Jaremiah

Sermon

There are so many jars in Jeremiah that I’ve come to call it Jaremiah. It’s a nice device to help me remember what happens here. You may remember Eileen preaching from Jeremiah a few weeks ago and there was a jar in that story, too, or a clay vessel. The verses she shared were a poetic meditation on natural consequences. The implication was that God is the potter and God is able and more than willing to make us new even after we’ve chosen our own destruction. Speaking of, there’s also a part of Jeremiah where jars are smashed, as I’m sure many of us would like to do, too, occasionally, as a meditative exercise for renewal.

If you were a ’90s church teenager, like me, you maybe recall Jaremiah is where the band Jars of Clay got their name. Or possibly they got it from the Apostle Paul… where he is likely quoting Jeremiah, in his second letter to the Corinthians, saying, “We have this treasure, in jars of clay, that this all-surpassing power comes from God and not from us…” That’s another powerful call back to the jars, but that’s not why I love Jaremiah. I came to love this prophet and particularly these words, this specific and very odd story from the lectionary today, closer to 2008. If you’re at least 25 years old or a bit more or a lot more, it likely doesn’t take more than me saying 2008 for you to remember or maybe even recall in your body what was going on in that year and all the reverberations in the years following.

Around this time of year in 2008, I spent a lot of time silently, nervously watching the news; it’s the last time I had cable TV. Because this was before scrolling, and it was free, or rather, it was included and already paid for with my rent. I’d sit so still, seeing the housing market and banks fail, watching journalists interview people as stunned as me, and I’d think: what have I done, I have borrowed more money to go to school, again, and I’m going to… divinity school?! And the images for weeks were big red arrows pointing down, down, down, and I felt like I had to watch it, to honor that pain or maybe because TV was included with my rent, so it was already paid for, unlike so many other things in that year.

There were other big things that happened around then; one of my classmates got this thing called an iPhone and I thought it was weird because it didn’t have buttons. Israel invaded the Gaza strip, and Bitcoin was introduced and discussed at length (yes, I’m still talking about 2008). There was an intense and consequential election in 2008, and in 2009 and 2010, there were the beginnings of the Citizens United decision from the Supreme Court and the global Occupy Wall Street movement, and the further understanding that we are the 99%. Seeing how many different people were speaking, I remember thinking, maybe this movement will fix it.

Then in 2011, the year I finished seminary, Gabby Giffords was attacked at a “Congress on your Corner” event, and I’m quoting the encyclopedia now to be sure I’m still talking about many years ago: “While the attacker’s motivations there were not immediately clear, the event prompted politicians and media pundits to call for a reduction of warring rhetoric, a featuring characteristic of early 21st-century American politics.”  

It can feel, and it has felt, never-ending. It’s no wonder that it can be hard to remember what year it is sometimes. But we’ll stick to those four years, and suffice it to say I felt them for a long time after; I still feel it. There are certainly things I’m grateful for from that time, besides TV, meaning there wasn’t so much social media. I loved how working in local coffee shops and with an HIV-testing clinic and the Duke Youth Academy and other odd jobs, like being an Uber driver, helped me get out of my head. I feel deeply it is an honor to serve however you can serve.

I know that I didn’t have to be an ordained minister to be in ministry; hopefully you all know that, too. I can tell you about folks I was in seminary with who gave up getting a church job to get MBAs or work for nonprofits or became social workers. After I graduated, I worked interim and part-time church gigs and in hospitals and service jobs because so many churches weren’t hiring—very few had any idea what their financial forecast could be to hire.

Eileen called Jeremiah the depression prophet; for me, he is a great recession prophet. Because somewhere in there I came across this story that somehow sounded wilder than me borrowing money to go to seminary in 2008; it sounded like buying a house unseen, and putting the copy of the mortgage you keep in your own files for your reference, and the copy a trusted lender would keep, into an off brand Tupperware and burying it in 2008. Nevertheless, in this story, a prophet buys a piece of land. And it’s a piece of land he will probably never see. He can’t go and see it because he’s in jail for being a prophet; he prophesied against the unjust systems and explained the natural consequences of God’s people seeking their destruction. So not only is he in jail, he’s in a jail, surrounded by troops, in a city under siege.

