Two
Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday September 28, 2025
Scripture: Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
I’m probably going to break some preaching rule somewhere, but this week I want
to give you a peek into how sermons are written – a bit like getting a glimpse
behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.
Though, I guess, there are many different ways to write a sermon, but I
want to tell you about one method.
The Four Pages of the Sermon technique was developed by Paul Scott Wilson, a
United Church preaching professor in Toronto, and this technique has been
adopted across denominations and around the world. He has the preacher start with four pieces of
paper – four literal pieces of paper – on the desk in front of you. At the top of page 1 you write “The Trouble
in the Text.” At the top of page 2 you write “The Trouble in the World.” At the
top of page 3 you write “The Good News in the Text.” And then you can probably guess what you
write at the top of page 4 – “The Good News in the World.” The preacher then starts brainstorming
different ideas under each of these four headings, and once the four pages are
filled, you can shuffle them around to figure out what order of pages makes
sense for this sermon – some weeks, it makes sense to start with page 2, then
page 4, then page 3, then page 1.
Another week you might want to go page 1, page 3, page 2, page 4. And then once you have your pages in order,
the sermon has essentially written itself!
I say all this, because I think that this week’s story from Jeremiah fits
really nicely into the Four Pages of the Sermon technique.
Let’s start with page 1 – the Trouble in the Text. On the surface, this story might look like a
complicated real estate transaction.
Jeremiah’s relative has a field for sale. God tells Jeremiah to buy the field. Jeremiah pays 17 shekels of silver for the
field. One copy of the deed is sealed up
for posterity, and the other copy of the deed is left accessible for public
scrutiny. Where is the trouble in this
story, other than the risk of getting bored to death by the details of property
law in ancient Judah?
The trouble in the text is actually hinted at in the beginning of the
story. Verse 2 reads: “At that time, the army of the king of
Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and the prophet Jeremiah was confined in the
court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah.” So we have a double-whammy of trouble
here. Jeremiah has been imprisoned by
the king, likely for speaking truth to power, for pointing out to the king all
of the ways that the king has led the people away from God’s way. But even more than that, the city is under
siege.
At this point in the history of the people of ancient Israel and Judah, they
had entered the Promised Land – the land promised to their ancestors – under
the leadership of Moses, after spending 40 years in the wilderness, after
leaving slavery in Egypt. But as our
regular bible study people will attest, things didn’t stay good for long once
they were in the Promised Land.
Gradually, under poor leadership, they turned away from God, and then
things really fell apart for them. The
northern kingdom of Israel had fallen to the Assyrian Empire’s army, and the
people had been deported, or had fled for refuge to Jerusalem in the southern
kingdom of Judah. And now that southern
kingdom of Judah was under attack by the army of the Babylonian Empire. The city of Jerusalem was under siege with no
one able to enter or leave, with the hopes of starving the people of Jerusalem
into surrender.
And from our perspective almost 3000 years later, we know that the strategy
succeeded. Jerusalem did fall to the
Babylonian army. The temple, the literal
home of God is going to be destroyed. The people are going to be carried off
into exile. The world as they know it is
about to crumble to pieces around them.
And so I would name the trouble in the text as the existential threat to the
people that the Babylonian army is posing to them. Their very existence is
being threatened.
So that is page 1 of our sermon – the trouble in the text. Moving on to page 2, titled The Trouble in
the World, is there any threat in our world today that might hold some
parallels to the existential threat in the story?
I don’t know about you, but for me, when I think of the things in the world
that cause me to feel existential dread, the threat of climate change is pretty
near the top of my list. To me, that is
the thing in the world today that has the most potential to demolish our very
existence on this planet. Rising sea
levels used to be viewed as the most dangerous part of climate change, and it
still is to people who live close to sea level around the world, but I see the
most pressing threat these days being the shifting weather patterns. Floods where there were never floods
before. Droughts and wildfires in places
that were never threatened before.
Farmers struggling to grow food under these changed weather patterns,
with the associated threat of hunger and starvation around the world.
When I think about the future of the world – the world that my niece and
nephews and their children are going to inherit – these are the sorts of things
that fill the pit of my stomach with dread. Our existence, just like the
existence of the people of ancient Jerusalem, is being threatened by something
that we don’t have control over.
