Feasting on the Word— Year C, Volume 4

Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ)

David L. Bartlett, Barbara Brown Taylor, David L. Bartlett, Barbara Brown Taylor

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780664231033
• eBook ISBN: 9781611641165
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

With this new lectionary commentary series, Westminster John Knox offers the most extensive resource for preaching on the market today. When complete, the twelve volumes of the series will cover all the Sundays in the three-year lectionary cycle, along with movable occasions, such as Christmas Day, Epiphany, Holy Week, and All Saints' Day.

For each lectionary text, preachers will find four brief essays--one each on the theological, pastoral, exegetical, and homiletical challenges of the text. This gives preachers sixteen different approaches to the proclaimation of the Word on any given occasion.

The editors and contributors to this series are world-class scholars, pastors, and writers representing a variety of denominations and traditions. And while the twelve volumes of the series will follow the pattern of the Revised Common Lectionary, each volume will contain an index of biblical passages so that nonlectionary preachers, as well as teachers and students, may make use of its contents.

PROPER 21 (SUNDAY BETWEEN SEPTEMBER 25 AND OCTOBER 1 INCLUSIVE)

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. ²At 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, ³where King Zedekiah of Judah had confined him….

⁶Jeremiah said, The word of the LORD came to me: ⁷Hanamel 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.” ⁸Then 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.

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

Theological Perspective

During the biblical period, land could mean the difference between life and death. The agrarian type of society structured its culture to prize land theologically. The legal system sought to protect land for the family. Of course, over twenty-five hundred years this agrarian society has given way to the postindustrial information society. Nonetheless, in our day we still prize space, if not land. Sometimes it is measured not in acres but in square feet. How much we prize land or space depends on the historical contexts and theological constructs. As anyone who has rented an apartment or bought a home knows, real estate transactions depend on knowing the value of the property based on the location and the situation. Once one knows the value, it is a matter of choosing. This passage invites the reader to a life that values human agency amid God’s mission.

Jeremiah 32 is a story of prophetic symbolic action. Jeremiah bought a field. That was a simple act. What made it prophetic was its location and situation. Jeremiah’s field was located in the city of Jerusalem, and Jeremiah bought it while the Babylonian army was threatening the city of Jerusalem. They encircled the city. However, the city was not the only thing that was encircled; Jeremiah was confined in an enclosure. So much of the transaction had to take place through proxy.

This is not the first or last time Scripture records a significant real-estate transaction. Abraham bought land for a burial place for Sarah (Gen. 23). Boaz redeemed a field (Ruth 4). King Ahab and his queen Jezebel botched the acquisition of a vineyard owned by Naboth the Jezreelite (1 Kgs. 21). Tragic real-estate transactions occur in the New Testament as well. When Judas returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, they knew the “blood money” would pollute the treasury, so they purchased the potter’s field for the burial of aliens (Matt. 27:3–10). When Ananias and Sapphira sold property and underreported their earnings, things did not go well for them (Acts 5:1–11)! Real-estate transactions described in the Bible seem never to be neutral. They advance either a blessing or a curse.

Jeremiah bought a field. His purchase came in what we might call a depressed real-estate market. Recently there had been a drop in the stock market, and on the television commentators wondered if this would be the end of the bull market and everyone would move to selling instead of buying. In the middle of a military siege, Jeremiah gives us meticulous details of the sale. The act is not contrarian just to be different, but Jeremiah does hope it will grab attention.

The transaction is not private and solitary, but public and collaborative. Prophetic symbolic actions provide a model of public theology, because they are public and collaborative. Among Jeremiah’s people, this transaction required Hanamel, Jeremiah’s cousin, and Baruch, Jeremiah’s secretary. The transaction also had wider air time because it required Judeans sitting in the court of the guard. Their presence ensured whispers and rumor about the crazy prophet who was buying bad titles. These Judeans also made this symbolic action one that required collaboration, even if many of the players were unaware that they were part of a prophetic symbolic action. The role of the Judeans points to the public nature of the transaction. Symbolic action here takes place in public. Prophetic action often requires a community of faith to witness it and absorb its symbolism. This is public. The deed is publically filed as well as privately kept by the prophet. The real-estate transaction is public, collaborative, and political; that is to say, it has an impact on developing land and communities from ancient times.

