For families this week

Worship for October 16, 2022

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Hespeler, 9 October 2022 © Scott McAndless – Thanksgiving Sunday
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7, Psalm 66:1-12, 2 Timothy 2:8-15, Luke 17:11-19 (Click to read)

I was a Samaritan – a Samaritan who lived in a narrow strip of land that was a kind of cultural no man’s land that ran along the border between Galilee and Samaria. Most of the people who lived there were Judeans who had been brought in to displace us centuries ago. But my family had somehow managed to remain there.

And, surrounded by a sea of Jewish people, we did what we could to hold onto our Samaritan culture and faith. We worshiped the God of Israel in our own way on Mount Gerizim. We followed our own laws according to our own scriptures that we also believed came to us from Moses.

A Despised People

But the Judeans didn’t care about any of that. They despised us, called us infidels and accused us of strange practices. They would not speak to us, and they certainly wouldn’t do things like share meals with us. So, I was pretty much used to being considered an outcast by most of the people I met from my youth.

And then you start to hypercorrect. You go out of your way to be deferential and polite to the people who are constantly criticizing you. You are always saying please and thank you and praising people who have done little more than be slightly civil to you. It can be exhausting. And worst of all, no matter how much you do it, you know that you will never belong. That was the life I was used to. And then things got so much worse.

Doubly Outcast

One day my entire world fell apart. I woke up to discover strange blotches on my skin. They itched and they burned and nothing I could do would make them go away. My family looked upon me with horror and cried out that I was a leper.

Once that had been settled, everybody knew what came next. Before the sun had set, I had been expelled from my home and the small Samaritan village where we lived. From now on, everyone who saw me would recoil with fear. Anyone who approached me, I was required to call out to them, to announce that I was unclean and that they must shun me. I was expected to live outside of all society. If I was lucky, I might be able to stay alive by begging, but, honestly, few people seemed to care whether I lived or died.

A New Community

And then, there was a miracle of sorts. I wandered around a fair bit in those days and, in my wandering, I passed through the outskirts of one of the larger towns in the region. People like me tended to congregate in the graveyards and garbage dumps that surrounded such places. And that was where I came upon the others. There were nine of them – men and women, old and young. Each one was suffering from a skin condition of some sort. Somehow, in the common experience of being cast out, they had discovered that the things that had once divided them – differences in wealth, status, age and even gender – no longer mattered nearly as much. Abandoned by everyone else, they had found a community with each other.

But even as I looked at them, it seemed to me impossible that there could be a place in such a group for me. They all had one thing, apart from their disease, in common. They were all Judeans and that had to be more important than any bond they might feel because of their shared condition. I felt certain that my Samaritaness was one thing that they would be simply unable to overlook. So, I turned and prepared to go on my way.

But they called out to me. When I explained who I was and where I came from, they said that it didn’t matter. They had all been rejected by the people around them. None of them belonged anywhere. But, in that situation, they had all found something. They had found each other, and they now had a community. If I was willing, there was a place in it even for a Samaritan like me. And so I joined them.

The Healer from Nazareth

One day several weeks later, one of our group came back to wake the rest early in the morning as we slept on the outskirts of a village. He had been restless and unable to sleep as his hives had been particularly bothering him of late. He rose in the early darkness and went down to the well hoping that he could bathe his sores before anyone came out of town to chase him away.

But the space around the well was not empty as he had hoped. Several men had gathered there early and were preparing for their day as they talked excitedly among themselves. The leper drew as near as he dared, hiding behind bushes so as not to be seen. And so, he had heard what it was they were so excited about.

“It is the healer,” he announced to us. “It is that man from Nazareth who has been seen everywhere in recent months performing wonders and miraculous healings. It is said that he is going to pass through this region this very day. My friends, we have to speak to him. They say he is compassionate and caring even to people like us. I believe that if anyone can make us clean, it is him.”

