Jerry Buys The Farm
What Are We Preserving?
Family Plot
By the year 588-587 BC, Jerusalem had been under siege by
Nebuchadnezzar for two years. “Under siege” means the city was
surrounded and cut off from the outside world. The only food and
water Judah had access to was whatever streams or wells they had
and whatever they could grow within the city walls.
Nebuchadnezzar had already taken the professional classes of
Jerusalem away for exile and “cultural assimilation.” The people
were starving, dying of plague and other diseases. The economy
had collapsed. All real estate in Israel was worthless.
Jeremiah’s message was pretty simple: God was going to deliver
His people, the Jews, into the hands of the Babylonians. The
Babylonians were going to capture Zedekiah, the king of Judah,
torture and kill him. Jeremiah told them they might as well make
things easier on themselves by surrendering when the time came.
This earned Jeremiah a lot of enemies, eventually landing him in
prison, accused of treason. This is where his cousin came to see
him.
Not much is known about Hanamel, “God is gracious,” the son of
Shallum, Jeremiah’s uncle, and, therefore, Jeremiah's first
cousin. We do not know, from Jeremiah’s report, that Hanamel was
one of the men of Anathoth, Jeremiah’s home town, who conspired
to kill the prophet back in chapters 11 & 12. But Jeremiah had
every reason to be suspicious of Hanamel and to question his
motives. For one thing, the men of Anathoth—mostly Jeremiah’s
relatives—had tried to kill him back in chapters 11 & 12. I
know, if my cousin had tried to kill me, I’d be extremely
suspicious of some shady deal he was now trying to pull me into.
God had revealed to Jeremiah that his cousin was coming and the
purpose of the visit as well. Hanamel was coming to hustle
Jeremiah for some quick cash, selling Jeremiah a plot of land
that, at that time, had tens of thousands of invading troops
parked on it. For another, Hanamel’s price was too low—about ten
bucks. Pocket change. Some traveling money, perhaps. Locked in
prison, Jeremiah couldn’t actually use the land himself, and
with Judah about to fall to the invading Chaldeans, assuming
Jeremiah survived the invasion, there was no guarantee the land
would ever be his again.
Anathoth was a sacerdotal (of priests; priestly) city. Hanamel’s
plot was part of farm lands just outside the city walls [Numbers
35:4 Numbers 35:5] reserved for the tribe of Levi, most
prestigious of the twelve tribes of Israel. The ancestor after
which the tribe was named was considered savage by some, having
slaughtered the male population of an entire city in revenge of
the rape of his sister Dinah [Gen 34:25-31], and the tribe
itself was often tasked to enforce God’s law (for example,
slaughtering the Israelites who’d participated in creating a
pagan god—a golden calf—during their journey through the
wilderness [Exodus 32:28]). The reserved fields outside the
gates were a big deal, protected by Levitical law. They could
only be sold to certain people and under certain conditions.
There were harsh penalties for misuse or wrongful transfer of
this property.
Hanamel quotes the law to Jeremiah, which is what hustlers do
when they are trying to hustle you: they recite The Rules. Soon
as somebody starts telling you things you already know, they’re
setting you up for something. Hanamel explains the Levitical
code to a Levite prophet—that, upon failure of the land’s owner,
the next of kin had the right to redeem the land (Leviticus
25:24, Ruth 4:3-6). This is Hanamel pretty much admitting he was
a screw-up, that he had failed in some way to honor his
responsibility toward the farm. It could also mean Hanamel is
simply acquiescing to the reality of tens of thousands of
Chaldean soldiers parked on it. So he offers this plot of land,
which would be of absolutely no use whatsoever to Jeremiah, to
him for the biblical equivalent of a lotto ticket and a ham
sandwich.
Even more puzzling, Jeremiah—who knows he’s being
hustled—agrees. He not only agrees, but he conducts the
transaction in exacting detail, counting out the money rather
than just telling Cuz to take his word for it. He has the
paperwork drawn out in specific detail, then orders those
records to be preserved. Preserved? For what? Why?
What was he preserving? 40 acres and a mule overrun by an army
of Nazis?
