The five-century old cognitive shift we call the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, or simply Modernity, produced an idealism bordering on hubris and delusion at times, the idea that humans were capable of producing a perfectly ordered society, a utopia in the writings of Sir Thomas More. The cognitive shift to post-modernity, only a century old and marked by things like relativity and uncertainty, has left us more than a little cynical about the human capacity for good, but people do still try to create just and ordered communities, sometimes called alternative or intentional community, from co-housing and housing trusts to Christian equivalents of the “kibbutz,” communities united in religious values and committed to shared endeavor.
Humans being humans, though, intentional and alternative communities rarely survive past the first generation, and are never quite as utopian as the founders intended. For example, Arden, Delaware, where I once lived, was artsy and progressive, an experiment in the economics advocated by a guy named Henry George, and influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement. In Arden, you own your house, but not the land it sits on, one interpretation of George’s push to tax land, not labor. The people who initially lived in Arden, being self-governed and human, didn’t quite live up to the vision of the founders, so there were sequels, Ardentown and Ardencroft, which were like most sequels, not as good as the original, and maybe best unmade. Still, Arden exists with roughly the same principles more than a century later, which is a raging success by alternative community standards.
Georgist economics predates the digital economy, the immense value attached these days to intangible assets, predates the Ponzi scheme that is finance capitalism, and was conceived before hedge funds and private equity firms. But in an age when those hedge funds are buying up trailer parks and holding the poor hostage for extortionist rents, when so much land is under water or on fire, sometimes in rapid succession, it might be worth re-engaging questions about land, who owns it, and who it benefits.
We begin our service every week by naming the fact that we are on stolen Seneca land, and the ancient Hebrews were in much the same position, sort of. The Books of Joshua and Judges are celebrations of a successful campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing, babies brains smashed against the rocks, the same sort of thing ethnic Russians and the Russian army are doing in Ukraine these days. Fortunately, at least for those ancient Canaanites, we don’t think this really happened, at least not on what is literally a “biblical” scale, though no doubt some were dispossessed and driven out. The Hebrew culture actually appears to be a construction, weaving together Canaanite culture and migrant populations like the Levite escapees from Egypt, with the idea of a racially pure Hebrew monotheism being about as real as the idea of America as a white Christian nation, which is to say, not real and absolutely false.
Still, the idea had power, and land had emotional value far beyond agricultural output and re-sale. The Hebrews told themselves that the land, this land of milk and honey, was given to them by God, and their entire economy was built on small-hold farms and inheritance. This is why, when the King of Israel wanted his vineyard, Naboth said “No. This is my inheritance. I will not sell.” Of course, Queen Jezebel was more than willing to fabricate a false charge against Naboth, ending with the man’s death, so much like the civil asset forfeiture laws in America today, widely abused by corrupt police departments.
We see the importance of keeping land within the clan in today’s scripture reading from the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, but this is more than just a real estate transaction. So let’s set the stage.
The Northern Kingdom was gone, wiped out by the Assyrians, resulting in the famous “Ten Lost Tribes” of Israel. The Southern Kingdom, Judah, had been a vassal state, first under the Assyrians, and eventually under the Babylonians, for over a century. The Egyptians, competing with the Babylonians for influence in the region, urged Judah to rebel. Geopolitics really hasn’t changed that much in the last 2500 years.
Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry takes place as this crisis is growing. He understands, through keen observation, divine revelation, or both, that disaster is coming. Later Hebrews, and the Christian and Rabbinic interpreters who would follow, would focus on the failure of Judahite monotheism and divine wrath as the cause, but an honest reading of Jeremiah makes clear that the prophet had the geo-political situation in clear view. He understood that rebelling against Babylon, refusing the tribute required of a client-state, would result in an invasion.
When God instructs Jeremiah to accept the offer of his cousin’s land, it isn’t just about keeping the property in the clan. The Babylonians are coming, and it ain’t gonna be a party, and it ain’t gonna be a disco. There won’t be any fooling around. Judah will be crushed. Jerusalem will be destroyed, the walls brought down, the Temple of Solomon a smoking pile of rubble. Anyone the Babylonians thought might be useful was taken to Babylon in what we now call the Babylonian Exile or Captivity, the rest left to scratch out an existence in a completely destroyed economy in the countryside.
Hanamel’s offer to sell Jeremiah some family land is the ancient equivalent of someone today saying “Here, let me sell you some beautiful land in the Donbas region of Ukraine. Very fertile! Super cheap! Just ignore the Russian tanks.”
But God says, “Jeremiah, buy the land.” Jeremiah will never see it settled, no flocks, no fields. He’s going to end up as a refugee in, of all places, Egypt, precisely the kingdom he disdains. But in the midst of catastrophe, he takes a concrete action that expresses his belief in an “after.” God asks Jeremiah to act on faith in the future, to invest in that long-term future, even if the short-term future is fire and blood. This is Jeremiah’s “fixed star,” faith that this crisis will pass, just as he has heard from the holy mystery he understands as God.
This is not practical. His financial advisor would tell him not to do it, that the land was a bad investment. No church council would ever approve. It is as absurd as Neom, Mohammed Bin Salman’s magic city in the desert, but instead of murdered journalists, it is captured Judahites and refugees crossing the Sinai. And yet, Jeremiah does it. He buys the land.
Babylon will not last forever. Jeremiah believes in a future in which his family will return to the land. He willing to invest in that future.
What do you believe? Do you have faith, if not in some absurd utopia, at least in an “after” this, after this corrupt oligarchy, after this theocratic patriarchy? What is your fixed star?
And what is God calling us to do today, what acts of faith that may look absolutely crazy, but are practical and public investments in the future, investments that may not see a return for many years, well after our lifetimes? What must we do, as humankind, to preserve the planet? What sacrifices must we make, now, to preserve the democratic process, in our nation, and in our congregational tradition? What investments must we make to insure that The Park Church exists after we are gone, not as some dusty old relic, but as a gathered people willing to stand for what is right and holy even when the days are dark and the night of injustice is long?
What is our “fixed star”?