The use of royal land grants for various purposes goes back to ancient times. These became important tools in the colonization of the Americas by Europeans. The United States also used real estate to shape the political landscape. According to the Homestead Act of 1862, every person would receive 160 acres and a mule if they stayed on the land and improved it over the course of five years. This legislation was an attempt to populate the land of the Louisiana Purchase, but it symbolically offered hope in the midst of a Civil War and in the first months after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Jeremiah’s purchase of the land near Anathoth parallels his instruction to the deportees in Babylon to buy land, build houses, and so forth (Jer. 29:4–7). We see here the domestic and foreign or global mission at work in Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry. Jeremiah assures Israel that they will one day buy and sell houses in their dear homeland again. At the same time he encourages them to see God as near and active, even in the present circumstances of their exile. The work of their own rebuilding would happen both in exile and in Jerusalem.

Two of the key verbs in this story are “buy” and “redeem.” Here the purchase is synonymous with the redemption. On the one hand, the purchase models that “houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land” (v. 15b). On the other hand, it is more than a coincidence that the redemption of land by a relative is part of the purchase process. This piece models what God is doing in the redemption of exilic Judah.

While the many laments of Jeremiah arise from disaster and call the people to contemplation, the story of Jeremiah 32:1–3a, 6–15 challenges exiled peoples to imagine hopeful action. This story reminds us that God’s grace occurs in unusual places and in sometimes contrarian forms. What will the congregation’s hopeful act be today? Will it be material and prophetic—a land buy and a development project in inner-city Detroit? Will the investment be more social—churches building special education programs for kids who seem destined to fail, or addiction-recovery programs for lives that seem to have no future? Whatever the form, the faithful reader of Jeremiah is called to find analogies of collaborative, inspired, public, prophetic actions that speak the hope of redemption in unpromising places and times.

STEPHEN BRECK REID

Pastoral Perspective

These verses from chapter 32 relate the details surrounding Jeremiah’s purchase of land in his hometown of Anathoth. On the surface, this is a most peculiar transaction. Jerusalem is under siege, and Jeremiah has already stated that Jerusalem will fall to Babylon and that King Zedekiah and the people of Jerusalem will be exiled. Also, Jeremiah is in prison, because, as part of his pronouncement that Babylon is serving YHWH’s purpose, he declared that the appropriate response to the siege is to lay down arms and surrender. At a time of war, suggestions like that are regarded as seditious, and the person who makes them is called a traitor. It is hardly a propitious moment to be paying good money for land that is in the process of being conquered.

A second level of reality appears in these verses, however. Jeremiah has delivered the oracle that tells the people of Israel that a new covenant is replacing the Mosaic covenant under which the nation has been operating.¹ For Jeremiah, the new covenant means that the people of Israel are no longer identified by geography, cultic practices, and tribal traditions, but are bound together by the recognition that YHWH’s law is part of their very being. Their com-munity is now composed of individuals who band together to worship God, strengthen their commitments to live according to the will of God, and celebrate the commonalities created by their dedication to YHWH and the things of God.

For Jeremiah, therefore, while the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the people may mean the end of the nation of Israel as it was once identified, it does not mean that YHWH has abandoned YHWH’s people or lessened in any way YHWH’s connection to them. The people of YHWH are an identified group just as much as they were under the old covenant, and they will thrive—they will till the soil, marry and bear children, worship God and celebrate together, just as they did in the past.

The opportunity to buy the land comes from his family. According to a provision in Leviticus, land could not be sold outside the family, if such a sale would affect the family’s ability to sustain itself. Jeremiah is the next of kin with the right of redemption by purchase, and the provisions of the Mosaic covenant have led his cousin to offer the land to Jeremiah. Likewise, the entire transaction—the establishment of the price to be paid, the weighing of the money to pay for it, the form of the deed on which the transfer of the land is recorded, the number of witnesses required to attest to the legality of the sale—is handled as dictated under the terms of the old covenant.

Throughout these verses, Jeremiah emphasizes that he is responding to the will of YHWH. Redeeming this land is not an act of foolish hope or the ability to ignore the obvious. Rather, it is the enactment of faith in the future and in the promise of YHWH to fulfill the covenant between YHWH and YHWH’s people. Jeremiah acts on the promise that despite the current siege and defeat of Jerusalem and Judah, houses and fields and vineyards will again be bought in that land.

The language of Paul Tillich may help us to understand the pastoral importance of this passage. For Tillich, a theologian who wrote in the mid-twentieth century about issues of faith, certainty, and doubt, Jeremiah’s willingness to invest in land at the very moment that Babylon had Jerusalem under siege would be evidence of the “courage to be.”²

In the course of his ministry, Jeremiah comes face to face with despair, agony, doubt, and meaninglessness. He questions YHWH, wrestles with what YHWH presents to him, experiences pain and torment in the face of Israel’s behavior and its limitations. He does all he can to let the people of Israel know what is required of them to restore harmony with YHWH.

