Did you notice what we just did? We prayed for some very, very difficult things going on in people’s lives and around the world…and then just a few minutes later, we sang our praises to God and said “How Great is Our God!” People of faith are somehow called to constantly hold together these two things…difficult circumstances, and the goodness of God. And if you’ll hang onto that thought for a moment, I think our scripture from Jeremiah will speak to this as well.

When I was a kid, we often drove over to rural Idaho to visit my grandparents during the summer. When we started packing up to go, I was really grumpy. I didn’t want to leave my friends, my bike, etc. “Do we have to go?” I’d say to my parents.

After a week of my grandma’s cooking, being around farms and farm animals and playing baseball with my brother in the wide open spaces, it would be time to pack up to come back to Seattle. Now my tune was very different. It wasn’t “Do we have to go?” It was “Can’t we please stay longer?!”

I feel that way about this prophet Jeremiah today, and I wonder if you do. It’s our last week with him. In these nine weeks, there have been plenty of times I’ve wanted to say nothing more than “Goodbye, and good riddance.” It’s been hard stuff. But after the picture Jeremiah gives us today, I wonder if we’ll instead be saying “Can’t we stay just a little longer?”

Jeremiah 32:6-15

I’m going to have a little conversation with Jeremiah this morning, and I invite you to listen in.

Pastor Dan to Jeremiah:

“It’s okay, Jeremiah. It’s okay. I mean, we can’t all be smart business people. You’ve probably got some other neat gifts, like I know you speak pretty well, and probably write well too. Maybe those are your gifts instead of business. I mean, c’mon! Buying a field near Jerusalem around 587 BC? You’ve got to be kidding. Poor Jeremiah. You’ve been totally taken.”

Jeremiah might well answer:

"Well, give me one good reason Ishouldn’t buy this field!”

Pastor Dan to Jeremiah:

“One? You want one good answer, Jeremiah? I’ll give you four, and that’s just for starters.

1) You are in jail! I’m not sure that making commitments and investments while you are incarcerated is a very good idea! You just couldn’t keep your mouth shut, could you Jeremiah? King Zedekiah tried and tried to work with you, tried to put up with you, but you just kept coming back with the same old prophecies: “…the answer to your problems is not in outrunning or outmaneuvering Babylon at all…but in returning to your relationship with the one true God.” So the king put you under house arrest where you couldn’t destroy whatever morale the people of the city had. You are in jail, Jeremiah. Pretty hard to do business and manage property from there.

2) Why shouldn’t you buy the field, Jeremiah? Because it is worthless real estate in the suburbs, that’s why! Anathoth is an hour’s walking distance of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is under siege by one of the greatest armies in the world.

That means that the piece of property you are looking at…has an immense army encamped on it, for heaven’s sake! It’s no secret! And it’s also no secret that Babylon is well-known to so thoroughly ravage its defeated opponents that they will destroy the crops and buildings and roads, that they will even pour salt onto the fields so that crops can’t be grown there for years.

3) Furthermore, Jeremiah, you are being hoodwinked…by a family member. They are playing you for a sucker. Your cousin knows, your whole family knows that the land isn’t worth anything. He’s come to you thinking you should keep the land “in the family.”

But you are only a cousin! He’s already tried everyone else in the family, and guess what? No takers! Of course not…it’s swampland in Florida! They, at least, had the financial smarts to know a bad deal and refused to buy. But not you.

4) Finally, Jeremiah. It’s like this. You’ve hacked off the king. You’ve isolated yourself from people. You’ve been arrested several times. But you are still a leader in the community, so the odds are very good that you will never, ever see the property that you’re buying. Your own future is extremely tenuous. If you’re not killed, you’ll likely be carried off to Babylon. Save your money.”

Now, this seems clear to me. But Jeremiah buys the field anyway. Is that crazy? It’s at least very risky. The UW Business School taught me that high risk investments had better offer an extraordinary rate of return. But what return could justify such a risk?

Nobody ever said you had to be a shrewd businessman to be a prophet. But it should at least make us curious, shouldn’t it? I mean, Jeremiah seemed pretty on-the-ball in other ways. So why did he buy that barren, occupied field?

Three simple reasons:

I. Jeremiah bought it…out of obedience.

Jeremiah heard God say “Your cousin is going to come and offer you this land.” And lo and behold, Jeremiah’s cousin shows up and offers him the land. “Then I KNEW that this was the word of the Lord,” Jeremiah says. How did he know? Because he was used to hearing God.

In fact, Jeremiah’s whole life showed a long-term pattern of hearing & obeying God.

We have a hard time combining all those terms. Hearing God? Oh, we have lots of instances of people who think they hear God. They pop up here, and there. “God told me to tell you this.” Some are just real confused, some are immature, some actually do hear God. But we need to use a lot of caution when someone says “I’m going to move to Anchorage because God told me to.” Did he? How did you hear? Does it stack up with scripture? Does it stack up with the character of God? Can the community of faith confirm it?

We want to be open to hearing from God in unlikely ways. But I also want to know how long, and how well someone has been listening to God before they say these things.

Jeremiah had a long, long record of hearing God. We don't do so well at the long haul.

We are products of our culture, and we live, Eugene Peterson says, “in a culture where a new beginning is far more attractive than a long follow through.” If something doesn’t work well, or feel right, or starts out poorly we quickly jettison it and move on. Start over. Businesses. Friendships. Marriages. Short-term approaches abound. We do it in our prayer life all the time, don’t we? We are pretty passive about our relationship with God until a crisis hits, and then we almost instantly say “I’m not hearing from God! What am I supposed to do?” Well…we haven’t been regularly having that conversation, have we? It’s why the “efficiency” approaches to faith, the “2 Minutes a Day to Spiritual Depth” approaches look ridiculous.

