2022.09.25 | Buy the Farm
“Buy the Farm”
Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Eden United Church of Christ
Hayward, California
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 25, 2022
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15 (NRSV)
We have an expression in the Midwest that goes like this: “So-and-so just about ‘bought the farm.’”
I polled the Worship Team last week to see how familiar this phrase might be to the congregation. As expected, Pastor Marvin and Ken Rawdon, who are from Tennessee and Iowa respectively, knew what I was talking about, and Pastor Pepper and Jessie Lo, who are from Oregon and Taiwan, looked quizzically at me through their zoom screens.
For the unfamiliar, I’ll explain that “bought the farm” is a phrase used by country people to describe a situation in which a person or pet has faced a mortal danger. For example, a farmer might say, “My dog just about ‘bought the farm today’” when a guy in a semi-truck drove by and the dog got close to the wheels, trying to run him off the place.
The reason this metaphor--”bought the farm”--is used by my people is that they know it takes most farmers and ranchers their entire lives to pay off a mortgage on a piece of land large enough to raise a family, and some aren’t able to do it, on account of droughts, floods, tornadoes, blights, and swings in the price of land, insecticides, fertilizers, equipment, and the commodities market.
For city slickers in the Bay Area, buying a single family home is probably the closest approximation to buying a farm in the Midwest. Even though the housing market has slowed a smidge since its all-time high a year ago, the selling price of a single family home or condo in the Bay Area is still quite high. According to Zillow, the average selling price of a single family home in Hayward last month was $900,000.
II
Given this high-dollar price for real estate in the Bay Area, not all of us are in a position to buy a single family home. Even so, imagining buying real estate in a risky market may provide us with a hint of how the prophet and his audience would have heard God’s charge to Jeremiah to buy his uncle’s land in Anathoth. You see, the farm was not only close to a war zone, it was in an area already conquered and occupied by the Babylonians.
Imagine that: the Northern Kingdom had already been taken by Babylon in 722 BC. The Southern Kingdom was now under siege. Jeremiah was in jail for condemning Judah’s leaders and telling them to surrender, and about God’s punishment for their infidelity.
And, now, God tells Jeremiah to purchase his uncle’s land and go through the proper legal proceedings to do so as a prophetic sign that God will keep His promise to one day redeem Israel and restore the people to their land.
Wow. Just wow. Do you hear how crazy this proposition must have sounded to Jeremiah? and to his audience?
Perhaps the only thing crazier than God’s proposition was the fact that Jeremiah accepted it. He bought his uncle’s farm and paid 100% of the price up front and in cash. That’s right, Jeremiah bought the family farm.
To be sure, it’s one thing to put an offer on a piece of real estate when the market is inflated and inflation is on the rise, but it’s quite another to pay cash for a piece of land that’s located in a war zone that’s already under foreign occupation.
Question: So why would anyone do that?
Answer: He was a believer. Jeremiah trusted God’s promise to redeem his nation, and to one day lead them back home from captivity to rebuild the Temple,the City of Jerusalem, and the nation of Israel.
III
I wonder, have you ever done anything as crazy as what Jeremiah did? Have you ever bought a farm? Have you ever stepped out in faith and done something that others thought was crazy? Have you ever taken the long view, and dared to believe that God would lead you (or you and your family) through the fire? If so, you’re in good company.
This congregation has survived more than one significant threat, and come back stronger than ever.
1) The first and perhaps most persistent challenge that Eden Church has grappled with over the years has been economic. Our members and the organization as a whole have struggled financially at various times.
In the early years of the congregation’s life, and again during the Great Depression and the World Wars, Eden Church struggled mightily to pay the bills and retain members. At our statistically lowest moments, this congregation went through pastors like Chiclets and membership dropped to a couple dozen. This was because most of our members were on bare-bones budgets themselves, and couldn’t afford to pay the pastors, and the pastors, in turn, couldn’t afford to feed their families.
