Hope in the Field

A Sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

13 July 2025

 
Jeremiah 32.1–3a, 6–15
John 4.34-38

It was the tenth year of King Zedekiah of Judah,
            the eighteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.
 
It was the year that we call 587 BCE.
            And things were bad—in fact, they were worse than bad.
            Because the Babylonian army was laying siege to Jerusalem. Again.
 
The walls of the city were crumbling,
            the economy had collapsed,
            and death hovered in the air like smoke.
 
And here, in the middle of this devastation,
            Jeremiah the prophet—ever the troublemaker,
                        always out of step with the powerful—
            is under arrest, and imprisoned by the king.
 
It’s hard not to think of Gaza. Of Rafah. Of Jenin.
            It’s hard not to think of refugee camps and war zones,
            of occupied territories and cities held under siege
                        —places where hope feels foolish,
                        where futures are buried in rubble.
 
And into such a moment,
            the prophet of doom buys a field.
 
It’s an absurd thing to do.
            Economically irrational. Politically meaningless. Personally unwise.
 
Jeremiah’s act is not only impractical
            —it’s utterly ludicrous.
 
But that’s the point.
            For the prophet enacts what the imagination dares to dream:
                        that land will again be bought and sold;
            that vineyards will again be planted and harvested;
                        that life will return from exile.
 
And this morning, perhaps more than most,
            we need prophets who will buy fields.
 
The Book of Jeremiah, as many of you will know,
            is not exactly a comfort read.
 
It’s hard going.
            It tells the story of a people in collapse.
 
But nestled in this long, difficult book are remarkable glimpses of hope
            —what Walter Brueggemann calls hope in spite of the data.
 
Chapter 32 is one of those moments.
 
Jeremiah is locked up, the nation is tearing apart,
            and God says to him, “Your cousin is going to come and offer you a field to buy.”
And then, as if to prove that even prophets can be surprised,
            the cousin does.
 
So Jeremiah buys the field.
 
This is not a parable. It’s a land transaction.
            It’s a signed and sealed deed, placed in a jar for safekeeping.
 
It’s boringly bureaucratic.
            And it is the most powerful act of prophetic resistance Jeremiah will perform.
 
We often think of hope as a feeling. A mood.
            But biblical hope is something far more muscular.
 
From a Biblical perspective, hope is something you do.
            It’s the practice of living toward a future not yet visible,
                        but promised nonetheless.
 
This field purchase is not hopeful because things look good,
            but precisely because they don’t.
 
It’s not optimism. It’s resistance.
 
Jeremiah dares to embody an alternative reality.
            He dares to imagine a future shaped not by the brutality of Babylon
            but by the faithfulness of God.
 
And then he dares to live as if that future is coming true.
 
And I wonder—where are the places in our own lives,
            in our city, in our world, where we are called to buy fields?
 
·      What does hope look like in a climate emergency?
·      What does hope look like in a housing crisis?
·      What does hope look like in a broken immigration system?
·      What does hope look like for churches that feel like they are in decline, in exile?
 
Jeremiah’s symbolic field purchase
            is not just a gesture of delayed gratification.
It is a declaration of God’s future being enacted in the present.
 
This is what theologians sometimes call realised eschatology
            —the idea that the reign of God is not just a distant hope
            but a lived reality breaking into the now.
 
Jeremiah is not simply predicting that one day things will be better.
            He is insisting that the promise of restoration
                        is so trustworthy, so real, that it demands action now
                        —even when the evidence suggests otherwise.
 
His field purchase is not about pie-in-the-sky optimism.
            It is a deeply political and theological act,
one that collapses the false divide
            between spiritual hope and material investment.
 
We sometimes fall into the trap of imagining
            that God’s kingdom is only about the life to come.
 
But what if it’s about life right now?
            About justice now, equity now, liberation now?
 
That’s why Jeremiah buries the deed in a jar
            —not to protect it for some heavenly future,
but to preserve it for a restored community,
            on this earth, in that land.
 
