Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Let us pray.
Dear Heavenly Father, we praise you and thank you that you speak to people who need to hear you, that you are there when we need you. We ask that you will open our ears and our hearts and our minds as we listen to once, long ago, you spoke to a king, and through a prophet, we ask that you will open our ears to hear what you have for us to hear today. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
This is from the book of JeRemiah, the 32nd chapter, the first 15 verses. This is a word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the 10th year of Zedekiah, king of Judah, which was the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar. The army of the king of Babylon was then besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah the prophet was confined in the courtyard of the guard in the royal palace of Judah. Now Zedekiah, king of Judah, had imprisoned him there, saying, why do you prophesy as you do? You say? This is what the lord says. I am about to give this city into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it. Zedekiah, king of Judah, will not escape the Babylonians, but will certainly be given into the hands of the king of Babylon and will speak with him face to face and see him with his own eyes. He will take Zedekiah to Babylon, where he will remain until I deal with him, declares the lord. If you fight against the Babylonians, you will not succeed.
Jeremiah said, the word of the lord came to me, Hannibal, son of Shallum, your uncle is going to come to you and say, buy my field at an atoth, because as the nearest relative, it's your right and duty to buy it. Then, just as the lord had said, my cousin Hannibal came to me in the courtyard of the guard and said, buy my field at an atoth in the territory of Benjamin, since it is your right to redeem it and possess it, buy it for yourself.
I knew that this was the word of the Lord, so I bought the field an anatoth from my cousin Hannamel, and weighed out for him 17 shekels of silver. I signed and sealed the deed, had it witnessed, and weighed out the silver on the scales. I took the deed of purchase, the sealed copy containing the terms and conditions, as well as the unsealed copy, and I gave this deed to Baruch, son of Neriah, the son of Messiah, in the presence of my cousin Hannibal and of the witnesses who had signed the deed, and of all the Jews sitting in the courtyard of the guard in their presence, I gave Baruch these instructions. This is what the Lord Almighty, the Lord of Israel, says. Take these documents, both the sealed and unsealed copies of the deed of purchase, and put them in a clay jar so they will last a long time. For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says. Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: For the sermons I've preached these last couple months. We've been looking together at covenants and commitments in scripture. We've looked at those times when the camera lens of the Bible hones in not on an autonomous individual doing their own thing, but rather on the ties that bind individuals to God, individuals to one another as a community, and individuals to the earth. In this vast web of relationships that we discover can lead to all of our thriving, we began looking at the commitment God made to humanity at creation, promising to provide for the human race from the goodness of the earth and calling upon humanity to care for creation. We then looked at other covenants God made with God's people, binding that people to God and God to that people. We saw such covenants in the stories of Noah and his family and Abraham and Sarah, Moses, and then David. We then looked at that covenant Jesus lifted up at the last Supper when he took the cup and said, this is the cup of the new covenant, sealed in my blood for the remission of sins. We looked at how receiving that gift of Christ's love poured out for us, uniting our lives with Christ by faith, how that brings forgiveness of sin. It binds us to God through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and we become vessels of Christ's love. The transformation not only works on us, but it makes us vessels of God's blessing to the world as extended members of Christ's body.
Well, last Sunday, we looked at that commitment two people can make to one another in marriage, binding themselves together with those vows till death do us part, or as long as we both shall live. Today we look at a commitment God calls a person to make, not simply to goddess and not simply to people, but to place.
Commitment to place. That's what today's passage highlights for us.
The date is listed as the 10th year of the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah and the 18th year of King Nebuchadrezzar, or King Nebuchadnezzar. Those are different spellings of the same king of Babylon. Based on the years listed for those two ancient kings, we can place today's story in the years 588 to 587 BC. According to our calendars, today. That was a cataclysmic year in the life of ancient Judah in America. You know, we often think of a presidential election year as potentially cataclysmic, for such a year can mark a significant shift in the party represented in the oval office and in the individual serving as president. It can represent one trajectory in policies and in values rising and another falling. And in the broad span of history, there are some dates that mark not just a change in political leadership. There are some years where you see an entire nation kingdom where people fall.
For many historians, 476 of the common era was the year the western Roman Empire fell. That was a big year. The historian Eric Klein argues that 1177 BCE was also a big year. That was the date a host of late Bronze Age kingdoms collapsed simultaneously. The Babylonians, the Minoans, the Mycenaeans, the Hittites. Now, this may have been caused by a lethal combination of drought, famine, and roaming marauders, impacting all these groups together.
But 1177 BCE, that was a year we believe a number of ancient kingdoms fell. Well, some 500 years after that date. The northern section of what had once been the united kingdom of Israel under King David fell to an empire called Assyria. The southern kingdom of Judah would endure for more than a century after that. But then came the time we read about in today's passage. When the armies of Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar finally broke through the walls of Jerusalem, they laid waste to the city and its temple. Many of the former citizens of Jerusalem and that larger region of Judah were sent into exile, and it would be nearly 50 years before a new superpower, Persia, ruled the land, and those exiles were allowed to return.