And, yet, by the grace of God, and the sheer grit and tenacity of the Women’s Fellowship’s ability to raise money, and the generosity of a major benefactor here and there, Eden Church pulled through every hard time, and a remnant survived to renew the mission and kept on keeping on serving the Eden Area in the midst of this pandemic.
2) Another series of challenges that Eden Church has endured over the past 158 years have been the result of natural disasters. Former moderator Eleanor Sakerak told me stories about calling out the membership to help pile sandbags along the San Leandro Creek to keep the flood waters away from the parsonage and other church buildings.
Occasionally the water came too fast and furiously, so the Trustees had to evacuate the pastor’s family. Survivors of those floods, like Judy Norberg, the oldest daughter of Eleanor and Dick Norberg, tell stories about John Schaap giving her piggy back rides through the water from the parsonage to higher ground.
As memorable as those floods were, the greater threats to Eden Church came in the form of major earthquakes. The biggies included the 1868 Hayward quake, which registered 7.0 on the Richter scale; the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 which registered 7.8; and the Loma Prieta quake in 1989, which registered 6.9.
During each of these quakes, numerous people lost homes, businesses and jobs, but Pioneer Chapel stood strong. How? It was constructed from old growth redwood trees using a tongue and groove construction technique. Unlike modern buildings made of brick or steel that cracked and bent under seismic stress, the chapel’s redwood frame rocked and rolled and retained its shape.
3) A third challenge that threatened Eden’s life was neither monetary nor physical, it was moral. Some of our Jubilee Members have told me that the congregation nearly split in the 1960s over disagreements about Housing Integration in the Eden Area.
Sadly, during the Post-World War II housing boom in the Bay Area, “redlining” (defining boundaries where bankers and real estate investors will not invest) and racist homeowner association policies were common. True confessions: I understand that we had members on both sides, pro and con, over the Homeowners Codes that denied ownership to African Americans, Latinos, and Jews in the Eden Area.
Some Eden Church members accepted racial segregation as normative, while others abhorred such practices. As a result, some members left because they thought the Church had become too liberal, while others left because they thought the congregation as a whole should have been marching in the streets for Civil Rights.
In the end, those who advocated for fair housing practices prevailed in this congregation and the courts, but the effects of racialized zoning ordinances and redline lending practices have persisted.
IV
So we continue to face challenges, and the work of justice is not done. It has barely begun. There are many opportunities to join in the prophetic work of love and justice right here in the Eden Area right. I’ll share three examples of prophetic witness that come to mind right now:
Saturday, Oct 22, 2022, from 10 am to noon, Eden Church will co-host a Mortgage Relief Seminar about the Urban County Mortgage Assistance Program. This program will be co-sponsored with ACHCD (Alameda County Housing & Community Development) and HERA (Housing and Economic Rights Advocates.) The target audience for this seminar is Spanish-speaking homeowners who have suffered economic losses due to the pandemic. Similar seminars will be hosted in other languages in accordance with public requests and needs. Help us get the word out to those who may benefit from mortgage relief.
Join the conversations in the City of Hayward and Alameda County about the impact of the racialization of zoning and redlining of real estate investments, and about how these practices have negatively affected people of color in the Eden Area. Learn about what action plans are being developed to acknowledge and to start making amends for these sins. For starters, check out the City of Hayward’s website page on the Russell City Reparative Justice Project, and watch for and participate in Supervisor Miley’s next town hall on reparations. For more information, speak with our own Aisha Knowles (whose father grew up in Russell City), or contact Supervisor Nate Miley’s office.
Learn how properties owned by religious groups have been and could be repurposed for affordable housing. There are at least a half-dozen religious properties for sale in the area right now. Any one or all of these could be repurposed for affordable or mixed-income housing for public school teachers, transitional age youth, adults with mobility challenges, low-income seniors, asylum seekers, and the like, while also contributing to small business development. For more information, check out the work of Eden Housing (which Eden Church leaders helped found 50 years ago) and Resources for Community Development (with whom we are developing a housing justice center in the Eden Area.)
V
My prayer for us today is that we may be emboldened to buy a field and plant it, like Jeremiah, so that all may enjoy the fruits of God’s creation. Amen.