This had to be the worst real estate transaction in history,
Jeremiah buying a piece of land that he couldn’t use. That was
worth nothing. While his city was under siege and, by his own
prophecy, about to be destroyed by an invading army.
Going Broke
When you’re broke, the first thing you lose is your dignity.
Everything you thought you were, everything you valued about
yourself, all gone. You lose it with the first phone call to a
relative or friend asking for a bailout. Now, if these people
are kind, they won’t make a sport of it, a yes or no will do.
Either way the cut is deep, the loss nearly unbearable. It is
both difficult to describe and nearly impossible to share with
anyone because most anyone you might feel such safety as to
share your pain with will surely be on the list of people you’ll
be reaching out to for help. So you suffer in silence as little
pieces of yourself get stripped away. It is a kind of violence,
this emptying of your soul.
Following God requires us to be broken. In its most pure
expression, it all but demands a certain loss of pride and our
dignity often suffers. Jesus was a well-respected teacher with a
huge following, a Joel Osteen of His day. He could have raked in
tons of cash and bought Himself a mansion and a Rolls and gotten
fat off of His followers. Instead, He allowed his enemies, the
Church Folk of His day, to strip Him of everything meaningful.
To humiliate and (seemingly) murder Him.
Following God often if not always demands us to separate
ourselves from our own sense of self. It requires us to be
broke. To be undignified. The reason many of us don’t have money
is God knows what money would do to us. Our relationship with
Him is not at a place where we know His voice when He is
speaking, where we can see the confirmation, or where we will
act upon His calling and in the service of His will. We’ll buy a
Rolex. We’ll take the safe route, to the crowds and the cash.
I, frankly, do not know any pastors who would have bought that
farm. Which is a pretty sad statement. Most of my pastor friends
would have recognized the hustle when they saw it and would have
told Hanamel to hit the bricks. They would have then gone back
to wailing to God for deliverance and begging God to speak, to
move, to act.
And this is the business, the tradition, that we are preserving.
The sheer critical mass of useless dead weight the African
American church drags around with it in the name of tradition is
absolutely staggering. Ninety percent of what we hold dear in
our culture will be burned away, discarded and destroyed because
it has no meaningful value to the Kingdom of Heaven.
I read this quote on somebody’s blog the other day: “Live your
life in such a way that it makes no sense apart from the
existence of God.” Moses, leading the Israelites to certain
death, to a dead-end at the Red Sea. Noah building an ocean
liner in the middle of a desert. Gideon reducing his army from
32,000 to three hundred. John The Baptist preaching in the
woods. All of these men had, to one degree or another, lost
their dignity but gained God’s favor. They were all broke—broken
for God. Doing God’s will is almost never popular. People point
and stare. They whisper. They snicker and mock. And that causes
many of us to either be timid in doing God’s work or to give up
on it.
An Ordinary Guy
Was Jeremiah a man of great faith? No. He was an ordinary guy.
He doubted. He complained. He was reluctant to do God’s will. He
was no different from many of us, subject to human weakness.
There is no record of Jeremiah being a great leader. He was, in
essence, God’s news reporter: he obediently, if reluctantly,
told people what God told him to tell them. He created a
record—what we now know as the Book Of Jeremiah—which is written
out of sequence and is fairly difficult to follow without a
study guide.
But here’s what Jeremiah did right:
He knew the Lord’s voice when He was speaking
This takes time. We can only know the Lord’s voice by spending
time with Him. By walking with Him. By fasting and praying and
staying in His Holy Word.
He received confirmation of prophecy
Hanamel makes his pitch, just like God said he would, and
Jeremiah says in verse 8: Then I knew for sure that the message
I had heard was from the LORD. How do we know a message is from
God? I know people who interpret every sniffle and yawn as a
sign from God. Not every sign is a word from the Lord. Sometimes
a burning bush is just a burning bush. Our inspiration, our
revelation, should be tested. We should wait on God for specific
instructions. We should wait on divine confirmation of the
vision. This may take hours, days, or decades. Some of us may
never receive the confirmation. Some of us may miss the
confirmation because we’ve boxed God in. We are demanding God
move only in a specific way at a specific time. It is vital to
keep our eyes open when God is speaking. He will manifest
Himself in unexpected ways and through unexpected means,
inspiring us to invest in land that is about to be pillaged.
