I've been reading through Jeremiah's writings - the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations. Words of lament, mourning, repentance, hope and expectation.
There is a difference between hope and expectation.
- Expectations are what often keep us from being present to the gift of the present.
- Expectations are sometimes just the other side of entitlement, and there is very little joy in getting what we believe we have coming to us anyhow.
There is a difference between expectations and expectancy. Expectancy is what the imprisoned prophet Jeremiah had when he wrote in Jeremiah 33:14
The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
This prophet sits in prison as Jerusalem is being taken over by Nebuchadnezzar and everything is collapsing around him, and he defiantly holds fast to the outrageous promises of God.
Jeremiah 32:2 sets the scene:
The army of the king of Babylon was then besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah the prophet was confined in the courtyard of the guard in the royal palace of Judah.Then in Jeremiah 32:9, Jeremiah writes:
I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel and weighed out for him seventeen shekels [about 200 grams] of silver.
There is violence and fear and violence all around him, and what did Jeremiah do?
He bought land.
Despite the chaos and despair around him, Jeremiah immersed himself in God’s promises and, on behalf of his people, would not, could not, did not let go.
When this prophet was persecuted for preaching God’s truth,
- he did not run away to some monastery for a life of quiet contemplation,
- he did not try and get a cosy job in the new regime.
He bought land.
In a defiant act of hope, he bought land. He refused to let the threatening clouds rolling over the present darken his view of what was possible in the future.
This reminds me of Martin Luther’s famous response when he was asked what he would do if he knew the world would end tomorrow. He said, “I’d plant a tree.”
As an aside, many of the shade trees we enjoy today were planted by people who did not get to enjoy them.
The promise that God is not done and we will not be left alone still holds.
- This hope to which we cling is not a naive hope.
- Nor is it an escapist hope.
- It is the opposite.
- It’s the hope of people who have heard the dangerous rumour that there is life beyond death and hope beyond suffering and that love eventually conquers the soul-crushing garbage we humans keep perpetuating.
To say that our hope is not something in our grasp, that there is a future created not by ourselves but by God, is very dangerous.
It goes against all the Western capitalist, individualistic messages of self-achievement we have ever heard. And we don’t just say it, we celebrate it.
What we do as followers of Jesus is completely bonkers - especially in our culture.
- our hope is not in the Dow Jones,
but in the God of Abraham and Sarah; - our hope is not in the nonprofit industrial complex,
but in the God of Jeremiah and Mary Magdalene; - our hope is not in our own ability to be hopeful,
but in the God of Teresa of Avila and Teresa of Calcutta.
This is what it means to stand amid a troubled world and raise our heads and voices in expectancy - pointing to and from where our help comes.
We are people of God's Kingdom. We reach back to the hope of the prophets, and we reach forward to the promised redemption of the world. And when we do this, we can be open and vulnerable in the present, without the worries and concerns of this present world crushing us.
Go out and buy land and plant trees. Or whatever the metaphorical equivalent is.
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