Not all of us shared the same enthusiasm as our brother leper. I myself felt particularly doubtful. Oh, I did not doubt that such a man could do something for people in our situation, but a lifetime of people refusing to do anything for me because of who I was had left me skeptical that he would. But we had all formed a pact. Where one went, we all went together. And I was not about to break the only solidarity I had ever found in my life. We decided that we would go and beg this man for help before he entered the nearby village.

Jesus’ Strange Response

And so we found him. As he approached the village, we began to call out together, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” It was the last thing we would ever do in unison. He looked up and he saw us. And when he did, he said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”

Now, you’re probably wondering, like I did, what that was supposed to mean. To my ear it almost sounded as if he was brushing us off. According to the Jewish law, after all, it fell to the priests to examine anyone who claimed that their skin condition had healed up and determine whether it was true or not. So, was Jesus simply saying that it wasn’t up to him to say whether we were clean or not – that there was nothing that he could do?

So it seemed to me. And I was hardly even disappointed as I turned away with the others. But, before we had gone very far at all, something began to happen. One by one, my fellow lepers began to shout out. One declared that his itching had stopped. Another said that the scales on her arms had fallen away, and the skin underneath looked pink and smooth. Soon the truth was inescapable to all of us – it seemed, somehow, that we were clean!

Excluded Again

As they realized this, all of the others began to speak together about what they were to do next. What Jesus had said was true. They needed to be seen by a priest before they could return to their families and villages and resume their lives. They began to talk excitedly together about making the trip all the way to Jerusalem.

But as soon as they began to speak practically about their journey, I felt a familiar sinking feeling in my stomach. My skin might have felt like that of a newborn baby, but I felt as if I was dying inside. For, as they spoke of the journey, they simply took it for granted that they would not take the shortest route because that would mean passing through Samaria and no good Judean would ever think of associating with Samaritans.

They didn’t even realize that they were doing it. All of a sudden, now that the one thing that the ten of us had had in common was gone, it was as if I no longer existed. I tried to tell myself that it didn’t matter. I mean, there was no way that I could go with them to see a Judean priest in Jerusalem anyways. I would not have been welcome there. But I will tell you something. It really hurt and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more alone than I did as I watched them head off on their journey without even realizing that they had left me behind. I looked around and wondered what I was supposed to do now.

The Leper Returns

Just a few minutes after Jesus enters the village – even as the local crowd is beginning to form – everyone is surprised to see a man run through the gate shouting praise to God at the top of his voice. As he approaches Jesus, he throws himself to the ground in an extreme display of gratitude. It is one of the lepers who had accosted Jesus earlier.

And when Jesus sees him, he cannot help but ask the obvious question. “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Because it is plain to everyone at this point what it is that sets this man apart from his fellows other than his gratitude. They can tell that he is a Samaritan. Don’t ask me how. Bigots always find a way. And once the bigoted mode of thinking has been engaged, you can know absolutely that people are going to find some way to complain about how the outsider group behaves.

Judgement

So, they look at this individual who is an outsider for two reasons. He is a leper and he is a Samaritan. And they note that he is the only one out of his group of lepers who has done what they consider to be the right thing and said thank you to Jesus. But, of course, they are not about to praise a Samaritan for doing the right thing, that goes against all logic of bigotry. And so, they choose, instead, to target the other outsider group: lepers.

“Ah, isn’t that typical. These lepers are constantly bothering us with their needs and disrupting our lives with their sickness and uncleanness. And here somebody does something nice for them and out of ten, only one can even bother to come back and say thank you.”

Jesus’ Response

But I would just like you to note that Jesus’ response to this man was a little bit different. First of all, Jesus did not even remark that he was the only one to say thank you. I’m not sure that Jesus really cared about being thanked. What he did notice, however, was that this one, the outsider, the Samaritan, was the only one who knew how to give proper glory to God. And when he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well,” he was definitely doing more than brushing him off.

He was recognizing that he was different from the others, that he couldn’t go off and show himself to a priest in Jerusalem. And so, Jesus gave him an extraordinary gift, Jesus stood in the place of the priest and declared him clean right there. But more than clean, he declared him acceptable, whole and included and that was something that that man had rarely experienced in his life.

