A Buyer’s Market
September 30, 2007
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15; Luke 16:19-31
If you are looking to the Bible this morning for practical economic advice I imagine you’re now ready to run screaming from the room. Jesus’ disturbing little story in Luke’s gospel suggests that the cultural value of affluence runs fundamentally counter to the kingdom value of compassion, and Jeremiah … well, he’s certainly not going to put the profit in prophet.
Perhaps Jeremiah was simply buying low with the expectation of selling high, for surely he must have got a bargain on this land. Jerusalem was besieged – who would be buying property? Supply must have far outstripped demand, so the price must have been right.
On the other hand, Jeremiah was imprisoned. He could not have had much expectation of enjoying a profit. But he goes ahead with the transaction anyway.
Why?
Well, at the risk of your continued groans, one might say it was because Jeremiah was less interested in making a profit on the land than in making a prophetic stand.
Show me your checkbook and I will show you your values; the way we spend our time is the way we spend our lives. A pair of truisms at the heart of this morning’s readings.
The rich man in Jesus’ story spent his life making money. He was probably a highly regarded member of the community, an upstanding citizen, a member of all the right clubs and social organizations; after all, he wore the purple robes of royalty. He may well have contributed to charities – the story doesn’t say – and he probably was a member of the local congregation – after all, he calls out to father Abraham so he’s clearly one of the children of Abraham.
But somewhere along the line he misunderstood what that identity means, and confused knowing the facts of faith with living a life of faith. If he did contribute to charity, he did so without doing justice, for clearly he never identified with the suffering of the poor, the outcast and the marginalized. Such identification is the essence of justice; missing it, he missed the kingdom – he became, himself, an exile.
We North American Christians ought to hear a prophetic and disturbing word in this parable. We ought to feel a certain tension and agitation as first world Christians in a world of often desperate poverty. We ought to respond in fear and trembling to a story that, as Walter Wink puts it, “demonstrates the impossibility of salvation for those who promote a situation which causes inequities and those who gorge themselves on the illicit fruits of their injustice.”
This story reminds us, as the word from Paul in the Timothy passage we did not read this morning puts it, that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. When we listen to these texts, we ought to find our very lives in the balance.
So where is the good news this morning? Is there no balm in Gilead to heal the souls of those of us made sin-sick by affluenza?
There is. It comes from the prophet of the exile, not in word but in deed. When all of the trustworthy economic indicators say “sell,” or, at the very least, “sit this market out,” Jeremiah buys. He invests, when every market index says withdraw. He risks his treasure for the sake of his vision.
Why? Was it just that Jeremiah was a lousy businessman? Just that he had no common sense? Just because he hoped for some pie-in-the-sky salvation in the by and by?
No!
Jeremiah invested because he trusted the imagination of God past the limited vision of the market and the empire. Jeremiah trusted that there was a future promised by God in which “houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”
In other words, Jeremiah trusted in the Godly vision of an emerging economy of abundance, of enough for everyone. Jeremiah trusted in the vision of a commonwealth of the beloved.
He looked around himself and where others saw only a barren and desolate land, he imagined vineyards on the hillsides of Samaria; where others heard only “lamentation and bitter weeping,” Jeremiah heard the music of the dance in which young women would rejoice; where others felt only the sting of broken promises, Jeremiah announced the hope of a new covenant.
Now you may say, and rightly so, that Jeremiah did not live to see his vision fulfilled. He did not live to see that day come when the covenant was cut and the law of the Lord carved indelibly into the hearts of the people. He did not put the capstone on the beloved community he envisioned, nor did he see the arc of the moral universe touch down in a land of unceasing justice.
But he understood something fundamental that we too often miss: we are not called to be successful, we are called to be faithful and to trust the ultimate outcome to God. We are called to spend our time faithfully, to invest our treasure faithfully.
That is an incredibly difficult conceptual leap for most of us to take. We are used to being judged according to achievements, payoffs and outcomes. We belittle the notion of getting “A’s for effort.” We get paid for results.
We grow accustomed to believing that the results are up to us, and thus we grow less and less faithful, and trust less and less in any divine purpose for our lives.