This prophetic imagination challenges us:
            do we believe in a God whose promises make demands of our present?
 
A God whose coming reign interrupts our current injustices?
            A God who does not abandon us to despair,
            but who calls us to live as if the New Jerusalem were already among us?
 
At Bloomsbury, we have sought to be this kind of church
            —a people shaped not by the fear of Babylon
                        but by the hope of the kingdom.
 
We do not merely wait for heaven.
            We plant heaven in the middle of history.
 
And poor old Jeremiah is in prison when all this happens.
            Literally locked away.
A prisoner of the king, silenced for his unpopular message.
 
It is not only the city that is besieged
            —so is the prophet.
 
And that’s a familiar experience.
            Sometimes we are imprisoned by circumstances,
                        hemmed in by loss, fear, exhaustion.
 
Sometimes the prison is emotional
            —trauma, regret, or grief.
 
Sometimes the walls are social
            —systems of injustice, racism, or economic exclusion.
 
And sometimes we build the walls ourselves.
 
But Jeremiah’s prophetic act reminds us
            that even from a place of confinement,
            it is possible to choose freedom.
 
Even when the future seems foreclosed,
            it is possible to enact a different story.
 
The work of faith is not always to escape the prison,
            but to live faithfully within it.
 
To do the thing that makes no sense.
            To buy the field. To prepare for return.
            To invest in a future you may not live to see.
 
And so Jeremiah buys the field.
 
He weighs out the silver. He signs the deed.
            He calls witnesses. He stores the document.
 
He does all the things people do
            when they believe there will be a tomorrow.
 
Let’s be clear: this is a terrible investment.
            The land is already under Babylonian control.
            The title deed means nothing to them.
 
Jeremiah will never farm that land.
            And yet, he goes through the ritual,
                        not because he expects a return on investment,
                        but because he expects a return from exile.
 
He is not just engaging in prophetic theatre.
            He is enacting a truth deeper than power:
                        that empires fall, that hope survives,
                        and that God’s promises outlast Babylonian armies.
 
Here at Bloomsbury, we also buy fields
            —metaphorically, perhaps, but no less powerfully.
 
When we welcome the stranger in our midst,
            we are buying fields.
 
When we speak truth to power through our community organising,
            we are buying fields.
 
When we say that LGBTQ+ lives are holy and beloved,
            we are buying fields.
 
When we open our doors to artists, activists, and pilgrims,
            we are investing in futures others cannot yet see.
 
We are stubbornly and prophetically choosing to live into God’s tomorrow,
            even when today feels like exile.
 
There’s something quietly beautiful about the detail
            that the deed of purchase is placed in a jar of clay.
 
It’s a preservation act—proof that history isn’t over.
 
The jar becomes a vessel of hope.
            A container for possibility. A sacred trust to the future.
 
We all have our jars.
            Perhaps they are stories. Or songs. Or sacraments.
Perhaps they are relationships, or communities, or buildings like this one.
 
Things we preserve not to escape the present,
            but to proclaim the future.
 
“Put them in an earthenware jar,” says Jeremiah,
            “so that they may last a long time.”
 
We are the custodians of jars,
            holding space for God’s future.
 
And sometimes, when all seems lost,
            it is enough to keep the jar sealed, to preserve the deed,
to say with our actions:
            this land, this life, this future still belongs to God.
 
The act of placing the deed in a jar is not just about preservation.
            It is about entrusting a story to the future.
 
Jeremiah knows he might not be the one to see the fulfilment
            —but someone will.
 
And his small, faithful act will become part of their story.
 
Some of us carry longings that feel unfulfilled.
            Prayers that haven’t been answered.
            Griefs that have not healed.
 
We wonder if the work we have done
            —our loving, our labouring, our witnessing—
                        has mattered at all.
 
We bury our deeds in jars,
            and wonder if anyone will remember.
 