Jeremiah, though, had been at it for years, probably about 40 years. There’s something about people who have just hung in there with God for many years. They carry themselves differently.

Jeremiah had a long history of being with God, of listening to God…and of obeying what he heard.

The last part is important, of course. All the hearing in the world won’t do any good if we don’t obey what we hear. But Jeremiah lived differently. So when Jeremiah says “God told me to buy this field, so I’m going to buy it,” we should listen. Or at the very least watch with interest as he plunks down the silver pieces.

II. Jeremiah bought the field…on faith.

Jeremiah chose, in other words, to trust God. And clearly, Jeremiah’s faith was built on something other than the circumstances and events going on around him. If Jeremiah looks only on what was happening nearby, he can’t buy the field. He can’t. An army, defeat, exile, death, destruction everywhere. If only for the immediate circumstances, Jeremiah can’t buy that field. But he believes that God’s words are true: “Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.” He buys it on faith. There will be a future.

When we look to our future… What do we choose to trust God for? Or is it even God we choose to trust? We’ve just come through a turbulent, bitter campaign season in U.S. politics. If you are a Republican, you may be experiencing a bit of depression. If you are a Democrat, you’re feeling pretty good, maybe even giddy about the future.

Now, I don’t mean to disparage politics, and I do believe that people of faith should be involved, and involved in changing systems that are unjust. But ultimately…our faith is not in a political system. I’m still slogging through a very detailed book about Winston Churchill and the intricacies of the British political system in the first half of the twentieth century. Churchill was involved in politics from 1899-1960, at least. I can’t tell you how many speeches, party changes, platforms, issues, defeats, triumphs there were along the way.

Just in my own lifetime, I think about how we get so very worked up over elections and political parties, issues and referendums and how our pendulum can so easily move from hope to hopelessness. But I had a moment this week when I thought, some day we’ll look back over our lives, and I don’t think we’re going to point to the political wins or losses or policies or candidates as the defining moments in life, nor the bringer of tremendous changes in people. It’s not what I’m trusting in for the future.

Jeremiah trusted that God was with him, and would be with him even if at any given point it was hard to see. Jeremiah bought the field on faith. It was risky business. Is that not a word that people of faith, people in the church, need to hear regularly? For goodness sakes, anyone who takes faith in Christ seriously signs up for huge, huge risks. We may be uprooted, called to live more simply, to buck family pressures, to suffer persecution, to change jobs for integrity’s sake, or will be discriminated against. At any given moment, it may appear that we have put our trust in something, or rather SomeOne, who is not in sight.

I think of these parents this morning that brought their babies to be baptized. It’s risky business. In baptism, God is starting something with their children, and they don’t quiet know where it will lead. We hand our children into God’s care, trust God for their future even though we know that doesn’t ensure safety or long life or protection from pain. But we believe that in the end, our children becoming followers of Christ will be more important than any other decision they make. For the kids it starts here, in the waters of baptism.

A pastor, writer and civil rights activist in the 1960’s named Will Campbell once told the story of his baptism as a boy in a river in Mississippi. His brother Joe was something of a skeptic. And Joe stood on the bank, watching the preacher baptize two or three other people before Will’s turn. But as he watched, he got more and more worried for Will’s decision, and his safety. So he slid down the muddy bank and grabbed Will, saying, “Will, dear God, don’t let them do this to you. A fellow could get killed doing this.’ Much later, Will writes “It took me thirty years to recognize that was precisely the point.” Our whole life as we thought it would be…could die.

III. Jeremiah bought the field…as a sign…pointing to a future.

Jeremiah’s life was no longer being lived for just himself. He was seeing a bigger picture. He was hearing a different voice, God’s voice, and it was saying to him “I am not finished with my people.” No matter what the moment in history, God wasn’t done with his people. Jeremiah’s people are people with a future. We are people with a future.

God isn’t finished with us yet. Where are you at? Trying different things to put your faith in for the future? Looking at politics or a career change as providing the answers? Or maybe struggling with addiction or a disease or a loss, and the prospects around you look terrible. What do you do? Jeremiah says “buy the field.” Trust God. Trust that God will be with you no matter what the circumstances. It’s risky business.

You know what’s funny? Jeremiah wasn’t the only person to ever make a ridiculous investment. He learned it, in fact…from God. For some crazy reason, God chose to invest in people. If the world was to have a future, if the kingdom was to have a chance, it would come through weak, imperfect people. If hatred and evil and racism would be defeated, it would be through people. And what God chose to invest…was himself, in Jesus Christ.

Jeremiah looked down at the documents that sealed the deal. When he sealed up the clay jar to preserve the documents, he was looking to the future. Not just for himself, but for those around him. Those who witnessed, those who would would hear about it, we who would read of it. Jeremiah’s risky investment was a sign that God was not finished.

I wonder if Jeremiah had a picture in his mind.

I wonder if he imagined that field outside of Jerusalem.

I wonder if he saw himself, or someone else, one day standing in the middle of that very field…in the middle of a crop of wheat, golden and ripe with heavy kernels ready to harvest.

I wonder if he could see children laughing and playing, a thriving marketplace, a wedding, a community at prayer.

I wonder if he pictured himself with his arms raised up in the air, pointing to heaven and thanking God for being with him even while his feet remained firmly planted on God’s good earth.

I wonder if all that ran through Jeremiah’s mind…as he sealed the deed and bought the field.

I really just have one question for you this morning -

What’s your investment strategy?

Following Christ is risky business. It could cost us what we thought our life was about. If we take it seriously, we don’t know what the immediate future holds. Only that we have a future, because God isn’t finished with us.

And I wonder where the field is…that God is calling you to buy?