September 29, 2013 – Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15; Luke 16:19-31
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15; Luke 16:19-31
Staking a Claim
19th Sunday after Pentecost [Lectionary 26] – September 29, 2013
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Excuse me: I have a call from my lawyer.
“Okay: yeah. Uh-huh. That’s right: that’s what I want: I want that property that is about to be completely and utterly worthless. That’s worth nothing. Yup: that’s the one. I’m prepared to pay full price for it. That’s right. Yeah I know that tomorrow or the next day it’s not going to be worth anything. Right. Just put the deal through. Thanks.”
If they had cell-phones back in Jeremiah’s day,
you might have overheard Jeremiah having a phone call just like that with his lawyer.
It’s about 600 years before Jesus is born.
Jerusalem is being besieged by the mighty Babylonians.
It is soon going to fall: everyone knows it. It’s just a matter of time.
Jeremiah is sitting in jail, where his king has put him for telling him all this was going to happen.
The people are trapped in the city: starving, sick, and desperate.
Property values are plummeting fast and are about to plummet more: in fact,
property is soon going to be worthless because the Babylonians are
just going to take it for themselves and not pay anybody for it.
It’s at this point that a man comes to Jeremiah and tells him to buy his cousin’s land.
“I knew this was the word of the LORD,” says Jeremiah, but how did he know that?
I think he knew it was God telling him to do this because it was just so completely crazy.
That’s often how you know, right? If it sounds kind of crazy, it might just be from God.
Anyway, he buys the land. And he makes a big show of it.
And he makes sure there’s two copies, and puts them in an earthenware jar where
where they’re sure to be preserved for a loooooong time.
Why? Because God, who gets the last word in this story, says,
“Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”
God has a future in store for this land, a holy future in which there is justice,
in which land is bought and sold and not stolen by the person with the biggest stick.
A future in which people will share what they have together.
A future in which love of neighbour will mean sacrifices for the common good.
A future in which poverty will be eradicated and in which the sick will be tended.
A future in which mercy, and not might will reign. A future in which life will flourish.
On that little piece of land. A piece of land to which, on this day, God stakes a claim.
That’s why Jeremiah invests in that land: because God has a future in mind for it.
Jeremiah will die before he sees that future, but that doesn’t matter:
the important point is that he has invested in God’s future.
Flash forward about 2500 years.
The word of the Lord came to some Icelanders in the West End of Winnipeg in 1913,
in the second year of Prime Minister Robert Borden,
in the first year of Winnipeg Mayor Russ Deacon.
At that time, the word of the Lord came and said:
“Buy the land on Victor Street at Sargent Avenue.”
So it was bought: legal papers were drawn up, deeds were signed, a building was built.
God’s future was invested in.
When the neighbourhood began to change, people began to consider the wisdom of
the thing that God had told the people to do.
And lo: the property across from Rae and Jerry’s came up for sale in the 1960s,
and the people were sore tempted to purchase it.
But that was not a word from the Lord.
Years went by, and the neighbourhood at Sargent and Victor changed some more.
And the people thought back to that land across from Rae and Jerry’s and lo!
they saw that a large Mennonite church building had been built on it!
Surely, they thought, by the waters of Omand’s creek is where we could be singing a
song to the Lord.
But that was not a word from the Lord.
This was the word of the Lord that came to First Lutheran Church council:
You shall continue to dwell on this land at Sargent and Victor, and worship me there.
And yet this: you shall open a food bank there and feed the hungry.
And make friends among the people you find there.
You, and your children, and your children’s children.
You shall meet there and love one another there.
And this place shall be a place of welcome for all people.
I the Lord have spoken.
And that is what the people did.
And the people’s eyes no longer wandered toward the flashy property and
modern building across from Rae and Jerry’s.
Oh no: the people’s eyes were firmly fixed on the place where
God had staked a claim for them 100 years ago.
The thing is, like that piece of land that Jeremiah purchased so long ago,
it seems a little crazy to continue to invest our own lives and talents and
energy and wealth into this piece of land at Sargent at Victor.