How we Talk about Thanksgiving

This is Thanksgiving Day, and it is, in many ways a celebration of the act of Thanksgiving. Bringing an attitude of gratefulness to our lives is a very good thing. It can help to change so much about our approach to life in positive ways. And we do have much to be thankful for.

But I’ve got to tell you something. Many of the discussions I hear about thankfulness these days are not quite as affirming as that. Most of the time, when I hear people talk about thankfulness, they are complaining. They are complaining about how certain people are not thankful in the ways that they think they should be.

The groups that people complain about vary, of course. Sometimes it’s young people who don’t say thank you in the right way. Sometimes it is people in society who are receiving some sort of help or assistance. Sometimes it is certain racial groups or minority groups who people criticize for complaining about how they have been treated. So often our discussion about thankfulness is all about how we think that certain people just aren’t good enough at it.

More than Thankful

And I think that this story in the gospel can help us to unpack that a bit. It is a story of a double outsider – a leper who also happens to be a Samaritan. And people have tended to turn it into a reason to complain about people who are not sufficiently thankful. I’m convinced Jesus didn’t see that man that way. Jesus simply celebrated him for who he was and how he gave praise to God.

The thankfulness that that man exercised; Jesus didn’t need it. It was only for the benefit of the man who experienced gratitude. I hope you can celebrate gratitude yourself this Thanksgiving. But if you encounter people whose gratitude is not exactly what you expected or not expressed in the way you are accustomed to, that really has nothing to do with you. It might be their loss. But if you choose to treat people like Jesus did, take them as they are and celebrate whatever they have to offer, I think you can experience something wonderful both for yourself and for them this Thanksgiving.

For families this week

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Hespeler, 2 October 2022 © Scott McAndless – Baptism, Communion
Judges 16:4-22, Psalm 37:1-9, 2 Timothy 1:1-14, Luke 17:5-10 (click to read)

Matthew and Venessa, you have shared a lovely gift with us today. You have invited us, as a church, into this very important and significant celebration of your family. Most of all, you have shared your beautiful daughter with us and introduced her into the life of this church. She is a beautiful girl, and she has a beautiful name.

I was a little bit curious about her name, Delilah, and just how popular the name has become over the last decade or so. Did you know, for example, that back in the 1980s and ‘90s the name Delilah was very rarely chosen for girls and that remained true right up until about 2007. Then it suddenly boomed in 2008. I’ll get to why that happened in a bit, first I want to acknowledge why it didn’t take off any sooner.

Delilah is a biblical name. It is also a very beautiful name that means delicate and so seems rather fitting for a little girl. But it was unpopular for a long time. And I’ll tell you why; it suffered from the bad girls of the Bible syndrome. Like a few other women in the Bible – women like Jezebel or Salome – she may have had a beautiful name, but it was overtaken by some of the disturbing events of her life.

Delilah’s Bad Rap

Delilah is credited, in the Book of Judges, with getting the Israelite hero, Samson, captured by his enemies, the Philistines. But it is not just the capture that made her infamous, it was the way that she pulled it off. The traditional understanding was that she used her feminine wiles on him which made her almost the perfect example of the extremely sexist (and I would say offensive) trope of the beautiful woman who tempts good men down evil paths.

So, I guess, parents hesitated to name their daughters Delilah because they didn’t want them to turn out to be that kind of woman which is pretty silly. First of all, the name you give your child does not predetermine what kind of person they will turn out to be. But, even more importantly, it was based on a sexist stereotype of a woman rather than the actual woman who appears in the Bible.

Samson and Delilah

So, let me tell you a few things about the biblical Delilah. We are told, first of all, that Samson “fell in love” with her. And, sure, that sounds very nice and romantic, doesn’t it? Sounds like the beginning of a love story. That is until you take a quick look at Samson’s story up until this point. He has already been married once. It was to a woman who he saw one day and said to his father, and I quote, “Get her for me, because she pleases me.” (Judges 14:3) And then he threw a tantrum until he got what he wanted.