We know that the wrong is oft so strong, but we’re not at all certain that God is the ruler yet. We know that truth stumbles mightily in the public square but we do not really believe that we shall know the truth and be set free. We know that the scales of justice are out of balance, but we do not trust that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.
And we despair because all of these huge challenges, that play out in our individual lives and in the life of the world, are beyond our feeble capacity to set right.
It takes an act of great selflessness to acknowledge that we are called to faith not success. It takes an act of great faithfulness to embrace this truth.
It takes great faithfulness because it requires our willingness to work for a future that lies beyond our own time. More than anything else he may have done or left undone, this was the tragic error and great sin of the rich man in Jesus’ story. He had no capacity to see beyond his own desires for he was blinded by his own wealth. He could not build up for the sake of anything other than his own narrow interests.
We are building something here, at Clarendon, for the long run. Its foundation was laid before we were born. It has been nurtured by faithful folks through the long years with all kinds of ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies, births and deaths and rebirths.
Through it all, God’s call and claim on this community has continuously emerged in and through the lives of faithful servants. In the long run God’s will will be done here, and I believe I can draw you a picture of what that is going to look like.
Imagine, if you will, a community of loving and joyful service gathering in numbers too great to ignore to worship God in this place.
Imagine, if you can, a multigenerational community of teachers and leaders and families of all kinds gathered to study and learn the stories of God’s active presence in the lives of faithful people throughout history.
Imagine, if you are able, a community of faithful seekers practicing together the ways of discerning God’s call and claim on each of our lives.
And then imagine, if you dare, a community living out that call and claim day by day in the making of peace, the doing of justice, the everyday passionate practice of compassion.
Each one of these plots is available, for sale, if you will, right now. It may seem to some that we are too small – that we are besieged by trends and numbers and budget problems and an old building and even a culture of disbelief. But I say to you, now is not the time to sell off the assets and weather the storm; now is the time for bold and faithful action.
Now I do not know the communicator’s art of making people feel as if I am speaking directly to them, so let me simply say it plain: I am speaking directly to you.
We have been given a great opportunity and a great commission. We have made covenant promises.
We have promised to nurture our children; so you are called today to teach Sunday School; don’t worry if you feel scared or unprepared, there are folks here who will help.
We have promised to bind one another up; so you are called today to participate in the women’s group, in the dinner groups, or in the other community-building opportunities that will be growing in the days to come; don’t worry if you feel shy or anxious about such things, there are folks here who will make you feel at home.
We have promised to do justice; so you are called today to join More Light Presbyterians – contribute money and time to building a church as generous and just as the God we worship. Don’t worry if you feel like you don’t know enough to help, there are folks here who will walk with you.
We have promised to make peace; so you are called today to witness for the shalom that is God’s desire for all creation. Don’t worry if you feel like you cannot possibly make a difference. After all, we are called to witness, not to success and there are folks here who will witness with you.
For, in the long run, God’s desires will be made flesh and all will experience it.
Now you may say, “but David, in the long run we’ll all be dead.” And I’ll say to you, “yes, that’s right. But it’s not about us, is it.”
It’s about God. It is our deep joy to be about God’s business – to be faithful – to participate in the bending of the arc toward justice. It is not ours to determine when the kingdom comes. Our lives can be glorious simply for the sake of the effort.
Was Martin Luther King’s life less glorious because he did not live to see the day when an African-American would become a serious presidential candidate? Was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life less filled with the spirit of God because he did not live to see the end of the Nazis? Was Jesus’ life worth less because he never saw his 40th year, he never saw his vision fulfilled, he never saw the kingdom come?
Was Jeremiah’s prophetic voice silenced because he never built upon the land he bought?
We cannot … we must not … we will not turn away from the task that is before us simply because we have not yet fulfilled the mission to which we have been called. We cannot, we must not and we will not be blinded by a narrow self-interest and paralyzed by the anxious present moment. We will not allow a chasm to grow between ourselves and all of those with whom we are called to ministry; we will not suffer a chasm to grow between ourselves and God.
We have been called – to be repairers of the breach and restorers of the city’s streets to live in. That is our life. That is our witness. Into God’s hands we commit ourselves; into God’s spirit we entrust our futures. Amen.