Today's passage, it zeros right in on these cataclysmic years of 588 to 587 BCE, right as the armies of Babylon are laying waste to Jerusalem now. King Zedekiah of Judah had been holding the prophet Jeremiah captive in his royal court. It was a form of royal censure. Jeremiah had been writing disparaging op ed columns in the Jerusalem times about King Zedekiah. He even was bold enough to write that if King Zedekiah went up against the king of Babylon, he would fail. Zedekiah, like many political leaders in history, did not like criticism in the media. Zedekiah wanted to proclaim, God is on my side. If I take on Babylon, I will prevail.
Jeremiah famously counters that God does not bend the knee for any king or political leader. God is the lord of history. And if Zedekiah will not accept that he will be humbled by history. Jeremiah warns, humbled by the goddess who rules history.
Well, such criticism wasn't taken well by Zedekiah. So he has Jeremiah confined to court and then interrogated. He asked, why do you prophesize? You do, Jeremiah. Why do you speak of how the Chaldeans, that's another term we think, for the Babylonians at this particular point in history, will take this city, and we will be unsuccessful in fighting against them. Aren't you committed to this place, Jeremiah? It's as if Zedekiah is asking and as if to say, yes, I am deeply committed to this place and its future. Jeremiah tells a story, says Zedekiah, you know, the other day, God said something to me. God said, jeremiah, your cousin Hamman Mel is going to come to you, and he is going to offer to sell you a plot of land at anathoth, that city just 3 miles north of Jerusalem. You are kin to him, and you have the right of redemption. And then Jeremiah tells Zedekiah, it happened just as God said it would. HannAmel came to me and offered to sell the land. I knew this must be God's will, so I bought the field, I weighed out the silver, I signed the deeds with all the proper witnesses, and then I said, thus says the Lord, the God of IsRael, seal these deeds in an earthenware jar. That will last a long time. For, yes, Judah and its capital of Jerusalem are falling.
Anathoth, along with all of Judah, will soon be in the hands of Babylon. But there will come a day when houses and fields and vineyards will again be bought and sold in this land in peace.
It's a remarkable act Jeremiah makes of committing to place right at the very moment that place, anathoth, is overrun by enemy forces. Anathoth, we learned back in the very first verse of the book of Jeremiah, was Jeremiah's own hometown and this land purchase with it, Jeremiah is saying, God is the lord of all time and place, not Nebuchadnezzar, not Zedekiah. And God has a future for this place, this place I call home. And it's a future where houses and fields and vineyards will be again bought and sold in peace. With that future in mind, trusting in the sovereignty of God over all time and place, I put my money down on this place.
What an incredible act of faith that is on the part of Jeremiah. What a powerful bond that's formed by God's call and claim, a bond between person and place.
Today, you know, in our highly mobile culture, our bounds to place can be quite loose. There's a lot of emphasis put on chasing the better job or going where things are more secure. The governance in that area is more aligned with our politics or values. And for some, we know their very survival can depend on relocating for the place they called home, getting destroyed. Think of Syria. Think of Gaza.
Think of Ukraine.
One cannot fault the people of ancient Judah in the time of Jeremiah for fleeing and seeking refuge elsewhere. And we know from the book of Jeremiah that those driven into exile have a great call, too. They are charged by the prophet to seek the welfare of the communities where they then live. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. God says through the prophet, Jeremiah, pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you, too will prosper. In scripture, God often leads people to head to new places and calls them to be a blessing, not a curse, to people in those places to do God's work in that new place. For God is lord of all places.
But still, today's passage reminds us there's something powerful to committing to the place where we are. There's something powerful to saying, God is the lord of all time and place. And God has called me to this place. So even if it's getting overrun by enemy forces, by powers that I fear are tearing it down, that I see tearing it down, I will call it home, I will sign the deed, I will put my money down, and I will trust in goddess, the God of all time and place, all trust. God has a wonderful future for this place and for me and those who share this place with me.
You know, of all the commitments made by the benedictine monks, the most remarkable may be the commitment not to poverty, nor even celibacy, but stability, a commitment to place.
A number of us this past spring had the opportunity to take another retreat. Josiah showed you some pictures from our summer retreat. In the spring, a number of us went up to spend time with the benedictine monks of St. Andrew's Abbey. And the monks of that place vow not simply to become monks, but to live in that place in Vallermo, in the high desert, in that community and that corner of the world for life. It's like they sign a deed saying, this will be my people. This will be my place come what may.
