Sept 29 Sermon Notes Jeremiah 32

September 29 Jer.32

For years, I have heard people speak of being on a fixed income. People who say it rarely mention if it is a sufficient fixed income. Part of the quality of retirement income emerges from decisions taken years before about investments, and if one can afford making them or not. Many of us have a hard time peering into the future and adopt a pay as you go strategy until it is too late to affect retirement benefits in a real way.Then again, the future has a way of disrupting our best plans.

Jer 32 has us notice the details in a life. The deed description is a law school course in ancient land contracts. v. 15 see its word of promise. Basic things should be done reverently and well, decently and in order, even imprisoned, the document is signed, sealed, and delivered to imagine a new future.God as a practical reality.We often say that relgion is impractical.Chesterton asked if hope was important only in hopeless situations, both unreasonable and indispensible.thew deed was held for safdekeeping.God continues to be at work.Jeremiah literally obught into the God project.so much of what i s called prractical is faddish and destined for the scrapheap.Clements calls the purchas a”sacramental sign of hope” (Int.series:193).

On NPR I heard an interview with a writer on the changes in our view of our life story. carrie Newcomer is going to do a spirituality workshop on charting our life story when she visits. A lot of us remember toffler’s book, Future Shock. this new book argues that our lives are being condensed into a present tense all of the time, so .Douglas Rushkoff titled his new work, Present Shock. Maybe the interest in end times, apocalyptic scenarios among religious and secular groups is an attempt to come to grips with a world of no future, only a timeless present.On the other hand, jeremiah and Jesus are presenting alternative forms of hte futre. Jeremiah is imagining a time when people will be returned to life in Israel after the destruction of temple and government. He is imagining the possibility of restoration and hope.

It says something noteworthy that our views of the future are often dystopian instead of utopina, frightful instead of hopeful. think of the difference between Star Trek’s future and the zombie-laden catastrophe menace of our time.Futurist movies now routinely show an Earth decaying at best and ruined at worst.the future seems to possess more dread than hope.

Every once in a while, people tell me that they think that all the Presbyterian churches should have moved near the UCC church. I don;t know all of the reasons why we decided to stay in town, but I would certainly guess that the sheer beauty of this sanctuary and chapel had something to do with it. Perhaps a noble desire to serve this area was part of it as well. All over the country, the PCUSA is in decline. All over the country, we represent graying congregations, and perhaps our churches will increasingly become museum pieces, and I pray that they do not beocme the ruined cathedrals of parts of the East Coast. Some of us could prize this magnificent structure so much that we are in danger of seeing it as a religious curio cabinet. 25 years ago, this chruch made a concerted and brave effort to rebuild after a devastating fire and stay put. In terms of a cold-eyed rational approach to the future, it fell short. with jeremiah, it was a decision to follow the call of god to bloom where we are planted, a place to stake a futre.