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15; Luke 16:19-31
If you are looking to the Bible this morning for practical economic advice I imagine you’re now ready to run screaming from the room. Jesus’ disturbing little story in Luke’s gospel suggests that the cultural value of affluence runs fundamentally counter to the kingdom value of compassion, and Jeremiah … well, he’s certainly not going to put the profit in prophet.
Perhaps Jeremiah was simply buying low with the expectation of selling high, for surely he must have got a bargain on this land. Jerusalem was besieged – who would be buying property? Supply must have far outstripped demand, so the price must have been right.
On the other hand, Jeremiah was imprisoned. He could not have had much expectation of enjoying a profit. But he goes ahead with the transaction anyway.
Why?
Well, at the risk of your continued groans, one might say it was because Jeremiah was less interested in making a profit on the land than in making a prophetic stand.
Show me your checkbook and I will show you your values; the way we spend our time is the way we spend our lives. A pair of truisms at the heart of this morning’s readings.
The rich man in Jesus’ story spent his life making money. He was probably a highly regarded member of the community, an upstanding citizen, a member of all the right clubs and social organizations; after all, he wore the purple robes of royalty. He may well have contributed to charities – the story doesn’t say – and he probably was a member of the local congregation – after all, he calls out to father Abraham so he’s clearly one of the children of Abraham.
But somewhere along the line he misunderstood what that identity means, and confused knowing the facts of faith with living a life of faith. If he did contribute to charity, he did so without doing justice, for clearly he never identified with the suffering of the poor, the outcast and the marginalized. Such identification is the essence of justice; missing it, he missed the kingdom – he became, himself, an exile.
We North American Christians ought to hear a prophetic and disturbing word in this parable. We ought to feel a certain tension and agitation as first world Christians in a world of often desperate poverty. We ought to respond in fear and trembling to a story that, as Walter Wink puts it, “demonstrates the impossibility of salvation for those who promote a situation which causes inequities and those who gorge themselves on the illicit fruits of their injustice.”
This story reminds us, as the word from Paul in the Timothy passage we did not read this morning puts it, that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. When we listen to these texts, we ought to find our very lives in the balance.
So where is the good news this morning? Is there no balm in Gilead to heal the souls of those of us made sin-sick by affluenza?
There is. It comes from the prophet of the exile, not in word but in deed. When all of the trustworthy economic indicators say “sell,” or, at the very least, “sit this market out,” Jeremiah buys. He invests, when every market index says withdraw. He risks his treasure for the sake of his vision.
Why? Was it just that Jeremiah was a lousy businessman? Just that he had no common sense? Just because he hoped for some pie-in-the-sky salvation in the by and by?
No!
Jeremiah invested because he trusted the imagination of God past the limited vision of the market and the empire. Jeremiah trusted that there was a future promised by God in which “houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”
In other words, Jeremiah trusted in the Godly vision of an emerging economy of abundance, of enough for everyone. Jeremiah trusted in the vision of a commonwealth of the beloved.
He looked around himself and where others saw only a barren and desolate land, he imagined vineyards on the hillsides of Samaria; where others heard only “lamentation and bitter weeping,” Jeremiah heard the music of the dance in which young women would rejoice; where others felt only the sting of broken promises, Jeremiah announced the hope of a new covenant.
Now you may say, and rightly so, that Jeremiah did not live to see his vision fulfilled. He did not live to see that day come when the covenant was cut and the law of the Lord carved indelibly into the hearts of the people. He did not put the capstone on the beloved community he envisioned, nor did he see the arc of the moral universe touch down in a land of unceasing justice.
But he understood something fundamental that we too often miss: we are not called to be successful, we are called to be faithful and to trust the ultimate outcome to God. We are called to spend our time faithfully, to invest our treasure faithfully.
That is an incredibly difficult conceptual leap for most of us to take. We are used to being judged according to achievements, payoffs and outcomes. We belittle the notion of getting “A’s for effort.” We get paid for results.
We grow accustomed to believing that the results are up to us, and thus we grow less and less faithful, and trust less and less in any divine purpose for our lives.
