A Field of Dreams

Text: Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-13

Election season is upon us and with it comes the constant political rhetoric of “happily ever after.” Like the prince waking Snow White with a kiss, hapless hobbits defeating the deathly forces of Mount Doom, Aslan conquering the evil queen of Narnia, “happily ever after” tales suggest that no matter what the current circumstances that, almost magically, good will prevail against the strongest odds. And in all “happily ever after” tales, it is always clear who is good and who is not.

I mentioned election season, because politicians are famous for telling “happily ever after” tales. This rhetoric is not unique to one party or region of the country or even to the age of the politician. Most political leaders employ some version of this promise: “Vote for me and happily ever after days will soon arrive.”

Politics are easy targets but pastors also often traffic in telling “happily ever after” tales. I can remember vividly the pressure I felt as a pastor in Alexandria just after 9/11. As I and other area pastors watched the smoke rise over the Pentagon, we felt a tremendous pressure to get aboard the “happily ever after” train, to preach that 9/11 was a signal to America to become god-fearing again and to bring godless infidels to their knees; it was us or them, and it was time to return an eye for an eye and then some, time to create our own “happily ever after” reality. 

Jeremiah was well acquainted with “happily ever after” tales. Had he not been hounded by God, I suspect Jeremiah would have gladly joined the “happily ever after” singers in Judah. As Chapter 32 opens, King Zedekiah of Judah has thrown Jeremiah in the slammer because this stubborn prophet just won’t get on the “happily ever after” train. All the other TV preachers in the land are hailing Zedekiah for his courageous faith – a godly King if there ever was one, a throw back to the days when kings were kings!

While the puppet preachers rave about good King Zedekiah, Jeremiah paints a different picture. Judah, says the gloomy prophet, is about to collapse under the weight of Babylon’s power and Judah’s sin. Jeremiah dares to tell the king that the day of kings in Judah is almost over. It should come as no surprise that King Zedekiah does not receive that message gladly. He calls Jeremiah a traitor for daring to suggest that God’s chosen people will fall at the hands of garish goyim from Babylon. 

In fairness to Zedekiah, Jeremiah is like one of those old LPs that is so scratched that it repeats in the same place. Judah, says Jeremiah, has forgotten that election by God means more than diving for more dollars; it means fairly distributing those dollars among widows and orphans and the poor. The people of Judah have forgotten that they are descendents of beaten and forlorn slaves, so they can never neglect to provide justice for the alien, the immigrant, the dispossessed. They have forgotten that they were chosen to bring blessings to all the earth, so they cannot satisfy themselves with blessed isolationism. Jeremiah sounds shrill over against the sweet “happily ever after” nothings being preached in pulpits throughout his land.  

Today’s text begins when Hanamel arrives for a family prison visit. He has come bringing an offer that cousin Jeremiah can’t refuse. He offers to sell his cellmate cousin a piece of hometown property that is about to be torched by Babylon. With family like this, who needs enemies?! No doubt to his great surprise, Jeremiah hears a voice from God, saying: “BUY!”  

Baruch, Jeremiah’s friendly scribe, is compelled to explain Jeremiah’s odd purchase. He writes: “Thus 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. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”    

At first glance, it looks like Zedekiah has finally convinced this reluctant, imprisoned prophet to sign onto Judah’s “happily ever after” story. Not a chance. God has not gone soft on Judah’s sin, says Jeremiah. “God’s refining judgment is upon us; it’s time to pack our bags, withdraw our IRAs, and make sure that we have a couple good pairs of walking shoes,” one to wear on the road to captivity and one to wear when God leads us back home. “Jeremiah’s purchase of property,” writes Patrick Miller, “is a down payment on the future, a foretaste of the promise, but one that takes place in the midst of the reality of judgment” (Patrick Miller, The Book of Jeremiah, The New Interpreter’s Bible, p. 820).

Not long before he would be hung by the Nazis, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this note 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 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. I fear that Christians who venture to stand on earth on only one leg will stand in heaven on only one leg too” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer and M. von Wedermeyer, Love Letters from Cell 92, 1943-1945, pp. 48-49).

I love Bonhoeffer’s image of Christians standing on one leg. I immediately think of one of the few living creature that can sustain such a stance. Not only does an ostrich stand for long stretches on one leg, but it also buries its head in the sand. “Buy this field of dreams,” was God’s word to Jeremiah to stand on two feet, get his head out of sand, reject his colleagues’ “happily ever after” tales, and trust in God’s irrepressible future.

Archbishop Desmund Tutu tells this story about buying when everyone else was selling: “during the darkest days of apartheid I used to say to P.W. Botha, the president of South Africa, that we had already won, and I invited him and other white South Africans to join the winning side. All the ‘objective’ facts were against us – the pass laws, the massacres, the murder of political activists – but my confidence was not in the present circumstances but in . . . God . . . who cares about right and wrong . . . It was these higher laws that convinced me that our peaceful struggle would topple the immoral laws of apartheid” (Desmund Tutu, A Vision of Hope for Our Time, p. 2). 

When some of you saw the title of this sermon, no doubt some are old enough to remember Kevin Costner and the late James Earl Jones looking out over a mythical field of dreams, one where great baseball players, living and dead, would come together to play the game they love. That is not the kind of field that God calls Jeremiah to purchase. There is nothing mythical about this transaction. Even as a symbolic act, Jeremiah buys real land, signs real deeds, registers real documents, engages in real hope for the future of the land and for his people to live on that land, though nothing around him warrants that hope.

  Jeremiah is labeled a traitor and a blasphemer for not buying into the “happily ever after” tale being told by the preachers and politicians of his day.  Many believers today still suffer when they decline to buy the “happily ever after” swampland of tales being sold by preachers, pundits, and politicians and choose instead to buy a field of God’s dreams. It may be a field of truth, where you and I dare to dispute the “happily ever after” tales being invented by those running for office. It may be a field of justice, where you and I insist that every last one of us is subject to the laws of the land and the laws of our God. It may be a field of mercy, where you and I reject “happily ever after” tales of retaliation, revenge, and violence. 

At the end of the first century of the Common Era, facing the terror of Emperor Domitian, fearing the collapse of Christianity in its infancy, God led John of Patmos to buy a field of dreams. God sent John a vision of a throne, but on it was not the residing emperor of Rome and the message from the throne was not another Roman “happily ever after” tale. Says John, “I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: ‘See the home of God is among mortals.  God will dwell with them as their God; they will be God’s people, and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more . . . the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.”  (Rev. 21:3-5)

With fire about to engulf his beloved land, God tells Jeremiah to buy “a field of dreams.” Marooned on a prison island, God tells John to buy, “a field of dreams.” Mired in the quicksand of apartheid, God tells Tutu to buy “a field of dreams.” Those who invest in the risky property of Gethsemane know that there is but one “happily ever after” land and we don’t drive there like we drive down to Orlando and Disneyworld. The road to God’s “happily ever after” land always routes us through the state of justice-making and the back roads of forgiveness before we finally arrive at God’s redemptive, grace-filled field of dreams. 

Knowing that, I would suggest that it is time, high time, to dismiss the “happily ever after” tales to which we cling so tightly. It is time, high time, to cling tightly to God’s “happily ever after” promise of justice, call to mercy, and pledge to love. And so, it is time, high time, to buy a field of God’sdreams.

                                             AMEN