Proper 21C 2013
Father Adam Trambley
September 29, 2013, St. John’sSharon
In our
first reading today, God is preparing to do two incredible, unexpected, and
almost totally unbelievable things. Both
of them are being lived into by Jeremiah.
Jeremiah
is currently in jail. He is in jail
because he has been proclaiming the first unfathomable act of God toward his
people in Jerusalem. Jeremiah has been
telling the people that the Babylonians are going to defeat Judah and take the
people into exile. And not only are the
Babylonians going to win, but God is currently on their side, so the people
should stop fighting, accept the rule of Nebuchadrezzar, King of Babylon, and
have as nice a life as possible under this pagan ruler. The king and leaders of Jerusalem can’t
accept this prophecy. After all, the
Lord God of heaven and earth is supposed to be on their side. They know that God saved Jerusalem
miraculously from the face of the great Assyrian army when all looked
lost. They have been promised that a
descendant of David would rule forever, and it hasn’t been forever yet. Plus, a whole lot of other prophets are
perfectly willing to tell them exactly what they want to hear.
So
Jeremiah is in jail. The Babylonians are
at the gates, threatening Jerusalem. The
King knows that Jeremiah is a prophet and a holy man, but he wants his army and
all the people fighting. If the people
go off to Babylon, or even if they believe they will be defeated, then he knows
he’ll lose. So rather than let Jeremiah
lower the city’s morale, King Zedekiah locks him up in the guardhouse in the
palace.
We
probably should mention some of the reasons why God was going to use the
Babylonians to defeat Jerusalem. God’s
decision wasn’t capricious. He didn’t
stop caring about his people. He didn’t
stop loving them. But they stopped
caring about him and they stopped loving each other. They took advantage of the poor. They used positions of power to pervert
justice. They ignored their marriage
vows for passing pleasures. And they ran
after gods whose worship allowed them to get away with whatever they
wanted. They abandoned the Lord God and
the covenant made with him that required them to live with integrity in their
personal, commercial, political and religious lives. They chose the idols they had made, and could
control, instead the living God who created them and therefore could make
demands upon them. Things had finally
gotten so out of hand, that God decided that he had to put an end to the
earthly kingdom in Jerusalem. The
Creator of the universe was going to use the Babylonians to do his work to
transform the way his people were behaving, and exile was going to be part of
that transformation.
This
message isn’t really anything new.
Jeremiah wasn’t the first prophet to proclaim the need for justice and
righteousness to roll like mighty waters, and the Northern Kingdom of Israel
had already been destroyed by the Assyrians.
Nor would Jeremiah be the last to expound the consequences of
unrighteous living.
Both
our Epistle and our Gospel readings today, in fact, talk about similar
themes. Saint Paul talks about the love
of money being the root of all kinds of evil, with ruin and destruction as the
inevitable results of senseless and harmful desires. Then Jesus gives us the parable of the rich
man and Lazarus.
This
whole parable is the same issue Jeremiah is dealing with but written as a
morality story with two
individuals instead of engaging the historical reality
of an entire people. The rich man’s
selfish attitude leaves God no choice but to segregate him across a huge chasm
from Lazarus. During his life the rich
man never cared enough to even share what he couldn’t actually eat with poor
man literally dying on his doorstep.
Then, after death, he still doesn’t see Lazarus as a human being beloved
by God. Lazarus is still seen as some
sort of hired servant errand boy. “I’m
in agony here. Have Lazarus dip his
finger in water and walk through the flames to touch my tongue.” Really?
The dude starved to death while dogs licked his open sores on your
patio, and you’re going to have him spend eternity dabbing water unto your
tongue? I don’t think so. Nor is he going to your equally self-centered
family, who probably wouldn’t let him in even if he did do some sort of Zombie
run all the way from Hades to their house.
No. Lazarus is going to a safe
place where he can be loved by God through the caring of Abraham and you are
going somewhere, anywhere, else. We
should also expect anyone else holding a similar sense of entitlement or
attitude of injustice to be sent somewhere similar, whether in Jeremiah’s time
or our own.