We know that the wrong is oft so strong, but we’re not at all certain that God is the ruler yet. We know that truth stumbles mightily in the public square but we do not really believe that we shall know the truth and be set free. We know that the scales of justice are out of balance, but we do not trust that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.
And we despair because all of these huge challenges, that play out in our individual lives and in the life of the world, are beyond our feeble capacity to set right.
It takes an act of great selflessness to acknowledge that we are called to faith not success. It takes an act of great faithfulness to embrace this truth.
It takes great faithfulness because it requires our willingness to work for a future that lies beyond our own time. More than anything else he may have done or left undone, this was the tragic error and great sin of the rich man in Jesus’ story. He had no capacity to see beyond his own desires for he was blinded by his own wealth. He could not build up for the sake of anything other than his own narrow interests.
We are building something here, at Clarendon, for the long run. Its foundation was laid before we were born. It has been nurtured by faithful folks through the long years with all kinds of ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies, births and deaths and rebirths.
Through it all, God’s call and claim on this community has continuously emerged in and through the lives of faithful servants. In the long run God’s will will be done here, and I believe I can draw you a picture of what that is going to look like.
Imagine, if you will, a community of loving and joyful service gathering in numbers too great to ignore to worship God in this place.
Imagine, if you can, a multigenerational community of teachers and leaders and families of all kinds gathered to study and learn the stories of God’s active presence in the lives of faithful people throughout history.
Imagine, if you are able, a community of faithful seekers practicing together the ways of discerning God’s call and claim on each of our lives.
And then imagine, if you dare, a community living out that call and claim day by day in the making of peace, the doing of justice, the everyday passionate practice of compassion.
Each one of these plots is available, for sale, if you will, right now. It may seem to some that we are too small – that we are besieged by trends and numbers and budget problems and an old building and even a culture of disbelief. But I say to you, now is not the time to sell off the assets and weather the storm; now is the time for bold and faithful action.
Now I do not know the communicator’s art of making people feel as if I am speaking directly to them, so let me simply say it plain: I am speaking directly to you.
We have been given a great opportunity and a great commission. We have made covenant promises.
We have promised to nurture our children; so you are called today to teach Sunday School; don’t worry if you feel scared or unprepared, there are folks here who will help.
We have promised to bind one another up; so you are called today to participate in the women’s group, in the dinner groups, or in the other community-building opportunities that will be growing in the days to come; don’t worry if you feel shy or anxious about such things, there are folks here who will make you feel at home.
We have promised to do justice; so you are called today to join More Light Presbyterians – contribute money and time to building a church as generous and just as the God we worship. Don’t worry if you feel like you don’t know enough to help, there are folks here who will walk with you.
We have promised to make peace; so you are called today to witness for the shalom that is God’s desire for all creation. Don’t worry if you feel like you cannot possibly make a difference. After all, we are called to witness, not to success and there are folks here who will witness with you.
For, in the long run, God’s desires will be made flesh and all will experience it.
Now you may say, “but David, in the long run we’ll all be dead.” And I’ll say to you, “yes, that’s right. But it’s not about us, is it.”
It’s about God. It is our deep joy to be about God’s business – to be faithful – to participate in the bending of the arc toward justice. It is not ours to determine when the kingdom comes. Our lives can be glorious simply for the sake of the effort.
Was Martin Luther King’s life less glorious because he did not live to see the day when an African-American would become a serious presidential candidate? Was Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life less filled with the spirit of God because he did not live to see the end of the Nazis? Was Jesus’ life worth less because he never saw his 40th year, he never saw his vision fulfilled, he never saw the kingdom come?
Was Jeremiah’s prophetic voice silenced because he never built upon the land he bought?
We cannot … we must not … we will not turn away from the task that is before us simply because we have not yet fulfilled the mission to which we have been called. We cannot, we must not and we will not be blinded by a narrow self-interest and paralyzed by the anxious present moment. We will not allow a chasm to grow between ourselves and all of those with whom we are called to ministry; we will not suffer a chasm to grow between ourselves and God.
We have been called – to be repairers of the breach and restorers of the city’s streets to live in. That is our life. That is our witness. Into God’s hands we commit ourselves; into God’s spirit we entrust our futures. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
11:13 AM
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