Buying the Farm
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
October 25, 2020
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
A recording of the service in which this sermon was preached is available here: https://youtu.be/8c3scrjyBFA
The expression “to buy the farm” usually means to die. Except for, you know, when it means to actually purchase agricultural land. It’s commonly believed that the phrase started during World War I. If a soldier died in combat, the death benefit was sufficient for his survivors to purchase a farm. So, a solider who was died, “bought the farm.” In that context, the expression means that one person’s hope comes from another person’s sacrifice.
When Jeremiah bought the farm at Anathoth, he may not have been giving the people the hope they wanted right then. He was not personally going to benefit from the purchase, and neither were they, but it was a sacrifice that would give hope to the next generation.
Ten years before today’s reading, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had laid siege to Jerusalem because then King Jehoiakim had refused to pay tribute to him. King Jehoiakim had been killed and many Judeans had been carted off to Babylon in the first deportation. At that time, Nebuchadnezzar had chosen Zedekiah to be his puppet king in Judah. Now Zedekiah is trying his hand at rebellion, believing the Egypt will be his ally against Babylon. Not surprisingly, Nebuchadnezzar is not pleased. The city is under siege. The Babylonian army waits beyond the gates for Jerusalem’s inevitable surrender.
Jeremiah had repeatedly warned that Zedekiah, the king of Judah, was going to lose this war. Zedekiah did not want to hear that, so he had Jeremiah arrested and thrown in prison for treason.
Jeremiah is in prison. The city is under siege. That’s when his cousin Hanamel shows up asking Jeremiah to buy the farm. Apparently, he needed some cash. Perhaps he was trying to get out of the country. Perhaps he just needed to buy food for his family. The only thing that he had of any value was his land, only it was no longer worth much. In normal times in Judah, there was a system to keep property in the family. If you had to sell, you sold to family members and if they could, they were obligated to buy it. Jeremiah is next in line to buy this property.
These are anything but normal times, which is what makes this story a bit ridiculous. Jeremiah describes the transaction in detail, as if he wants to make sure it is legally, binding, but he knows it is absurd. Several times, he stops to say that this is God’s idea, not his.
Because he is in the palace prison, all of this takes place in front of the palace courtiers and prison guards and even the king. Imagine the spectacle. Who is the bigger fool – Hanamel for selling when it is clearly a buyer’s market? Or Jeremiah for buying when the Babylonians are going to claim any land they want for themselves anyway?
While he has their attention, Jeremiah takes the opportunity to shape the narrative. This land deal has nothing to do with buying low and selling high. It has everything to do with hope. He proclaims that he is doing it because God promises that the people will come home from exile and houses and fields and vineyards will be sold again in It is prophetic action which symbolizes that there will be peace again someday, that the economy will recover and people will live on the land and tend their own farms and vineyards. The defeat of Judah, the imminent destruction of Jerusalem will not have the last word.
I notice that being hopeful, acting out hope makes Jeremiah seem ridiculous. Once again, he seems to be the fool, the object of derision, the butt of other people’s jokes. I wonder what his scribe Baruch thinks as he transfers the money and records two copies of the deed and seals them up in clay jars to stay safe. I wonder if we ever feel stupid for being hopeful. I wonder how often we allow that fear of being taken for a fool keep us from enacting hope.
Whatever Baruch the scribe might privately think, publicly, he does as Jeremiah directs. He preserves the record of this action, just in the clay jars, but also in the Bible.[1] That is the safe place where the evidence of the land deal endures, and along with it, Judah’s long-term hope.
Martin Luther is supposed to have been asked, “If you knew the world would end tomorrow, what would you do?” And his answer was, “I would plant an apple tree.” Now the earliest evidence of this story comes from 1944, 400 years after Martin Luther died, so it almost certainly never happened. But it’s still true: If the world is going to end tomorrow, plant a tree today. That is living in hope.
Jeremiah said that the appropriate response to Babylon was to lay down arms and surrender. He recognized the harsh reality of the situation. And yet, he still maintains tangible hope for the future.
But it is not all pie-in-the-sky by-and-by. He also articulates hope in the present time. Remember those people who were deported ten years earlier, the ones who are now living in enemy territory in Babylon? Jeremiah had a word for them as well. He sent letters to them.
One of those letters is in chapter 29, where it says “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters. . . Seek the welfare of the city where you are in exile.”
Jeremiah tells those who are in exile to settle down, plant gardens and raise families. He says to make peace with the Babylonians, to live full and productive lives. That is the constructive hope he imagines for them. I appreciate that he has both a short-term and a long-term understanding of hope.
The last time I preached on Jeremiah 29 was in 2013. I’m sure you remember it well. That was the sermon where I said that Jim and I had moved around a lot. So much that we had never planted asparagus, because you have to stay in one place long enough for asparagus to establish itself and we never did. The next Sunday, one of you brought an asparagus plant to us, as a sign of hope for our future together. Today, there is a happy healthy asparagus section in our garden.
That is who you are, who we are. People who enact hope for each other. Right now, you are checking in on your neighbors, and sending encouraging notes to those who are having a hard time. You are showing up for worship and other gatherings on Zoom, which none of us love, because you have hope for the long term when we will be together again in person.
Jeremiah was shut up in prison while a war raged outside. Similarly, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested for and imprisoned by the Nazis for treason as World War II raged on. Three months before his execution, he wrote to his fiancée Maria, “When Jeremiah said, in his people’s hour of direst need, that ‘houses and fields and [vineyards] shall again be bought in this land,’ it was a token of confidence in the future. That requires faith, and may God grant us it daily. I don’t mean the faith that flees the world, but the faith that endures in the world and loves and remains true to the world in spite of all the hardships it brings us. Our marriage must be a ‘yes’ to God’s earth. It must strengthen our resolve to do and accomplish something on earth.”[2]
You and I are not in prison. Our situation is not nearly as dire. But we might need this reminder, that confidence in the future depends on faith in God. We don’t live in despair. We don’t live in denial, but we can live in radical hope, a hope which allows us to see the world differently, a hope which commits us to action now, even while we await the long-term fulfillment of God’s kingdom on earth, the hope of resurrection.
There’s a poem I have quoted to you before, usually around Easter, but it came to me again this week. Let me remind us of some of the lines from Wendell Berry’s Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
Practice resurrection.[3]
Beloved ones, The world might end tomorrow.
Plant a tree today.
Buy the farm.
Expect the end of the world and laugh.
Be joyful even though you have considered all the facts.
Amen.
[1] Walter Brueggemann, A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1998), p. 302
[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer and M. von Wedemeyer, Love Letters from Cell 92, 1943–45 (ed. Ruth-Alice von Bismarck and U. Kabitz; London: Harper Collins, 1994), 48-49
[3] Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” from The Country of Marriage, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1973.