So, this tells me that Samson is not really a man who has a mature attitude towards women. He apparently thinks of them as pretty playthings that he wants to possess. And we certainly see that play out in his first marriage when he loses interest in his wife and abandons her, at least until it is convenient for him to go and look for her again.

So that is Samson’s history with women. You will perhaps forgive me if I am a little doubtful about his deep and abiding feelings towards Delilah when he “falls in love with her.” But worse, that is all that we are told about Samson and Delilah’s relationship. That he fell in love with her. Whether she felt the same or whether she just felt as if she had no choice but to give in to this big strong guy who had a tendency to throw tantrums, we are not told.

But my impression is that there was not really a mature, mutually loving and affirming relationship between these two people. Delilah appears, above all, to have been pushed into what is not a particularly healthy relationship.

Delilah and the Philistines

And then, of course, Delilah gets manipulated by the Philistines to discover the secret of Samson’s incredible strength so that they can capture him. Again, there is no indication that this is something that Delilah wants to do. At one point, they do offer her money to betray Samson, but it mostly seems to me that they are putting her in a position where she just can’t say no to them. They are threatening her, or maybe threatening those who are dear to her.

So really, the impression I get of Delilah in the Bible is of a woman who is deprived of choice and agency in her own life. She has Samson take possession of her without consulting her desires. She has the Philistines using her whether she wants to be used or not. And I can’t help but wonder how differently her story might have turned out if she had been allowed to be in touch with what she wanted and needed as an individual. I certainly don’t believe that she was fated to go down a bad path just because of her name.

Name Popularized

So, I hope you understand a little better why Delilah was not a popular name up until 2007, even if I think the reasons for that were a little bit silly. So, if people stayed away from the name up until that year because of scripture, what changed at that time? We know exactly what happened. In 2007, a song by the American rock band Plain White T’s hit the top of the pop charts. A certain number of months later, thousands of girls were given the name Delilah. The song was called “Hey There Delilah.”

So is that it? It just took a really popular song to turn the fortunes of a name around? Well, I think there was a little more to it than that. I know that I usually interpret scriptures in these sermons that I do, not the text of popular songs. But I’m inclined to make an exception today. In many ways, I feel as if that song did not just popularize the name Delilah. There’s a sense in which it redeemed it.

Another Silly Love Song

You might make the mistake of thinking that the song is what Paul McCartney would call just another silly love song. But I say there is more to it than that. It is a song that a boyfriend sings to his girlfriend, Delilah, when the two of them are separated because she is pursuing her studies on the other side of the country. It is sweet and sentimental, but it is also more than that.

In many ways, the fictional relationship in this song is the antithesis of the relationship between Samson and Delilah. The young man singing the song obviously misses his girlfriend and would like to be with her. He says so several times. But he also shows a deep understanding that both of them are in the midst of pursuing their own goals and becoming the people they are meant to be. In other words, Delilah is not there merely to please him or to be the object of his love.

There is a real sense in which they are both there to bring the best out of each other. As the singer puts it at one point, “We’ll have it good. We’ll have the life we knew we would. My word is good.”

Empowering Delilah

So, I see the Delilah of the song as having something that the Delilah of the Bible never really had. She got the opportunity to define her own life and she had at least one person in her life who was supporting her in that even at great emotional cost. And I cannot help but wonder how the biblical Delilah’s story might have been so differently if she had just been given that kind of support rather than having a bunch of people around her telling her exactly what she was supposed to do and who she was supposed to be.

And that is why it is so good to be here today and to celebrate what we are celebrating. I do not know what the future course of Delilah’s life is going to be. Nobody does. She has many choices ahead of her that will define who she is and what she accomplishes. That is exciting. And we are here today as the people who love her, her family and her church, because we want to do our very best to make sure that she sets a good course in her life. We want her to be the kind of strong person who can stand against those who would use her like the Philistines and Samson used Delilah. But how can we do that?