Throughout his struggles, the power that animates him is the creative and sustaining hand of YHWH. He knows YHWH is present and working in the world. This certainty that human beings, even in all their limitations, participate as integral parts of something that transcends them utterly, Tillich calls “faith.” This is not faith in the sense of declaring to be true something that cannot be proved through the physical senses. Rather, it is the recognition that meaninglessness (“non-being” in Tillich’s terms), while not to be dismissed, lacks the power creatively to engage a situation, and so cannot obliterate the power of “being.”

Tillich would also point out that YHWH was Jeremiah’s “ultimate concern,” which “demands the total surrender of him [or her] who accepts this claim, and … promises total fulfillment even if all other claims have to be subjected to it or rejected in its name.”³ In some ways, the Mosaic covenant had replaced YHWH as ancient Israel’s ultimate concern. The covenant itself was only a “preliminary concern,” and as such was unable to provide the fulfillment of the spiritual, aesthetic, and creative aspects of human life.

By purchasing the land in the midst of Jerusalem’s destruction by Babylon and while he was imprisoned, Jeremiah defines what it means to have faith in YHWH’s future. He attests to his conviction that YHWH is present even in catastrophe. He declares that meaninglessness or nonbeing will not triumph. To the multitudes of our parishioners who suffer from hopelessness and despair of unexpected setbacks, Jeremiah underscores that, out of the chaos of change, YHWH’s promises will be fulfilled. Jeremiah bet his bottom dollar on it—he went ahead and purchased a field right in the middle of the turmoil!

SHARON PEEBLES BURCH

Exegetical Perspective

When Jeremiah received his prophetic call from the Lord, he was commissioned to proclaim a double message: “to pluck up and pull down … [and] … to build and to plant” (Jer. 1:10). His prophetic mission was to speak forth God’s words both of judgment and of promise and hope. Surely there were times when Jeremiah wondered when—if ever—God would give him a message of hope to preach. “Whenever I speak, I must cry out, … ‘Violence and destruction!’” (Jer. 20:8). The majority of Jeremiah’s words consisted of denunciation for Judah’s sins and the attendant prophecies of judgment against the people and the nation.

Jeremiah always seemed to be “swimming against the stream.” Most of his prophecies of judgment were delivered at times when the people of Judah felt themselves secure from any adverse judgment of the Lord (e.g., Jer. 3:4–5; 5:12; 7:8–10), and at many of those times there were other prophets, preaching comforting words of assurance and hopefulness (see Jer. 23:16–17; 27–28). When finally Jeremiah’s message of imminent disaster proved true with the attack of the army from Babylon (Jer. 32:2; cf. 2 Kgs. 25:1–21), Jeremiah’s words of hope (found esp. in chaps. 30–33) began to issue forth—words from God that clashed with all appearances.

The passage under study here is the one passage in Jeremiah’s Book of Consolation (chaps. 30–33) which is given a clear date (32:1–2). The tenth year of Zedekiah’s reign was 587/586 BCE, ten years after the first Babylonian defeat of Jerusalem and the carrying off of one group of exiles (2 Kgs. 24:10–17). Now the army of Babylon has again besieged the city of Jerusalem, and Jeremiah has been imprisoned, under suspicion of being a traitor (see Jer. 37:11–16; 38:28). In today’s passage we can be instructed that, in contrast to the prophet imprisoned and the king and people caught in a fateful situation of siege, God’s word is free (cf. 2 Tim. 2:9).¹

The omission from the lectionary text of King Zedekiah’s question to Jeremiah in verses 3...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Publisher’s Note
• Series Introduction
• A Note about the Lectionary
• Proper 17 (Sunday Between August 28: and September 3 Inclusive)
• Proper 18 (Sunday Between September 4: and September 10 Inclusive)
• Proper 19 (Sunday Between September 11 and September 17 Inclusive)
• Proper 20 (Sunday Between September 18 and September 24 Inclusive)
• Proper 21 (Sunday Between September 25 and October 1 Inclusive)
• Proper 22 (Sunday Between October 2 and October 8 Inclusive)
• Proper 23 (Sunday Between October 9 and October 15 Inclusive)
• Proper 24 (Sunday Between October 16 and October 22 Inclusive)
• Proper 25 (Sunday Between October 23 and October 29 Inclusive)
• All Saints
• Proper 26 (Sunday Between October 30 and November 5 Inclusive)
• Proper 27 (Sunday Between November 6 and November 12 Inclusive)
• Proper 28 (Sunday Between November 13 and November 19 Inclusive)
• Proper 29 (Reign of Christ)
• Contributors
• Scripture Index
• Author Index