Today, March 20, marks the Vernal Equinox: the official first day of Spring.  In our new home, situated near a pond, we have been hearing the chorus of spring peepers: a springtime song I haven’t heard since I was a boy.  I just saw three robins hopping through our front lawn, and in many yards and flowerbeds, the first blossoms of spring are determinedly breaking through the soil.

The significance of this day has been marked by our species from our beginnings. Ancient monuments such as Stonehenge in England

and the Serpent Mound in North America

demonstrate the heroic lengths to which our ancestors were willing to go to calculate and celebrate this day.  Indeed, on the equinox the sun sets directly in the west, producing along Chicago’s east-west streets (although they weren’t designed for this purpose) a phenomenon called #chicagohenge.

The reason for our ancient obsession with the Vernal Equinox is not hard to understand.  After the cold and scarcity of winter, the promise of Spring on its way means that soon the air will be warm again, crops will grow again, lambs and calves will be born again.  The message of the Vernal Equinox has always been hope.

Please note, friends, a vital (and often forgotten) distinction here.  Hope is not optimism–and I say that as an optimist!  Optimism means looking on the bright side, and believing that in the end, everything will turn out right–that things are not as bad as they seem.

Hope, on the other hand, recognizes that things may indeed be as bad as they seem–if not worse.  However, to have hope means to  believe in something larger than the present moment: to have confidence that ultimately, the One in whom we place our trust will prevail.

Jeremiah 29:11 is much reproduced, on posters and in memes:

 I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the Lord; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope.

Often, the prophet’s words are read optimistically: God intends nothing but good for believers, who can therefore rest in the confidence that they will be well and successful and happy.  But the context of this passage is vital to grasping its meaning.  It comes from a letter Jeremiah is writing to the exiles in Babylon, specifically to quash any optimistic expectations they might have had that their exile would be short; that the crisis would pass and they would soon be home again.  The prophet’s advice?

Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they produce.  Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle away.  Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because your future depends on its welfare (Jer 29:5-7).

In short: settle down and make a life for yourselves in Babylon,  because you will never come home again.  For those prophets who promise otherwise, Jeremiah says, the LORD has a grim word:

The LORD of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims: Don’t let the prophets and diviners in your midst mislead you. Don’t pay attention to your dreams.  They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I didn’t send them, declares the LORD (Jer 29:8-9).

So–what in the world does that famous passage in verse 11 mean?  What are those “plans” God has?  If the exiles are indeed doomed to die in exile, how can Jeremiah say that they have “a future filled with hope”?

Here is the immediate context of those words:

The LORD proclaims: When Babylon’s seventy years are up, I will come and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the Lord; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope. When you call me and come and pray to me, I will listen to you. When you search for me, yes, search for me with all your heart, you will find me. I will be present for you, declares the LORD, and I will end your captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have scattered you, and I will bring you home after your long exile, declares the LORD (Jer 29:10-14).

Seventy years is a long time–and biblically significant.  A generation is about forty years.  So usually, when Scripture wants to indicate a long time, the number is forty: forty days and forty nights for the Great Flood, forty years in the wilderness after the exodus–and of course, Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness,  which our forty days (less Sundays) of Lent now recall.

Seventy years ups the ante considerably!  Seventy is, biblically, about as long as a person can expect to live (see Psalm 90:10)–so the point is that none of those addressed by this letter should expect to see God’s plans realized.  Deliverance will come, someday, but for your children or grandchildren–not for you.

Jeremiah performs a sign act underlining this message, involving a field in his hometown of Anathoth (Jer 32).  When word comes from his cousin that the field is for sale, Jeremiah–at the LORD’s direction–buys it: even though Jerusalem is surrounded by the Babylonian army and on the point of collapse, even though Jeremiah himself is in prison!  The prophet directs his friend, the scribe Baruch ben Neriah, to see to it that all is done legally and properly–and then instructs him to place the deeds of sale in a sealed pottery jar “so they will last a long time” (Jer 32:14).  The purchase isn’t for Jeremiah, who will never see the land he has bought–or indeed for any in his family right now!  But someday, the prophet says,

 Fields will be bought, and deeds will be signed, sealed, and witnessed in the land of Benjamin and in the outlying areas of Jerusalem, in the towns of Judah and in the highlands, in the towns of the western foothills and the arid southern plain; for I will bring them back from their captivity, declares the LORD (Jer 32:44).

Someday, Jeremiah realizes, someone in  his family–his great nieces or nephews–will return, and they will need a place to live, and land to farm.  They will find the jar, and know that their long-dead uncle had hope for their future.

I must confess, friends, that I am having a hard time writing right now.  Every day it seems brings another outrage from the powers that be, against the poor, against immigrants, against racial minorities, against transgender persons–often purportedly justified by Christian faith, and by the Bible that I love.  I confess that, optimist that I am, I am not at all optimistic about our immediate future as a nation.  We were amply warned.  In an important article last November, conservative commentator David Brooks wrote,

[W]e are entering a period of white water. . . .  Over the next few years, a plague of disorder will descend upon America, and maybe the world, shaking everything loose. If you hate polarization, just wait until we experience global disorder. But in chaos there’s opportunity for a new society and a new response to the Trumpian political, economic and psychological assault. These are the times that try people’s souls, and we’ll see what we are made of.

I am not at all optimistic–but I do have hope.  My hope is grounded, not in politics or patriotism, but in my faith that God is at work, even when all seems lost.  I am remembering the words of abolitionist Theodore Parker, famously quoted by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and by Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice (Theodore Parker, “Of Justice and the Conscience,” in The Collected Works of Theodore Parker 2, 37-57 [London: Trubner, 1879], 48).

Lent, after all, is leading us on the road to Calvary, where even Jesus will give voice to anguish, despair, and doubt: “’Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Matt 27:46 NRSVue).  Yet that Friday was not the end; Jesus had not been forsaken!  Sunday would see the power of Christ’s resurrection and victory over death itself.  But let us never allow ourselves to forget that the way to Easter leads through Good Friday–or that our crucified Lord has said, 

All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.  All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me and because of the good news will save them (Mark 8:34-35).