A Prayer for Delilah

I would say that my prayer for you, Delilah, would be that you would have the spirit that is spoken of in our reading this morning from Second Timothy: “For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” That is what you need, what we all need, in order for you to become the best person you are meant to be and not simply the person that everybody else thinks you are supposed to be.

But the question remains, how can we make sure that somebody has that kind of spirit? How can we make sure they don’t fall into the trap of just conforming to everyone else’s expectations of them? Well, the exemplar of that in our reading from the letter this morning is Timothy, the one to whom the letter is addressed. This is what the writer says about Timothy: “I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.”

And that makes it pretty clear, doesn’t it? One of the things that helped Timothy to avoid a spirit of cowardice and develop instead a spirit of love, power and self-discipline was the incredible support and love and acceptance he received from extraordinary people in his life like Lois and Eunice.

Extraordinary Support

Now, Delilah, I do not know all of the members of your extended family. But I do know your mother and your father, and I know some of your grandparents. I know that these are people who love you with a fierce love and are absolutely devoted to accepting you for who you are and giving you the space and the power to become the person that God made you to be. I know that, while you will face your own unique challenges and you will have your own unique capacities, that they will be there to love you and support you in who you are and who you become. That is exciting. I am also excited that they have invited this church to be a part of all of that and that we will do all we can to support you in similar ways.

Delilah, the best and most exciting part of this celebration today is that we get to watch you become the incredible person God has created you to be. You are not merely someone to be possessed by somebody else, even somebody who falls in love with you. You are not somebody to be manipulated by others for their own ends. You are going to build your own personhood and accomplishments with the help of these incredibly supportive people, your church and your God. That is what we get to celebrate today. And if I’m going to end with a promise, it’s going to have to be this one:

Delilah I can promise you
That by the time we get through
The world will never ever be the same
And you’re to blame.

For families this week

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The Cousin the No One Talks About

Hespeler, 25 September 2022 © Scott McAndless
Jeremiah 32:1-15, Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16, 1 Timothy 6:6-19, Luke 16:19-31 (click to read)

Every family seems to have at least one member that everyone else just struggles with. I’m not just talking about those members who hold different political positions from the majority or who happen to believe weird theories about vaccines or international cabals of child traffickers. I mean, family is family, and the truth of the matter is that we don’t all have to believe all of the same things in order to get along and love one another.

No, I am talking about the kind of family member who just has a way of taking all of that too far – who just refuses to talk about anything but their strange theories, even when it is clear that everyone else is doing their best to change the subject so as to not start an argument. I’m talking about the person who floods everyone else’s social media with photos and quotes from dubious sources and who is very quick to say that anyone who disagrees is an idiot or a sheep. That can be a little bit much.

Family and Divisive Times

And so, what do we do in that situation? These are divisive times when people everywhere seem to be at odds with each other, but the very last thing we want to do is see that division creep into our families. So, we don’t really want to cut ourselves off from those family members completely. Sure, we might choose to block them on Twitter or Facebook because we just can’t deal with their issues on a daily basis, but we won’t cut all ties.

We will still make a point of inviting them for Thanksgiving or Christmas even though we know things may get uncomfortable. We will include them in the family discussions about what is going to happen to the old family homestead when Mom and Dad eventually pass on. We don’t write them out of any wills because, well, family is still family, and we are willing to tolerate a bit of discomfort in order to stand up for that.

Hanamel’s Cousin

So, can you imagine the person that I’m describing here. If you don’t have somebody like that in your own family, chances are but you know somebody who does. It seems to have become a very common experience. Well, I want you to understand this morning that, for Hanamel, the son of Shallum, his cousin Jeremiah was that person in the family. Nobody in the family liked Jeremiah.

Do you want to know how bad relations were between Jeremiah and that extended family? The whole family had lived in the town of Anathoth in Judah for as long as anyone could remember. As is the way in many a small town, just about everyone who lived in Anathoth was related to everybody else by blood or by marriage.

