Sermon Recording:

Sermon Text:

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…”? 

This is the missing text from today’s passage from Jeremiah; describing exactly why Jeremiah was “confined in the court of the guard. “ Judah’s king, Zedekiah, was furious with Jeremiah for prophesying his defeat and exile to Babylon; “and there he shall remain until [God] attends to him…,” which will be in about seven decades. As Mark noted last week, the anger and heartbreak in Jeremiah’s prophetic voice was a direct reflection of the anger and heartbreak of God, who spoke through him. He had warned, and warned, and warned Judah that their worship of idols, corruption, and neglect of the poor and marginalized would have serious consequences, and now? No surprise to Jeremiah, at least; Jerusalem was under siege. 

Jeremiah had spoken truth to the powerful, and those who refused to hear chose instead to silence him.

(Apparently, free speech controversies go back a long way…)

So Jeremiah was securely confined, and Babylon was at the gates of the city. 

But though Jeremiah’s voice was imprisoned, God’s was not. 

“Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came to me: 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.’”

What does this mean? Jeremiah was of the priestly class through his father Hilkiah of Anathoth. By tradition priests and Levites were not permitted to own land in large contiguous areas like the other tribes. Instead, they were given fields in certain specified areas—like Anathoth–where they could plant and harvest, but the land must stay within the family; this way priests would always have a livelihood even as they followed their calling to serve God.

So, just as God had told him would happen, Jeremiah’s cousin Hanamel came to Jeremiah with a proposition to sell him some property, which would seem to be just a wee bit counterintuitive, what with Jeremiah in jail and destruction and exile imminent. 

But Jeremiah had more to say, though not, this time, in words. Carefully, meticulously, deliberately, he executed the purchase of Hanamel’s property, putting the paperwork in a pottery jar for safekeeping, knowing that it would be a long time before he or his progeny would build, plant, and harvest in the land.

“For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”

That is what we call hope. It’s hope against hope, while face-to-face with disaster. Hope that will not be incarcerated, or stifled, or silenced. It’s hope with roots. Jeremiah’s actions spoke a prophecy of restoration, renewal, and healing that would ultimately bloom amidst the ashes. It was a prophecy as solid and real and rooted as the judgement that had befallen Judah. Hope, not despair, was God’s last word; God’s invitation.

Hope is an ongoing challenge. As Jeremiah demonstrated, it is not something taken lightly. It calls for courage, persistence, and perseverance to see beyond a world on fire to new life, even though we have no idea what it will look like or even whether or not we will see it ourselves. 

And that’s not easy. 

Do you know the story about Palestinian keys? In 1948, in the first Nakba—which means “catastrophe” — when Palestinians were displaced from their homes to make room for the State of Israel, they took the keys to their houses with them. They have kept these keys, and handed them down, generation to generation, as symbols of their deep connection to their land, and in persistent hope of return and restoration.

In these dark days, as a second Nakba against the Palestinians tragically unfolds, the hope embodied in those keys is the gritty, stubborn, resilient hope that Jeremiah radiated as he sealed the deeds of purchase in a pottery jar.

This kind of hope takes practice.

We talked a lot in our summer book group about the importance of building up what we called “hope muscles.” Because we all know that clenching of the gut, that catch in the breath, that slump of the shoulders that draws us inward toward our personal little rabbit hole of despair. We are so curled and huddled that we forget to look up and outward. We forget awareness, curiosity, creativity, and what it feels like to attend to our senses. We forget that small acts of kindness and mercy given and received nourish and strengthen us to withstand those things we cannot control, and to persist (and resist) with the things that we can control. 

It adds up. Think again about Jeremiah. Commenter Alphonetta Wines tells us that Jeremiah’s careful, deliberate act of buying a plot of land, witnessed by others, was in itself a sermon and a prophecy. When we build up and exercise our hope muscles through acts of courage, persistence, and simple awareness we are preaching without words. We are passing the keys one to another. Other people see it, and don’t think for a minute that it doesn’t make a difference.

This morning we will participate in one of the most significant acts of hope in the life of the Church, and in the life of a Christian; Baptism. Through water and the Spirit we will welcome Thomas James Leary into the Household of God. 

It may sound trite to say that children are profound examples of hope, and indeed some may go so far as to suggest that we should be hesitant to bring children into a world in such peril. But that would be to listen to the siren song of the rabbit hole. Blogger Mary Catherine Adams, in her Substack, “The Interior Life”, writes, 

“Instead of asking what kind of world we’re bringing [children] into, we should wonder: What might my child contribute? She might be a great artist, a great healer, a great leader. If not those, she might at least tell the truth and love her enemies.”

Exactly.

At Baptism we make a covenant with God that we will be faithful followers of Christ in worship and fellowship, forgiveness and repentance, proclamation of the Good News, and in honoring Christ in all persons, striving for justice and peace, respecting the dignity of every human being. We seek to raise and form children with this Covenant as a guide and with our community as support through times of joy and of inevitable struggle in a world of idols that compete for their allegiance (and ours.)

It’s not easy. Jeremiah may have been able to protect his hope in pottery jars, but we can’t do the same with our children. They are out there and vulnerable, which is scary for those of us who love them and who need to see them, not as extensions and projections of our own dreams but as individuals with agency, and vocation within the Dream of God.  Which is why the prayer for the newly baptized is probably my favorite in the entire Prayer Book. We pray for God to sustain them in the Holy Spirit. We pray for the gifts of an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and love God, and (this is my favorite) the gift of joy and wonder in all of God’s works. 

This is a prayer for what hope looks like; mercy in the face of cruelty, curiosity in the face of judgement, creativity in the face of numbness, trust in the face of despair, courage in the face of fear. Hope roots us as it rooted Jeremiah. It sustains us as it sustains the Palestinian people. And with God’s help, may we not let it be silenced.