Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
1 Timothy 6:6-19
Howard W. Roberts
Glenview Community Church
September 30, 2007
           
How would you like a dashboard device for your car that changes red lights to green at the touch of a button?  Now, actually such a device is available. 
           
That’s great news isn’t it, because we hate to wait?  Whether we’re standing in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles, being put on hold by customer service, or sitting at a red light, we have a tough time remaining relaxed until our turn finally comes. Some people even take the approach of Albert Einstein and observe that time itself is relative — they are convinced that the clock in a doctor’s office waiting room actually gets slower ... and slower ... and slower ... as their waiting time gets longer and longer.
           
Well, there may be nothing we can do about the Department of Motor Vehicles, customer service lines and doctor’s office waiting rooms. But red light delays are now being shortened by a high-tech tool.
          
A dashboard device has been put on the market that changes traffic lights from red to green at the touch of a button. According to The Washington Post, fire and rescue vehicles have had access to such equipment for years, but only recently have the devices become available to ordinary motorists.
           
Check it out. You’re running late for an appointment, and the light in front of you turns from yellow to red. Instead of having to sit around sucking exhaust fumes, you simply punch a little button and give yourself permission to go. Thanks to advances in technology, you no longer have to feel hate while you wait.
           
Unfortunately, such traffic light switchers are a bad idea. Interfering with traffic in an intersection is illegal in most states, and the random switching of signals is bound to create significant safety problems. “Every driver I know would like to have that power,” says Sally Greenberg of Consumers’ Union, “but these devices could create serious safety hazards, not to mention the havoc they’d create at busy intersections where lights are carefully synchronized.”
           
I don’t know about you but I don’t wait very well.  And yet, there are times and situations when there is nothing we can do but wait.  Cubs fans have had to wait, wait to get into the world series, wait to win a world series.  I really liked the attitude expressed in 2003 when the Cubs got so close but didn’t make it and the fans had to continue to wait.  George Vecsey of The New York Times wrote that Chicago fans can recite “the familiar litany of disaster, and on occasion wear T-shirts which proudly announce, ‘Any Team Can Have a Bad Century.” But that may all change this very year!
           
The traffic light problem is pertinent because the people of Jerusalem in our text feel as though they’re sitting — waiting — at a huge red light in their national, corporate, life. The army of the king of Babylon has surrounded the city of Jerusalem, and the people within the walls are desperate for relief. Some want God to remove the Babylonian army, some want to take up arms and fight, while still others want to find a way to escape. The army of Babylon is a huge, glaring red light — and it doesn’t look like it is ever going to change.
           
Finally, a message from God comes to the prophet Jeremiah, but it doesn’t tell him how to build a traffic light switcher. Instead, God orders Jeremiah to buy a field in Anathoth, the town of his birth, outside the city of Jerusalem.  God promises Jeremiah that the light is going to change, but not for a long, long time. God wants the prophet to wait patiently for the green light, wait through the conquest of Jerusalem and the devastation of Anathoth, wait until that time when the exile in Babylon is over and people will be able to return and repopulate the land. “For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel,” reports Jeremiah: “Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land” (32:15).
           
What a strange command this is: to buy a piece of land in a town that is about to be destroyed by an invading army. The traffic light may be red, but God tells Jeremiah that he doesn’t have to feel stuck — he can use that time of captivity to take an action that shows his complete faith in God.
           
The message of this passage is that there are lots of red lights in life and we have to deal with them.  However, God is continually working with us and with the red lights in our lives to give us a way to go, even when life seems to say “Stop!”
           
So Jeremiah buys the field at Anathoth, and carefully weighs out the money — 17 shekels of silver. He signs the deed, seals it, gets the proper witnesses, and then orders that the papers be put in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last for a long, long time (vv. 9-14). Jeremiah is prepared to wait for the light to change, wait as long as it takes. He trusts that God is going to create a better future for the people of Israel, but it’s not going to happen as quickly as the people would like. The people grabbed onto the false hope that change was happening immediately when the siege on Jerusalem was lifted for awhile.  They were devastated when the lifted siege did not last.  Jeremiah continued to have hope because his hope rested in God and what God would seek to do with people rather than resting his hope in the whims and wishes of a military leader.  The better future usually does not happen as quickly as we expect.
           
I In The Fine Art of Political Wit, Leon Harris recounts that after the end of World War I, French general Louis Lyautey requested that his gardener plant a particular kind of tree on his property. The gardener protested that the tree would take nearly a century to reach maturity because it grew so slowly. “In that case there is no time to lose!” declared the general. “Plant it this afternoon!”
           
What are we supposed to do when life gives us a red light?  I suspect many of us are sitting at a red light in our lives right now.  What are the actions that we can take when we are feeling stuck in our jobs, our schools, our communities, our social circles, our relationships? Each of us is going to feel trapped from time to time, put on hold by some omnipotent operator, but that doesn’t mean that we cannot make a move toward a better future. A great deal of good can be done while we are sitting at life’s traffic light.
           