It seemed foolish for Jeremiah to invest in land that was about to be worthless.
And maybe it seems foolish to continue to invest our lives at Sargent and Victor
all these years later.
I don’t know.
And yet, like Jeremiah, we know that this is the word of the Lord: how could you doubt it?
On that day when the Babylonians were besieging Jerusalem,
God staked a claim to the land that Jeremiah purchased.
God reached down and claimed that soil and said, “This land is about to be worthless,
but it is not worthless to me.”
The land that was the site of bloodshed and violence and exploitation was to be held by God
in trust for another day, for a day when houses and fields and vineyards would once again
be the basis for life and peace and the well-being of all people in the land.
Just so, 100 years ago, God reached down and staked a claim on a piece of property in
the West End of Winnipeg at Sargent and Victor.
God claimed this land, and named it worthy, come what may.
Property values could decrease, but it still had value in God’s eyes.
Crime could increase, but it still had value in God’s eyes.
Because God loves the people who live here and God has staked a claim to this neighbourhood.
A neighbourhood that is full of joys and full of sorrows.
A neighbourhood that in the purchase of this land God has joined God’s very self to.
In Jesus, the crucified God, God joined God’s self to every part of creation,
to the joyful bits as well as to the sorrowful suffering bits.
In his great argument with Ulrich Zwingli about whether or not Christ was really present in
the bread and wine of Holy Communion, Luther said,
“Oh: Christ is present in the bread wine because Christ is present in my cabbage soup.”
The good news this morning is that in Christ there is no where and no place and no person
in all creation where God is not present.
In some mysterious way, God has reached down in Christ to this suffering joyful creation,
reached down and joined for all time with every part it.
Christ is present in our rejoicing and in our sorrowing.
Christ is present in the full and in the hungry.
Christ is present in the singing and in the silence.
Christ is present in you and in the person sitting next to you.
Christ is present in justice-working and in injustice suffering.
God in Christ has joined God’s self to this place and
God in Christ has joined God’s self to you and has promised never to let you go.
In your baptism, God has staked a claim on you, and that is very good news.
In the Gospel story, there is a wide gap between the rich man and the poor man.
But God in Christ has overcome that gap, and made us all one.
Rich, poor, and everyone in between: we are all one in Christ Jesus our Lord.
God makes us one here, at this table, in this building, on this land, at Sargent and Victor,
in the West End of Winnipeg, in 2013.
God has staked a claim here: to God this land and this place and this property and
this gathering is not and never will be worthless.
In your care for one another.
In your welcome of every single person who enters this building.
In your feeding of the hungry at Food Banks and Community Meals.
In your care for children, in your welcome of refugees, in your knitting hats for the homeless,
in your cooking for the hungry, in your beautiful Christmas hampers for the people of
this neighbourhood, in your treating every single person as if
that person were Christ himself:
in all these ways, God has staked a claim to 580 Victor Street,
and God continues to call you, like Jeremiah,
to invest in the future God has in mind for this place:
God calls you to invest with your faith, with your trust, with your time, with your steadfast
gathering together to witness to God’s purposes, with your wealth, with your hope.
This is the word of the Lord.
And how do you know it is the word of the Lord?
At our Community Meal at Food Bank last Wednesday,
where the Boaler family invested in this place once again by providing
a hearty simple meal of chili, one of our guests came up to me as
he was about to leave.
Now, I’m not gonna lie: he’s a bit of a rascal,
and earlier in the day I had had to be a little firm with him in my insistence that
I couldn’t treat him differently than anyone else,
and that I had to be fair to everyone.
But at the end of that day, he came to me – the last guy I expected to say something like this – and, with a look of a sort of astonishment said, “Thank you. God is in this place.”
This is God’s place. This is Jesus’s place. The Holy Spirit is alive and well here.
God has reached down and staked a claim here at Sargent and Victor.
God has reached down and staked a claim on you.
This land is not and never will be worthless.
You are not and never will be worthless.
This is the word of the Lord. And this, surely, is Good News.
So together, on this day, at Sargent and Victor, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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