So that is page 2 of our sermon. We’ve
covered the problem in the text and the problem in the world. Let’s move on to the good news half of our
sermon!
Page 3 of our sermon is titled The Good News in the Text. In our story from Jeremiah, where is the good
news? To me, the whole story about
Jeremiah buying the field, that tedious real estate transaction, is the good
news. On the surface, it makes no sense
at all – after all, who in their right mind would buy a piece of land when the
city is about to fall to a foreign army?
In a very short time, that land is likely going to be worthless, as the
invading army is about to take over and confiscate all of the land in the
region. So why does Jeremiah buy this
field?
He buys the field because God told him to do so. Jeremiah, as a prophet, was a mouthpiece for
God. He pointed people back to God and
towards God’s way of doing things. But
Jeremiah was a prophet in more than his words – when you read his story, he was
a prophet in his actions too, and did a lot of crazy things to get people’s
attention, and then re-direct their attention towards God. And buying this field was a prophetic act.
Because right at the end of our story, God says, through Jeremiah, “For thus
says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:
Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”
Jeremiah is buying this field as a sign of hope. Yes, the disaster is going to come, but that
isn’t the end of the story because God is still in charge. Even though the field is going to fall into
the hands of the invaders, a time will come when it will be valuable again, and
ordinary real estate transactions will be able to happen.
And from our perspective, a couple of millennia in the future, we know that
this was true. The siege is going to end
when Jerusalem falls to the Babylonian army, the temple is going to be
destroyed, the people are going to be carried away into exile, but that isn’t
the end of the story. 70 years are going
to have to pass in exile, two full generations, but eventually the people will
be allowed to return to Jerusalem, they will be able to rebuild the temple, and
houses, fields, and vineyards will once again be bought and sold in the land.
Hope is a funny thing, because it makes no sense in the present moment. Hope is the thing that kicks in when the
world is falling to pieces around us, and reminds us that this isn’t the end of
the story. Hope is irrational, but hope
is a tangible thing, because it lets us continue on, it frees us from the
existential dread so that we can continue to be God’s agents in the world.
And hope is the pattern through the whole biblical story. The story doesn’t end with slavery in Egypt –
the story continues until the people reach freedom in the promised land. Exile in Babylon is followed by restoration
to the land. The story doesn’t end on
Good Friday with the crucifixion, but continues on to Easter and resurrection.
So what about page 4 of our sermon?
We’ve seen the problem in the text, the problem in the world, and the
good news in the text. What about the
good news in the world? Where can we
find parallel good news in a world bogged down by existential dread over
climate change?
I think that it is maybe up to all of us to write that page 4 in our own
lives. Jeremiah bought a field as an act
of trust, as an act of hope. Even though
he wouldn’t live to see the time 70 years later when the land would be worth
something again, he trusted in God when God said that this time would come.
What action can we do to put our trust in God’s future?
In a moment, we’re going to be singing the hymn “This is God’s Wondrous World,”
and in verse 3, we’ll be singing the very powerful line, “O let me ne’er
forget, that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.”
I’m reminded of the quote attributed to Martin Luther, the 16th
Century theologian who was one of the driving forces behind the Protestant
Reformation. When he was asked what he
would do if he knew that the world was ending tomorrow, his answer was, “I
would plant an apple tree today.”
When we trust that God has the whole world, our past, our present, and our
future, in their hands, we can be freed from fear and freed to act as if that
future was already here. We can buy a
field. We can plant an apple tree. We can drop a donation off at the food
bank. We can make tomato sauce from the
tomatoes we grew in our garden this summer.
We can volunteer at the local school, knowing that these children will
grow up in a world we are helping to create.
If we let ourselves fall into despair, or be trapped by the dread, we become
paralyzed, unable to act because anything we do doesn’t matter anyways. But when we have hope – remembering that hope
doesn’t make any sense in the present moment – then we are freed for action.
So I’m going to leave you to ponder that question – how are you going to write
page 4 of our sermon this week? What are
you going to do in the world today that signals the hope that God has given to
you to carry?
And may God strengthen the hope within each one of us, and empower us to act on
that hope. Amen.
Image: “Regrowth” by Q Family on flickr
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