One possibility is that we make a down payment on the future, as Jeremiah does when he buys the field in Anathoth. There are times when our faithfulness to God doesn’t appear to be a good investment, but it always is. Despite the fact that Anathoth is about to be burned and destroyed, Jeremiah puts his hard-earned money into it. He trusts that God will restore the fortunes of his chosen people, and will make their land valuable once again.
           
My great uncle was a professional truck driver.  He had owned a fleet of trucks.  He developed cancer.  He had surgery.  He had radiation treatments.  These efforts slowed the spread of cancer but did not stop it.  During the last year of his life he bought a new pick up truck.  Why would he do that?  It was his way of making a down payment on the future.  He knew he was not going to live long enough to get his money’s worth out of that truck but he knew whatever time he had left he was going to enjoy making his last trips in a new truck.  It enlivened his hope to make a down payment on the future.
          
For us, this down payment could mean working with integrity in a dead-end job, trusting that God will channel our best efforts to a positive end. It could mean being faithful to a spouse, trusting that God will lead long-term partners to deeper levels of intimacy. It could mean being generous in our charitable giving, trusting that God will use our gifts to accomplish good that we cannot see ... or even imagine.
           
“If I have learned anything from more than 70 years of living, it is that life is going to surprise me,” says Methodist pastor and Protestant Hour preacher Thomas Lane Butts. Rarely is the future in the form that we expect it to be. “And so I do the best I can,” says Butts. “I may not be able to predict what my particular generosity may do, but it is a down payment toward what God is going to do, and that I can trust.”
           
We never know what God is able to do with the resources we place at God’s disposal.  There have been times when what seemed to be impossibilities were turned into possibilities.  Seldom does it happen as rapidly as we expect or want.  After buying the field, Jeremiah prays to the Lord, saying: “Ah Lord GOD! It is you who made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you” (v. 17).
           
We can find encouragement in the efforts of William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was a member of the English Parliament two centuries ago, and in the course of his life he became convinced that the slave trade was contrary to God’s will. He committed himself to abolition, and saw his mission in life as the suppression of the slave trade.
           
But change came slowly ... painfully slowly. Wilberforce introduced a 12-point motion against the slave trade in May of 1788. The motion was defeated. Planters, businessmen, ship owners, traditionalists and even English royalty opposed his motion, seeing abolitionists like Wilberforce as dangerous radicals.
           
But Wilberforce refused to yield, introducing another anti-slave bill in 1791. It, too, was rejected. Another defeat followed in 1792. And in 1793. Others still in 1797, 1798 and 1799. And in 1804 and 1805.   
           
It seemed like the light was never going to change. But gradually the public came to support the abolition of slavery, and in 1806 Parliament abolished the slave trade throughout the British Empire. Wilberforce wept with joy. It took until 1833 to free all the slaves in the Empire, but Wilberforce remained committed to his cause, eliminating the greatest evil of his day by using the tools of faith, politics and persistence.
           
Great good can be done, even when the traffic light seems to be stuck on red. Finally, we can remember that God is always working to turn evil into good, and death into new life. Over the course of our lives, we will certainly experience pain and suffering, but punishment and defeat are never the last words in our story.  
           
I It is natural for us to want to control our destinies, which is why a high-tech traffic light switcher is bound to be so attractive to us. But as people of faith, we are challenged to allow God to shape our futures with us, and this requires waiting for God’s guidance with open hearts and receptive minds. “To wait open-endedly is an enormously radical attitude toward life,” said Henri J. M. Nouwen. “The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.”
           
“Goal-driven” is a phrase that crops up on personnel evaluations all the time — and it’s generally considered a positive thing. We admire people who set goals and proceed toward them without deviation. But having our eyes on a goal may keep us from seeing where we actually are and where God wants us to be; we become impatient with delay, unforgiving of what seem like impediments in “our” paths.
           
Isaac Asimov’s Book of Facts tells a story from the childhood of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. He was 9 years old when he went for a walk in the snow with his uncle. When they got to the end of a field, his uncle stopped him and made him look back over their footsteps in the snow.
           
“Notice how your tracks wander aimlessly from the fence to the cattle to the woods and back again,” he said. “And see how my tracks aim directly to my goal. There is an important lesson in that.”
           
Years later Wright remarked that this experience had had a profound influence on his philosophy of life. “I determined right then not to miss most things in life, as my uncle had!”
           
The challenge before us is to find a way to live with red traffic lights. This means turning off our traffic light switchers, and letting go of our craving for control. Once our hands are off the switchers, we can invest in what God is doing, move ahead with faith and persistence, and gain a clearer picture of living into the future.  As Jeremiah did, as my uncle did, and as William Wilberforce, may we deal with the red traffic lights in our lives by making a down payment on the future.