Jeremiah had grown up in Anathoth, had become a man there. But he didn’t turn out like most people who lived there. He began to have visions and insights. He had an extraordinary ability to not only see what people were doing wrong, but also to foresee the dreadful consequences of their actions. Above all, he had absolutely no hesitations about sharing such insights.

Jeremiah was Annoying

So, Jeremiah started going around and pointing out to his friends and relations what they were doing wrong. He didn’t care if someone was his elder or if they had been in their position for years and were highly respected. It was just not in his nature to hold back.

And the most annoying part was that he was often right. People were getting things wrong. But being right didn’t make things better. Jeremiah could never be gracious about it; he was too self-righteousness. So, people generally ended up hating him all the more. To say that things got very strained in Anathoth would be a gross understatement.

When Jeremiah Left Town

Let’s just put it this way, Jeremiah left Anathoth because nobody wanted him there anymore. And, yes, he went from there to Jerusalem, the big city. He went on to bigger things and to have a bigger impact and to find a lot more people to hate him. But he also did not leave on good terms. There were a whole lot of hurt feelings in his wake.

As he left town, Jeremiah said, “Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the people of Anathoth who seek your life and say, ‘You shall not prophesy in the name of the Lord, or you will die by our hand’— therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: I am going to punish them; the young men shall die by the sword; their sons and their daughters shall die by famine, and not even a remnant shall be left of them. For I will bring disaster upon the people of Anathoth, the year of their punishment.” (Jeremiah 11:21-23)

When that is the last thing you say to your family and the people you grow up with, there really is no coming back from that.

Jeremiah in Jerusalem

Of course, his friends and family in Anathoth were hardly the last people that Jeremiah rubbed the wrong way. As time went by, he managed to offend just about everyone in Jerusalem as well. He particularly clashed with the kings who ruled in the city, especially the latest, King Zedekiah. When Zedekiah’s nephew had rebelled against Babylonian overlordship, Nebuchadrezzar, the king of Babylon had come and deposed him, elevating Zedekiah to take his place.

Zedekiah should have supported Nebuchadrezzar in return. But, pushed by the anti-Babylon faction in the city, he had followed his nephew’s foolishness and stopped paying taxes, rebelling against the powerful king. It was pure, unadulterated stupidity. And Jeremiah was not the kind of man to stand idly by while this kind of thing was going on.

New Enemies for the Prophet

Jeremiah condemned the king and everyone who had supported this doomed rebellion against Babylon. He proclaimed that he spoke for the Lord and declared that such a course would doom the entire nation to destruction.

Nobody, least of all the king, wanted to hear any of it. In fact, as tensions with Babylon rose, more and more people started calling Jeremiah a traitor and a foreign agent. He was barred from speaking in the temple. Once they even threw him into a deep cistern. Lately he had been placed under arrest in the court of the king’s guard.

The worst part, as usual, was that Jeremiah was right. Things went badly very quickly. The Babylonian army came. They invaded the land of Judah, laid waste to towns and villages everywhere including Anathoth, by the way. And they put Jerusalem under siege. At this point nobody needed prophetic powers to know that the city would fall, the kingdom was doomed. But being right didn’t endear Jeremiah to anyone, especially as he was the kind of guy who never hesitated to say, “I told you so.”

Hanamel’s Decision

When Hanamel went to see his cousin Jeremiah, he was not looking forward to the visit. Sure, they had grown up together, but, after everything that had happened, they hadn’t spoken in years.

He especially wasn’t looking forward to it because of why he was going. He was going because Jeremiah had been right all along. As he had prophesized so many years ago, their shared hometown of Anathoth was suffering from a disaster.

The Babylonian invaders on their way to Jerusalem had, almost as an afterthought, destroyed the entire countryside. Anathoth was in ruins. There was nothing left there for Hanamel and his family and they had fled to Jerusalem with many others before the city was put under siege.

Why he Needed to See Jeremiah

They had, like many other refugees in those days, decided to escape and go to Egypt. But in order to make it there, Hanamel needed to raise some cash. His decision to sell a piece of land that had been in his family for generations was an act of desperation. I mean, who would want to buy a field that was occupied by the enemy? But desperation was their only course of action at this point.

