PLANT THE APPLE TREE                                                   Eighteenth after Pentecost

                                                                                                                September 26, 2010

  

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

 

 

            When I was ordained in 1988, my first pastoral charge was in Manitoba.  I moved there in the middle of a prolonged drought.  It wasn’t the 30’s but it was serious.  And it was during that first summer and autumn that I learned that people there who grew wheat and canola and mustard-seed are often known as next year people.  Next year it will rain enough or not rain as much or the grasshoppers will stay away or the hail will not fall—next year.

 

            It seems to me that Blue Jays’ fans are also next year people.  One season does not a lifetime make.  How many seasons have we been saying that??  And you poor Leafs’ fans have been saying it even longer.  Next year……

 

            Jeremiah, in our reading this morning, is, in some ways, a next year man.  He was being held prisoner in the palace of King Zedekiah because he was going about forecasting the destruction of Jerusalem due to the way the ruling elite, and the people themselves, were behaving.  Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, would surely win any war launched against Jerusalem and exile would follow, Jeremiah predicted.  But the religious and political authorities did not want the people to hear that.  So Jeremiah was prevented from speaking.

 

            But not prevented from being contacted by the outside world.  And his cousin, Hanamel, offered to sell him a piece of family property.  Given the situation in Jerusalem and his own personal circumstances, we would expect that Jeremiah would say: “Thanks, but no thanks.  There’s not going to be any future here for us and I’m not putting any money into something that will not succeed.  It would be like throwing money into a fire.”  And we would agree with this.  Don’t throw good money after bad, we say.  Quit while you’re ahead.  Don’t invest in a losing cause.

 

            But that’s not what Jeremiah said.  Instead, he and Hanamel arranged for the deal to be struck.  Jeremiah produced the money, signed the deed, sealed it and had it witnessed.  And said to Baruch, his scribe or secretary, “Take this deed….and put it in an earthenware jar, in order that it 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.’”

 

            Once again, as so often before, Jeremiah speaks a word of hope.  Beyond destruction and exile there would be reconstruction and restoration.  Redemption and a prosperous future would come in due time.  And he was right.  Jerusalem was defeated; the people were taken into exile and spent many years in Babylon.  But then things changed and they returned to their homeland and rebuilt their lives—and one can assume that Jeremiah’s field was still there and ready to be planted.

 

            Jeremiah, as I said last week, is often considered a doom-and-gloom prophet.  And yet, no prophet of Hebrew/Christian scripture speaks more hope than he does.  And, much of the time, perhaps most of the time, the doom-and-gloom are heard without any credence being given to the hope.

 

            Some of you know that Field of Dreams is one of my favourite movies.  Many of you know the story: the corn farmer, Ray Kinsella, hears a voice one day.  “If you build it, he will come.”  He figures out that he is being instructed to build a baseball field.  And so he mortgages his farm and his future.  And lives with the ridicule of neighbours and family.  Builds the field and waits.  For what, he’s not sure.  And waits a long time.  A time in which money is scarce.  Bills pile up.  Even his wife and child start to doubt his wisdom, if not his sanity.

 

            But then, one day when Ray and his wife, Annie, are trying to figure out how to pay the people who are getting impatient for their money, their daughter, Karen, comes in and interrupts them.  At first Ray dismisses her impatiently.  Even he is starting to wonder if his dream is all folly.  She keeps insisting.  “There’s a man standing in your field.”  And Ray goes out to see Shoeless Joe Jackson and, while they are talking, other long-dead players from the past come out of the corn field nearby and they begin a game.

 

            And through the rest of the story, even though the financial woes are not over and others still think they’re crazy, other dead baseball players come to play.  And, best of all, the father, from whom Ray was estranged and who died before they could be reconciled, returns and they begin a game of catch and start down the road to a new relationship.  Finally, even the most disbelieving people see the miracle. 

Ray set out building a dream on what appeared to others only foolish hope and the promise of a voice.  And that hope was rewarded a hundred-fold and the promise was fulfilled.

 

            We love this kind of movie—an often unlikely hero begins a journey or a quest or a task that seems impossible, foolish, foolhardy and, against all odds, succeeds.  Human beings have always loved the endless versions of this story—legends and myths of ancient peoples, movies, books and plays are rife with impossible dreams achieved through hope and tenacious refusal to give up the hope, through never backing down from the dream, through working at impossible tasks without giving up until the hope, the dream is realized.

 

            And we love these stories because the people in them do what we cannot bring ourselves to do.  Oh, we’re not reluctant to “dream the impossible dream,” but we are so often afraid to do and live for what we consider the impossible dream.  And it’s understandable.  We live in a very insecure world.  We have only to turn on our radios or TV’s or computers, or open a newspaper to know this.  We’re anxious about it all.  And there has developed, because of this insecurity everyone feels—in varying degrees, of course, and in varying levels of acknowledgement—but there has, reasonably, developed an overemphasis on our guaranteed security, present and future.  If there’s one thing the economic collapse of the past couple of years has taught us, it’s that we should invest in only sure things—whatever they are.  People who live by hope and trust are considered naïve at best, foolish by most.

 

            But the truth is, our Christian faith speaks against this kind of grasping for what is sure.  In the story that forms our faith, the first followers of the One who is the centre of our faith, felt that their cause was lost—that their leader’s death had put an end to all for which they had hoped.  But, as we know, the story doesn’t end there—three days later their lost cause became a living cause and one to which they committed their lives—and to which we have committed our lives.

 

            Someone, I believe it was Martin Luther, said: “Even if the world were to end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree.”  This is what we are all about as Christians—really, what all fully human beings need to be about, especially these days—planting apple trees in the face of the possibility of the orchard disappearing.  And the truth is, if we don’t plant the apple trees, the orchard will disappear.

 

            I know I’ve told some of you this amusing story—maybe I’ve even used it in a sermon—I can’t remember.  But it’s worth repeating here.  A man went each day to a church and stood under a statue of his patron saint and prayed, “

Please St.

whoever, please, please, please, let me win the lottery.”  This went on day after day for months.  Finally, the statue could stand it no longer and it came to life and said, “Please, my son, please, please, please, buy a ticket.”

 

Now, I’m not advocating buying lottery tickets.  For most of us that is not hope but futility.  But the point of that story is that, while prayer is important, if we are not willing to take the actions of hope, prayer is merely wishful thinking.  We have to do something.

 

            Our world, by and large, doesn’t support hope, doesn’t reward trust.  If we, a community of Christ, are going to live the hope and trust that is God’s gift to us always, in all situations, if we are going to live it, we have to live it in spite of the reality all around us.  We have to buy a field.  We have to plant an apple tree.  We have to sow seeds.  If we do not, the future will be bleak.

 

            There is no denying the precarious position the world is in.  But there is also no denying that we serve a God who will support and inspire and love us into a future of an abundance of apple trees.  We just have to plant them.  And we have to buy the field in which we may grow them.  We have to trust in God’s future and invest in its dawn.

 

            So….buy a field.  Plant an apple tree.  And trust that God’s promise that it will bear fruit, that the promise of an abundant harvest will be fulfilled.