First Presbyterian Church, Enid, 9/28/25
Good morning. It’s great to be with you all. As some of you know, my sister Diane and I grew up going to church here at First Presbyterian. In junior high my buddies and I usually sat up there in the balcony during the service. Sunday School and youth group were an important part of my life. This church was my spiritual home for my first 18 years. So I’m blessed and honored to be asked to bring the message today.
In this lectionary passage from Jeremiah, Judea is occupied militarily by the Babylonians. Jerusalem is under siege and about to be destroyed. Jeremiah is imprisoned in a dungeon in the King’s palace. He had been prophesying Jerusalem’s capture and telling the people not to resist the Babylonian conquest.
While Jeremiah is in jail, God commands him to buy a piece of land, and have the deed put in a safe place. By any rational measure, this was a ridiculous purchase. Jeremiah knows that the Babylonians will occupy all Judea and Jerusalem, and that the land he’s buying is worthless. He seems to be wasting his money, which he probably needed for his daily needs in jail. But he trusted God’s word and acted in faith.
Jeremiah’s land purchase was a symbolic action signifying hope. “For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says,” he prophesies. “Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land.” Jeremiah’s purchase was a witness that the Israelites had a future. That God still loved them and would restore their nation.
We learn a lot about hope from this passage. That our hope doesn’t arise from circumstances but from God’s faithfulness. And that hope involves action, not just feelings. Jeremiah expressed his hope by doing something, by buying a piece of apparently worthless land. Likewise, for us, our hopeful actions may seem like small things, even foolish things, but they are the seeds of a better world.
Our everyday lives provide many opportunities to invest in a future that we don’t yet see: Through our prayers. By seeking to live in ways that please God. By learning to love others unselfishly. By bringing whatever comfort and healing we can offer amidst the world’s pain.
And in a world of pervasive conflicts – both global and personal – one of the most important investments in hope we can make is learning to be reconcilers and peacemakers.
In the early 1990s my family and I lived in Mexico City doing mission work. We got word that a neighbor was angry with us. We weren’t sure why, but thought it probably had to do with our rambunctious 11-year old twin boys. This was a serious matter because the neighborhood was close knit and we were Americans, foreigners, who were representing our mission agency.
My wife Diana said, “let’s bake them some cookies.” So we did and took a plate of cookies to the neighbor and apologized for offending her and her family. This kind of effort doesn’t always succeed, of course. Like all investments, it’s a risk. But we acted in the hope for a repaired relationship. And our neighbor graciously forgave us. By God’s grace, peace was achieved. Asking for forgiveness, offering forgiveness, and receiving forgiveness: these are powerful investments in hope.
Yet forgiving someone can be one of the hardest things we ever do and the most miraculous. You may know about the amazing life of Corrie ten Boom. During Nazi control of Holland during WWII she and other family members were imprisoned in a concentration camp because of hiding Jews in their house and for helping hundreds of others escape to safe places. Her father and sister died in the camps.
After the end of the war, Corrie traveled around the world talking about her experiences and of God’s faithfulness in the worst of times. Once after speaking to a group on forgiveness a man came up to her and told her how much her message meant to him. How God had forgiven him and transformed his life. She recognized him as one of the cruelest guards in her prison.
As he held out his hand to shake hers, Corrie felt only hatred. She couldn’t shake his hand. But she thought, if I can only just lift my hand a little toward his, even an inch, perhaps God will help me. As she made that small effort, that tiny investment in hope, the Holy Spirit welled up within her and filled her heart with love. She embraced him, and holding each other, they wept together for God’s amazing grace.
God can take our small investments, our strained, imperfect efforts, lifting our hand even just an inch, and make something wonderful from them.
Investing in hope for our country is especially important today. A group of five of us friends since childhood get together for a guys retreat every couple of years in a different city. We’ve been doing this for more than twenty years. Three of us grew up here at First Presbyterian: Brad Johnston, Pat Mickle and me.
Playing golf is a major activity, along with sharing memories of good times and cherished friends. But we also have serious discussions about politics and religion. The remarkable thing is that the five of us have very different views. Not just diverse but contrasting.
We five are perhaps a microcosm of America’s wide political divide. Each of us is strongly committed to our convictions. And we don’t dilute our opinions for the sake of an easy conversations. We have exchanges of views that are honest and passionate, and sometimes tense, but always civil.
It might be safer to declare such discussions off limits at our gatherings. Yet as consequential as the issues are, our friendship is strong enough to handle our differences with mutual respect and affection. I’m sure this has only been possible because of God’s presence and grace.
In our own small way, our group of friends is making an investment in hope for our country’s future, for reconciliation across our differences. Maybe each of us goes from our times together more able to talk graciously with others with whom we differ. So that perhaps the circle keeps expanding.
Maybe such conversations are more common than I think. I hope so. But I’ve known friendships ended over political differences, and families where tensions over politics run almost to the breaking point. Our country is more divided today than since the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War.
Certainly, learning to talk together isn’t going to solve all our problems as a nation. The issues that divide us are serious and weighty. The roots of our divisions are deep and complex. And the gulf between us seems vast. But while some on both sides may act from malign motives, the great majority of Americans are good-hearted and well-meaning. And like Jeremiah we can look beyond the current bleak circumstances.
Learning to talk to each other is a beginning, a place to start, an investment in hope. As prominent Presbyterian pastor Timothy Keller wrote, “If our culture cannot form people who speak with both conviction and empathy across deep differences, then it becomes even more important for the church to produce such people.”
We are called by Jesus to be peacemakers, and to set an example for the nations. If not us, then who? if not now, then when?
Telling this story here today makes me think that perhaps the Christian formation Brad, Pat and I received as children here at First Presbyterian was an investment in hope by this church that has helped make it possible for our group of friends to talk together, as Rev. Keller said, with both conviction and empathy.
The greatest work of reconciliation and peacemaking is of course the Good News of Jesus Christ. Making peace across deep divisions is God’s own work. God coming among us as Jesus is God’s loving investment in hope for humanity: The hope of reconciliation with God and with neighbor. The hope of lives renewed and transformed in love. The hope of a world made new.
Jesus is God’s risky investment in us in love. We follow his example by learning, albeit in fits and starts, to love as Jesus loves. None of us is perfect. We all struggle and fall short of what we would like to be. But as we let him, God will make our everyday lives investments in hope for a better, kinder, and more compassionate world.
And as Jesus assures us, as we learn to be peacemakers, we shall be called children of God.