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Century Christian
Church 1301 Tamarack Road, Owensboro, KY 42301, (270) 684-0286, Pastor: Rev. Jim Westmoreland |
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Buying Into God’s Vision by Jim Westmoreland
Hospital regulations require a wheelchair for patients being discharged. However, one fairly new student nurse found one elderly gentleman--already dressed and sitting on the bed with a suitcase at his feet– who insisted he didn't need my help to leave the hospital. After a chat about rules being rules, he reluctantly agreed to be wheeled to the elevator. On the way down the student nurse asked him if his wife was meeting him. "I don't know," he said. "She's still upstairs in the bathroom changing out of her hospital gown." Jeremiah was not in the hospital. He was in prison, held under the orders of king Zedekiah of Judah. Jeremiah might have wished for a student jailer, much like the student nurse in the story, but no one was escorting him out of the jail. He was stuck there, but he was about to receive a visitor. Jeremiah was from the village town of Anathoth, just southwest of Jerusalem about 5 miles. It was not isolated from the life of the capital and influence that Jerusalem represented. He had been called as a prophet as a young man. Rarely, does anyone like a prophet, especially when they are young and cocky. Well, the message God gave Jeremiah to proclaim sounded negative. He would condemn the leaders in Jerusalem and even his own town for dishonesty in the way they treated the poor or anyone with little power and prestige, and then he began to say that God was going to punish them by sending Babylon to conquer them. He could have used a Dale Carnegie course on “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” because he made everyone mad. He was run out of his own town, but he kept prophesying. He wore on people the wrong way. Zedekiah, king of Judah got tired of him and had him put in prison. Meanwhile, Babylon began to move troops, conquer villages, cities and regions and was soon headed for Palestine. Soon they were there conquering the lesser towns and isolating Jerusalem. It sure looked like they were about to be conquered, just like Jeremiah had prophesied. So, in comes Jeremiah’s cousin, Hanamel, offering to sell Jeremiah the family farm. That is like offering to sell your Enron stock a few days after the accounting scandal is all over the newspaper. There are few buyers when something is considered to be worthless or too high a risk. God had prepared Jeremiah for Hanamel’s visit, and Jeremiah agreed to buy the family land. He did all the things he need to publicly record his purchase so that others would know what he had done, and he had the deeds put in an earthenware jar, much like the jars that contained the Dead Sea scrolls, to preserve them for a long time. Jeremiah’s field was the place where he ought to be. Anathoth, a little village west of Jerusalem, was Jeremiah’s family home, and the field belonged to his relatives. It would be fair to say that the field God told Jeremiah to buy was his own home, the place where he belonged. It was hardly a good time for buying land. Even as the prophet closed the deal in Jerusalem, outside the city gates the Babylonian army was massing for an assault, bent on conquering and destroying Jerusalem and exiling its people. In a matter of weeks, the walls of the city would be breached, the king’s palace burned, the temple would lie in ruins, and everything that had held meaning and value for Jeremiah and his people would be taken from them. The economy was already in collapse; Jeremiah’s own family probably couldn’t afford to keep the field and needed the cash to buy food. And Jeremiah himself was imprisoned, accused of treason against king and country. Hardly the time to buy a field. And yet, that was exactly what God called Jeremiah to do: buy a field in Anathoth. For in so doing, God said, Jeremiah would be making a downpayment on the future, on a time when invading armies would be vanquished and destruction mended, a day when exiles would return and life would resume, when even the storied greatness of yesterday would be surpassed by the promise of tomorrow. Buy a field in Anathoth, commanded the LORD, because “houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.” God’s call to Jeremiah is a call to an eschatological act which looks to the fulfillment of God’s purposes, a commitment of radical faith in the promise of God. It is an investment in hope. Jeremiah would not even live to see that investment pay off; he would die in exile in Egypt. But even the uncertainty of his own life did not prevent him from entrusting himself to God. Despite the gathering gloom of Babylonian power, Jeremiah believed that God was not yet through with the people whom God had called and the land on which they lived. Jeremiah invested in the hope that God’s promise outlasts all threats, even so great a threat as the Babylonian army. Jeremiah weighed out his cash and plunked it down squarely on the barrelhead, put his money where his prophetic mouth was, in an act that staked a claim on the promises of God. He bought a field for the future. And that is what I think God is calling us to do. What does buying the field in Anathoth mean to you? I am not saying that the church is about to fold. God is not interested in preserving historic shrines. He is interested in his people living their faith with passion. This means going the extra mile in ministry, in witness, in hospitality. This means we practice a radical commitment to be and tell the Good News of Christ to others. In some ways, putting together this event called Century Fest is a way of buying the field in Anathoth. It is an act of hope, promise and possibility. Many have invested many hours and some have even made financial commitments to make this possible. Century Fest is one way of buying the field and looking toward the future with hope. We have asked you to help us through a tight year in finances and many of you have responded with pledges and additional contributions. This is buying the field in Anathoth. In the next few weeks our Finance Committee will be putting together our spending plan for next year. This budget of goals and priorities is a reflection of both what we want to do and what we are able to do. It is weeks before we consider our financial commitments for next year, but our public participation as those who make commitments is like Jeremiah publicly letting others know that had bought that field when no one else was buying land. In our support of important and needed ministries, like the ministries to our children and youth, we need to find ways to sew the seeds of hope as we give our time and energy. We need a sharper focus on how we minister to our senior adults in our church, and a more directed and purposeful ministry with our seniors is a way to sew seeds of hope and buy the field in Anathoth. How will we buy the field for our young adults and middle age adults in our church and in our community? For various reasons in our history we lost some people in those age groups and we have failed to keep them. What new energy and purpose can we use to reach the hearts and lives of people in their twenties, thirties and forties? People look for simplistic answers to reaching people: “All the staff should be under 30.” One church seems to be trying that. If they start bringing in a significant number of families under 40, do you not think there are going to be some discussions about a worship style aimed at the members 60 and older who pay most of the bills? “Just keep everything the way it is” sounds like a simple answer, but, even if we try, things just don’t stay the same. People move on. People die. People are not able to do what they used to do. Another idea might be to “just focus on people in mid life.” Since we can’t offer all the bells and whistles for children and youth that the big churches do, we can focus on people whose children are grown. A Church dies when it gets no new members and keeps shrinking. So, even a strategy for mid life adults would still provide new members to continue our life and ministry together. How will we name and envision our field in Anathoth? What will we do to buy it. I believe that we are being called to seek and be open to God’s vision for this church. Century Fest is an example of what we can do to begin a new chapter in the life of the church. If we see it as an event that comes and goes, we will have lost a great opportunity. I hope that we see it as an opportunity to meet new people, to find those who need a new relationship with the church and then reach out to them. One thing that we can be sure of – God is calling us to buy into His vision for what we can do here, and the better we understand His vision for us, the better investment we will make. God gave Jeremiah a promise. He said, “Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.” Today, I want you to go home and think about what God wants to promise to us. Amen Century Christian Church, September 30, 2007 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland _________________ |
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