Early one evening, on one of my trips to St. Andrew's Abbey, I was heading out for a walk. And to do so, I would head out along a road that went right by the living quarters of the monks. And then along this road for a time, it would head into a couple different hiking trails I could take. Well, as I was heading out, I saw one of the younger monks who was coming back, and he wasn't in his monkish attire. He was wearing a t shirt and shorts at the time and had a big old walking stick. It was a time of silence, so we smiled at each other and nodded at each other, and he went back to his quarters, and I went out on this walk. But as we did, I thought, wow, I'm walking this road once. But I wonder if that monk is walking this same road every day and will do that for decades to come, this same road, day after day, what would that be like, I wondered. I sometimes think of christian life, you know, as a pilgrimage to new places. Many today travel to walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain. I went on a pilgrimage to the island of Iona back in 2016 and did a prayer walk around the island. Some in this church have been to Kenya to work with the Amani school. And that kind of adventure can be powerful, you know, seeing God at work in some new place, some place we haven't been before, and where God is at work. And yet, for benedictine monks, I learned this commitment to place is like a pilgrimage. It's an interior pilgrimage, where you journey away from selfish ways towards an ever deepening intimacy with the goddess of all time and place that God we know in Christ. Such a journey, they say, is made possible when you commit to one place. So that road, when I passed this young monk walking along, that was his Camino de Santiago, day after day.
I've often thought recently of Mona the elder in this Presbyterian, also the elder among the Tongva Gabrieleno band of Mission Indians. And I've thought often of her commitment and that of her tribe to this place, a commitment that long precedes the time that spanish missionaries arrived and this land was taken from them. As your history books tell you, for so many years in recent history, no part of this land that had once belonged to that people was officially deeded to them. And then one small symbolic act took place. A tract of land in Altadena, near my home, was returned to them. And though they had to pay back taxes and other fees to receive the land, though they had to put money down, one deed on one track of land is now in their hands. And what a powerful statement that one small act can make. It proclaims that God is the ruler of all times and places. A powerful presbyterian conviction that Mona holds. And it shows that if God calls you to a new place and you commit to it long enough God can bring about a new day for you, for your people, for that place.
In his book the Wisdom of Stability, Jonathan Wilson Hartgrave writes of his commitment to a place called Wall Town in Durham, North Carolina. Wall Town, he notes, is a historically black neighborhood with a tight knit extended family that fought to survive the racism of the Jim Crow south for much of the 20th century. But with the access gained through the civil rights movement, many who could leave Wall town did, and the neighborhood was left to people without resources. The crack epidemic then hit them in the 1980s like a Mack truck. The town was also hit hard by the building of the I 85. That freeway brought a degree of mobility unimaginable before Altadena, or rather Atlanta and Washington, DC were only a days commute from each other after that interstate was built. But the damage to african american communities like Wall town was profound. It cut people off from their local communities, making the next city closer than the other side of town.
That summer, they moved into Wall town. They heard gunshots through the open window. But in their journey of committing to place, Wilson Hartgrave came to see a God at work in that place, at work, in local churches, in neighborhoods, in the struggles and the successes of the people there, amid the social and economic forces they face there, he found the chance to truly know and love his neighbors with the love of Christ and to see God's hand in the wonder of creation, something as simple as getting to know the birds of that region. He saw the love of Christ touching down, changing lives, changing whole communities in one corner of the world, that place he called home.
And Wilson Hartgrave will tell of others who've committed to place and inspired his journey. People like Paul Wilkes. Wilkes, you may know, is an acclaimed writer and documentarian. And at the age of 33, inspired by the catholic worker, Wilkes co founded a social service center in Brooklyn, serving food to the poor and providing a home for the unhoused mothers. He would later travel to India and, seeing the plight of orphans, he would found homes of hope in that country. But then he would write of how his boldest and most daring move of all may have been in his early sixties, with a simple commitment he learned from the Benedictines, a recognition of the wisdom of stability.
Reflecting on his younger years, Wilkes wrote, I bridled at restraints. I moved again and again. There was always something more out there I wasn't finding. His life as he saw it, was a grand effort to find God and God's purposes in some other place, some extraordinary place.
And this finally led to a midlife crisis and a desperately unhappy existence.
And then he encountered this call we hear placed on Jeremiah in today's passage, a call to the wisdom of stability. And it marked a shift. Wilkes wrote, when I was younger, I looked on married life and children as punishingly restrictive and certainly not the path to holiness or heroism.
Then, after committing to the people and the place where he was, he writes, now, with two sons embarking on their teenage years and a working wife, my freedom of movement is severely restricted, my own desires secondary at best. Yet I experience some of the richest days of my life.
The boundary lines of his life and love expanded as his roots grew deeper.
Friends, God may call you to some other place, and if so, I pray, like the exiles of Babylon, you will seek the welfare of that place and be a blessing to it. I pray that you will find God's provision and rich christian community in that new place.
But if, like Jeremiah, God calls you to the place you already are, perhaps this place may you find right here on our sidewalks and our mountain trails, a glorious pilgrimage before you. May you find here in Los Angeles county, here in whatever place you live today, hear it nothing, an ever deepening intimacy with that God we know in Christ.
As you sign the deed and put it in an earthenware jar, may you know rich communion with that Lord who reigns over all time and place, and know that savior here and now.
In the name of the Father, Son and holy Ghost, amen.