But, as the title above this section says in our translation, “Jeremiah buys a field during the siege,” because today and every day is a great day to participate in commerce and the trusted exchange of funds for goods and services. Sigh. I know it sounds like I’m making a joke, but I mean it, and I really think Jaremiah means it, too: “houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.” Well then. What a meaningful purchase? What a special exchange. Does it still count as retail therapy if you don’t ever see the retail? I mean I guess you could see the witnesses as the point-of-sale system and that’s important for trusted exchange? I don’t know, but I know that it matters that we make exchanges.

It matters what we exchange and hold back. It matters how we participate in society, as individuals and collectively. We can build trust and connection in very simple actions. Exchange can keep us from being isolated. It can give someone a reason to leave the house to go get a coffee and it can give a grad student a job as a barista. It’s worth wondering what the natural consequences are when we choose to be more isolated, instead of making exchanges of money for goods and services or exchanges of trust and information for “hellos.”

As Eileen said about Jeremiah a few weeks ago, the natural consequences of this biblical time were “fear for national security… instead of trusting God and each other… relying on cobbled alliances that required their paying crippling tributes, [all] paid for on the backs of those experiencing extreme poverty.” And immeasurable debt from many turned into profit for a few, as Junha described last week, from a parable of Jesus, which, of course, would’ve been centuries later. Again, it’s okay to be confused on the century we’re in now. But in every age, it matters that we participate in exchange; it builds buildings and literal bridges and writes ads so you know about the bridges, about the funds, like the one that paid me to teach other seminary students how to talk to folks about testing for HIV. A grant paid for that! What an idea!

A friend of mine wrote in a text exchange this week: “We hear God in each other.” Our exchanges also bring us groceries, information, transport, and the terrible annoying toys that your kid buys after earning money at a lemonade stand, where some people who do not know you OR what was put in that lemonade trust a neighbor and buy that lemonade. It matters if and how we participate in society and exchange. It doesn’t have to be a big land purchase or even a purchase at all; it might be you giving the blanket that’s in your trunk to a person who looks cold by the library. It might be you volunteering at the library, just going to the library or to worship, or saying yes to being a deacon or elder, or maybe it’s saying, “No, I’m not going to watch TV if it doesn’t include free speech with purchase.”

I read something this week from the Reverend Dr. Alphonetta Wines, who is a retired biblical scholar with a more collective view than most of us, as she has often studied, and shared, the biblical scholars of Africa and Asia. She wrote this about Jaremiah in 2016, another big year: “Where is the hope when changes in the economy result in an unwanted layoff? Where is the hope when failing health signals that life will go on, but it will never be the same? […] What do you do when it seems that what is broken can never be healed, never be fixed? […] The one whose heart is broken can trust that God will heal…    For Jeremiah, that act of [trust] meant buying a plot of land” …under siege, from jail, but not in isolation. “His purchase was not just for himself, but for future generations. His purchase signaled to the nation that the one who brought warning of destruction was also one who believed in restoration.”

I might start saying that last line at the grocery store checkout, where it seems many prices are higher than they have been in a long time, “My strawberry yogurt purchase (which is 99% of what my child eats) signals to the nation that one who brought warning of destruction is also one who believes in restoration.” Maybe you say it when Alaina emails you from the church office saying: “Hi, you asked us to tell you when there’s a new member class, would you like to RSVP yes for this one?” Maybe we’ll say it just before the World Café next week or when we fill out our pledge cards or when we fill out poster board signs for protests. Or maybe we use Paul’s verse and say: we have this treasure in jars of clay: power, not in isolation. 

Amen.