Prophet Margins

Luke 16:19-31

19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24 He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ 27 He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28 for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ 29 Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ 30 He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

1The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the tenth year of King Zedekiah of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar. 2 At 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, 3 where King Zedekiah of Judah had confined him.

6 Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came to me: 7 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.” 8 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 knew that this was the word of the Lord.

9 And I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel, and weighed out the money to him, seventeen shekels of silver. 10 I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales. 11 Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing the terms and conditions, and the open copy; 12 and 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. 13 In their presence I charged Baruch, saying, 14 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. 15 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.

This is the Word of the LORD

Thanks be to God.

One Tuesday a little over one childhood ago, I was sitting in Linda McCrary’s 9th grade geometry class. Our desks were gathered in groups of four, forming little tables for group work. Mrs. McCrary was lecturing from behind her overhead projector when another faculty member opened the door and told her to “Put on the news. Something’s happened.” A plane had hit the World Trade Center on that Tuesday morning. We all wondered what kind of terrible accident had led to that tragedy until we watched the second plane hit, live on television. I remember the reporter being suddenly silent and then just repeating “There are no words.”

One of the effects of trauma on the human soul is that it removes language. That’s why victims of certain kinds of violence can have trouble retelling what happened to law enforcement. It’s why some crimes go unreported for decades. That reporter on the news those eighteen years literally had no words to describe what was happening in front of him. He talked for a living, and his language disappeared from the structures of his brain, leaving him only with cliche, rehearsed lines.

While most of us can remember what it was like for our nation to be attacked, either on September 11th or at Pearl Harbor nearly eighty years ago, there is no analogue in living American memory for the disaster of the fall of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonian Empire. The closest thing in our history is the Trail of Tears, and most of us come out of that story looking more like the Babylonians than the people of Judah.

Jeremiah has been preaching to a people on the edge of catastrophe for years now. Ten years before our text this morning, Babylon had conquered Judah for the first time, and took many of its citizens into exile, the first deportation. Now their capital city is once again under siege. Jeremiah’s anguished prophecies as the Babylonians bear down on the people has been to advocate for surrender. Naturally he is imprisoned for his words. He’s been critical of the government and hasn’t been supporting the troops. Common sense would say that this was a time to preach national unity, for us all to come together.

But Jeremiah wasn’t listening to common sense. He heard the promises of the LORD, and lived his life between the promises and their fulfillment. Prophet margins, you could call them. The faithful distance between our experience and the reality of God’s promise.

Even among the other prophets in scripture, Jeremiah has a unique calling. “No matter how he actually lived and preached, [Jeremiah] is a symbolic figure whole life embodies the suffering of his people and the long term effects of the disaster.” One way to understand him is that he’s trying to do psychotherapy on a national scale while dealing with his own PTSD. Right now, he’s trying to do that from prison.

In his prison cell, Jeremiah hears the word of the LORD. It’s a tiny promise in the dark days of the siege. “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.’” Scripture doesn’t tell us if Hanamel is fleeing the Babylonian armies. It doesn’t tell us if he’s trying to sell everything he owns in order to flee the Middle East and take refuge modern day Turkey or Greece, somewhere far from the violence of his homeland. Scripture does tell us that land had to be kept in the family. So Jeremiah’s cousin comes to sell his field to the imprisoned prophet. Common sense says that now is not the time to invest. Commons sense says that now is not the time to tie yourself down to the land. Common sense says get out while you still can.

But Jeremiah is not interested in common sense, he’s watching his prophet margins. He’s not looking for prudent investments, he’s looking for the promises of the LORD. God told him that his cousin was coming, a small promise. Once his cousin arrived, Jeremiah knew it was the word fo the LORD, speaking through his cousin, to buy this field at Anathoth.

So he does! The rest of our reading tells in Levitical detail the steps Jeremiah takes to purchase this land while the siege rages around them. It’s a precise closing on the property, everything done in accordance with the Law of God.

Common sense says that that money could have been better spent shoring up the defense of the city, or providing for the care of those fleeing the siege. Common sense argues that the witnesses and legal experts who closed on the deal ought to be fighting against the invaders, or fleeing from the unstoppable armies ahead of them. Common sense sees that Jeremiah, the imprisoned advocate of surrender to Babylon, should be the last one to try to invest in the local economy.

But Jeremiah lives in the prophet margins, between his experience and the promises of God. He chooses to trust God’s promises, and to do so publicly, reminding all the people he bothers along the way, that God’s promises are a sure and certain hope. “For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”

We don’t know the end of Jeremiah’s story. He almost certainly never makes it back to the land he purchased at Anathoth.  Jeremiah 43 tells us that he is carried off to Egypt against his will by his fellow Judeans. Scripture never tells us what happens next. We do know that he never married or had children, so that field could not have been passed down from generation to generation. But that’s the cost of a prophet margin. We know the promise, and we act on it, even if we know we will not see its fulfillment. It’s not about us, it’s about faithfulness to the word of the LORD.

As my 9th grade geometry class watched the disaster of September 11th, 2001 unfold in front of us, Mrs. McCrary did something curious. She switched off her television and returned to her lesson. I have no idea what the lesson was about, she would likely tell you that I was a poor student of geometry anyway, and the whole class was distracted by what we had seen.

She didn’t turn from the disaster to the lesson to ignore the dangerous world, to her I believe it was an expression of hope. It was a smaller scale prophetic act like Jeremiah buying a field in the middle of a siege. She turned off her television and continued to teach geometry because she had faith that one day we would need to learn geometry again. She had faith that whatever disaster was on the news that morning it wasn’t the end of the story. She trusted the promises of God that, “houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”

Jeremiah’s prophet margin, the distance between the trauma of his experience and the testimony of God’s promises, shows us that disaster and death are never the end of the story. Violence and terror never solve anything in the long term. Even if we never see the fulfillment with our own eyes, we know that the faithfulness and love of God always wins.

There’s the ministry of the Church for you. Live in the prophet margins, trust the promises of the LORD to shape reality. When we experience violence and terror and division, to instead act out the love of God, the peace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.