According to the ancient laws of Israel, lands were supposed to remain in the extended family forever. So, before he even tried to sell it to anyone else, Hanamel had to offer it to his last living male relative. Yup: Jeremiah.

A Dreaded Interview

Hanamel made his way into the king’s palace where his cousin was under arrest in the court of the guard with a sinking feeling. He had replayed the conversation he was expecting many times in his head. He fully expected Jeremiah to laugh in his face, to tell him that he should have listened to him all those years ago and left Anathoth too. He expected Jeremiah to make him feel like an idiot for thinking he could get anything at all for a now worthless piece of property.

Hanamel braced himself to hear the inevitable words of his cousin, “I hate to say it, but I told you so.” He didn’t want to put himself through such an ordeal but, you know, family is family.

Jeremiah’s Prophetic Performance Art

I find it fascinating that we are told this story in the Book of Jeremiah from one point of view. We get Jeremiah’s side of the story. And Jeremiah, the prophet, only tells us that the reason why he choses to do what seems to everyone to be a foolish thing and actually buy Hanamel’s field and pay what it would be worth in ordinary times is because God tells him to.

Jeremiah, as a prophet and a natural showman, makes a big deal of doing the purchase in public and then taking the unusual step of preserving both copies of the deed to the land in an earthenware jar so that they will last.

This all makes a clear prophetic point. Even if Jeremiah is right and the whole country will be destroyed, God will not completely forget God’s people. There will be a return. People will again possess the land. They will just need to wait a really long time – like a deed preserved in an earthenware jar.

That was the prophetic performance that was inspired by God. But just because Jeremiah did that because it was what God wanted him to declare, doesn’t mean that it was his only motivation. I’d like to think that there was also a personal dimension – you know, cousin to cousin.

How it Went

The guards let Hanamel into Jeremiah’s cell. When they heard why he was there, they decided to permit his visit because it might be a laugh to see his disappointment. But when he entered, nothing went as Hanamel expected. Jeremiah embraced him immediately – seemed genuinely pleased to see him.

“God told me that you were going to come,” Jeremiah said matter-of-factly. “I would be so pleased to buy your field.”

Hanamel was so taken aback that he began to apologize. All of the positive things he had rehearsed saying about the field went out of his head and he actually began explaining how worthless it was now.

Reconciliation

But Jeremiah just waved all of his objections away. He would hear none of it. I’m going to give you seventeen shekels of silver and I don’t want to hear another word about it. And I know that I’m doing this because God wants me to say something to the whole people at this moment when everything seems so dark, but I am glad that the message that I have to give allows me to do something that will do some good for you and your family.

I’m not going to say that I was right. I’m not going to say I told you so because now, now that the worst that I feared is coming to pass, I have finally realized that there are things that are more important than being right – things like hope and family and the people we love.

Families Divided

We find ourselves living, it seems, in very divisive times. Everything, from politics and public health policy to electric vehicles and wind turbines, seems to be an excuse for people to line up on opposing sides of the issues and start fighting. But it is one thing for such issues to divide us on a political level, it is quite another to see them disrupting some of the most important relationships in people’s lives. When families start to fall apart because they can no longer abide one another because of differing opinions, that is devastating on a very personal level.

There seems to be no question that Jeremiah was that kind of divisive figure in his own day. His prophecies and pronouncements definitely had a way of setting people at odds with each other. But what he did when he decided to buy his cousin’s field was a definite break from the way that he usually operated. For the nation, he offered an unusual message of hope, even if it was a hope that was a long way off.

Never Too Late

But I am also struck by how that act of hope was an act of mending broken relationships with his family. I am pretty sure that Hanamel had given up a long time before on any hope of being reconciled with his cousin. But maybe this story can stand as a reminder that, no matter how much water has flowed under the bridge, it is never too late. We should never give up on those people. I’m wondering, even if you were right in the dispute that you had with someone you care about, what might you be able to do to bring about reconciliation that previously seemed impossible?