see.  It is true that some of what "once was" may never come back the way it had been before--not everybody who went into exile eventually found the courage to come back home when it was time.  But there will be restoration.  There will be a day for opening up the jar to get the deed back out. 

The people right around you need that kind of hope.  They need it in big bold lettering and with flashing lights.  They need symbols they can latch on to--they need property deeds stored in clay jars that speak of a future day of homecoming.

Today, that is your and my calling--bring the presence of hope to them.  Bring the symbols of promise.  Bring the message the world needs to hear: that grace wins in the end.

Lord Jesus, teach us to practice hope today in defiance of the powers of the day, and let us trust your promise to put all things right.