Lest we
pass by the point of Jesus’ parable too quickly, we should stop and note that
the incredible purple and linen clothing the rich man wore are nothing compared
to the warmth, color, variety and sheer number of clothes and accessories
contained in the average American closet.
Feasting sumptuously every day probably meant, among other things, being
able to have meat frequently. Ancient
Palestinian eating sumptuously may or may not be equivalent to the amount of
food available to us as part of our expected meals and snacks. Lazarus was longing to eat the scraps from
the rich man’s table and we have so much extra food we can’t eat that our dogs
have to go on diets. We better make sure
that no one is dying on our watch while we are too busy stacking the dirty
plates out of the way before the next course.
Somebody has come back from the dead to warn us, so we best pay
attention. We know that in Jesus time
the leaders didn’t pay attention, and things went badly for them. In Jeremiah’s time, the leaders ignored God’s
word, too, so the Babylonians came and took them into exile.
But
just a short time before that exile, while Jeremiah is sitting in jail, the
same God who is preparing to put an end to the injustice among his people has
something else in store. Jeremiah is
told in prison that a cousin is going to come to sell him some land, and that
he should buy it. Based on everything
Jeremiah has been saying, Judean real estate would not seem to be a good
investment. King Nebuchadrezzer doesn’t
really care which Israelite’s name is on the land he is about to take
over. Anyone of political, economic or
religious importance, like Jeremiah, is either going to flee to Egypt or be
carried off to Babylon. If Jerusalem is
going to fall, a Jewish deed isn’t likely to be worth the paper it’s written
on, and buying land with money that will be needed to survive in the middle of
war is likely a very bad idea.
But
Jeremiah listens to God and buys the land.
The closing is described in great detail, and closings haven’t changed
much in twenty-five-hundred years. They
make copies of the deed. Witnesses
confirm the deal and seals are put to the documents by the equivalent of the
ancient Palestinian notary. The
financing is carefully weighed. They
probably even have a papyrus that says if Jeremiah forgot to sign something,
he’ll promise to sign it later. Then
they put the deed on record, not in courthouse, but in an earthenware jar so
that the record will be as permanent as possible.
Then
Jeremiah tells everyone that this transaction is not about buying this piece of
property but a sign that houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought
in that land. God has such an amazing
sense of the fidelity to his people that after they are defeated by the
Babylonians, after they are sent into exile, after their entire life is turned
upside down, after everyone would expect them to lose their identity and their
religion into that of the Babylonians, God is going to do something so that
they can buy and sell land in the promised land again. Through the next chapters of Jeremiah, we are
going to hear more of that promise. We
are going to hear about how God will set his law in their hearts so that they
can keep his covenant. We are going to
hear how they are going to go from being this stubborn, unjust people to the
people that can live out the life God has always wanted for them. But even before that full completion of God’s
plan comes to fruition, Israelite property will be bought and sold in Judea by
God’s people, and the deeds they now have will be worth something. This promise is amazing. After God does the inconceivable in tearing
apart the political structures of Judah and Jerusalem, he is planning to
recreate them again in an equally unbelievable fashion.
None of
this should surprise us, however. God’s
kingdom is always a place of justice and love. He is continually tearing out our selfishness
and hatred so that we can do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with him. We can expect to have our pride and greed,
our selfishness and our self-seeking, whether individual or collective, thrown
down. If we decide to hold on tightly to
such destructive behaviors, we can expect to be thrown down with them. Those who define themselves by their wealth
and power, whether Lazarus’s rich neighbor, the Jerusalem elites of Jeremiah’s
time, or our similarly blind contemporaries, should not expect a future. But when we shun such things to pursue
righteousness, godliness, faith, love, and gentleness, we can expect God to
build us up. Even if we are far from
achieving the fullness of kingdom life on our own, our faithful God will reward
our efforts, and just like those who will eventually buy and sell land again in
Jeremiah’s Israel, God will lovingly remake us as his people, living as his
people, in his time.
God is
just and faithful, and is capable of living out his justice and faithfulness
with his people. He is inviting us to
join him, and he will make it possible for us to live out that life with him,
although things may not happen between now and then quite as we might
expect.
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