He took action
Christian belief is about action. Not works to earn our way into
heaven, but actions that manifest God’s love and power here on
earth, putting hands and feet to the love of Jesus Christ. It's
not enough to merely believe. Your belief must find meaningful
expression.
James 2:
Dear friends, do you think you'll get
anywhere in this if you learn all the right words but never do
anything? Does merely talking about faith indicate that a person
really has it? 23 The full meaning of “believe” in the Scripture
sentence, “Abraham believed God and was set right with God,”
includes his action. It's that mesh of believing and acting that
got Abraham named “God's friend.” (The Message) 18b I will show
you my faith by what I do. (NIV)
Obedience and Sacrifice
Many if not most popular preachers today get rich off of
promising crowds of seekers happiness and prosperity, but
biblical prophecy warns of terrible things in the end times and
of false prophets preaching what we want to hear (2 Timothy
4:3). God’s promise to us isn’t a life of ease. Jesus said He
did not come to bring peace and prosperity but division and
turmoil (Matthew 10:34). Following Christ involves risk. Risk to
your career, risk to your social life, risk to your health and
safety. To your finances. In Jeremiah’s specific case, God’s
promise included suffering and death, including, perhaps, his
own. But he remained faithful.
There can be no obedience without sacrifice. And the more
genuine the act of obedience is, the less certain we are of its
outcome. In its most pure manifestation, faith works most
efficiently when we understand it the least. When we make our
bed in a burning house. When Jeremiah makes a real estate deal
for land he may never see. Jeremiah believed God, believed God’s
prophecy—that Israel would ultimately be restored. Buying the
farm was an act of obedience but also an act of faith. It was a
message of inspiration to the people of Judah. By preserving the
documents for future generations, Jeremiah’s act of faith and
obedience was meant to inspire future generations as well.
The children of Israel were to be taken and held captive for
seven decades. Seven decades. Jeremiah is told to buy the land
as a sign that God will restore the city and society—even though
Jeremiah himself will not live to see it.
Years ago, I told a pastor friend who was planting a new church
that he should build his ministry so that it could go on without
him. Too often we pastors think only about what we can see and
use and, in many cases, benefit from today. But God exists
beyond time. God created time and, therefore, can move in and
out of time as He so chooses. God inspires me to get up early
and work hard on this online ministry, which is all but
completely ignored by churches here in Ourtown. I suspect this
archive may continue to exist in relative obscurity (here, at
least) until I am dead. That these words won’t find a real
audience until I am long gone and somebody discovers these
archives and finds a useful purpose for them.
Our obedience to God will not always produce fruit we can
immediately see or that will have immediate impact on our
circumstances. Thus, our obedience to God must not be
conditioned upon near-term results but simple faithfulness to
His promise. Following God is often an act of defiance. In the
face of sickness or poverty, job loss, eviction and
homelessness—to have the courage to do something others might
see as foolish can be an act of defiance,
The Promise
Who are we inspiring? What are we preserving? I don’t see a lot
of time capsules—or clay pots—in our African American
experience. What I see are young people being ignored or
marginalized, leaving the church in huge waves. What I see are
black parents asleep at the switch, allowing popular urban black
culture to infest our youth with corrupt values and a
glorification of underachievement.
What are we preserving? In a time of war, with terrorism both
foreign and domestic on the rise, an uncertain economy, people
losing their homes and losing their minds, what are we investing
in? What seemingly vain gesture are we making to inspire and
lift hearts and invest in our future? How many of us would have
bought that farm?
God has led us through troubled times before, and the bible
tells us there are troubled times ahead. But so is peace. And
prosperity. That’s His promise. And it’s worth betting on.
Building only for ourselves, investing only in things we can see
and benefit from, is intrinsically selfish. Obeying God means
denying self. We don’t always understand His plan, but we
shouldn’t need to. Our faith needs to find expression. Our
investment should be in His promise.
Christopher J. Priest
1 August 2010
editor@praisenet.org
TOP OF PAGE