But the gospel assures us that nothing offered in faith is lost.
 
Maybe you are grieving something that never came to fruition
            —a relationship, a vocation, a vision for life.
 
Maybe, as a church, we look back on times of flourishing
            and wonder if those days are gone forever.
 
But Jeremiah’s deed tells us that memory and hope are not separate things.
            They are the same thing held in tension.
 
We do not need to resolve the tension.
            We are simply called to live within it.
 
To trust that what we place in jars of clay
            —our love, our witness, our longing—is held by God.
 
So keep the deed. Bury it in the jar.
            And know that it is safe.
 
Because one day, someone will find it.
            One day, someone will harvest the field we bought in faith.
 
And when they do,
            they will give thanks for those who dared to hope in dark times.
 
We don’t know if Jeremiah lived to see the fulfilment of the promise.
            Probably not.
 
But the point isn’t whether he returned.
            It’s that he acted as if return were possible.
 
And in doing so, he planted seeds for others.
 
This is the paradox of prophetic ministry:
            it often looks futile in the moment.
 
But it seeds the ground for transformation.
 
Jeremiah bought a field he would never harvest.
            And in John’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples something remarkably similar:
“One sows and another reaps.
            I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour.
Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.” (John 4:37–38)
 
These words come just after
            Jesus has spoken with the Samaritan woman at the well
—a woman who, like Jeremiah,
            dares to hope in the face of exclusion.
 
And Jesus, in turn, offers a vision of divine purpose
            that transcends the boundaries of time and tribe.
 
The disciples are eager to get on with the harvest
            —to see results, to do something visible, something tangible.
 
But Jesus points them deeper.
            He invites them to live in solidarity with the slow, patient work of the Spirit.
 
To enter into the labour of others.
            To join the quiet sowers of seeds.
 
There’s humility in this invitation, as well as hope.
            Because the work of the gospel is not a solo project.
            It is shared. Layered. Collective. Intergenerational.
 
We inherit the fields others have sown in tears.
            We harvest from justice movements long forgotten.
            We draw from wells we did not dig.
 
And still we sow again
            —trusting that even our smallest acts of love and resistance
            become part of a larger harvest in God.
 
Sometimes we see the fruit. Often we do not.
            But still we plant. Still we water. Still we labour.
 
This is what Jesus calls food
            —his sustenance, his very purpose:
“My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete that work.”
 
This is the nourishment of the faithful.
            Not accolades. Not outcomes.
But the deep joy of joining our lives
            to the long, slow redemption of the world.
 
So yes—Jeremiah bought a field.
            And we, too, sow our seeds.
 
In sermons preached and bread broken.
            In protest marches and policy meetings.
 
In songs sung and letters sent
            and prayers whispered at hospital bedsides.
 
We enter into the labour of saints and prophets.
            We plant vineyards we may never drink from.
We work for justice we may never fully see.
 
But Christ is the Lord of the harvest.
            And even now, the fields are ripe.
 
In our work—whether in church, in justice campaigns,
            in quiet acts of care and compassion—
            we may not always see the results.
 
But we do not labour in vain.
            The field is bought. The deed is stored. The promise is alive.
 
One day, houses and fields and vineyards will again be bought in the land.
            And the call to us, friends, is to live that truth now.
 
To buy the field.
To store the deed.
To plant the seed.
 
Jeremiah’s story reminds us that faith is not about escaping exile
            but about finding God in the middle of it.
 
And hope in exile is not a vague feeling,
            but a radical act of commitment.
 
It’s not easy. It’s often costly.
            But it is the gospel-shaped way of living.
 
A cruciform hope that trusts in resurrection
            even while standing by the tomb.
 
We are called, here and now,
            to be a people of field-buying faith.
 
So may we, like Jeremiah, risk absurd hope.
 
May we invest in God’s tomorrow, even in the ruins of today.
 
And may our deeds of love and justice
            be found in jars of clay,
            testifying that the story is not over.
 
Amen.