A down payment on the future

A Down Payment On The Future

A Down Payment On The Future

Jubilee Preaching Aid for September 28, 2025

This week is all about money. The liberation present in the Year of the Lord’s Favour, God’s Jubilee, is bigger than just questions of money, but the passages appointed for today absolutely demand that we consider the Christian’s relationship with money. In Jeremiah, we hear about the right of redemption, who may purchase what land. The connection between money and land is a crucial one for we who live on stolen land to explore. 1 Timothy provides us with the famous, oft-misquoted line declaring that “love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” And Jesus tells the story of a rich man who ignored the pain of the poor during this mortal life, and what happened to him afterward.

The passages invite deep wrestling for those of us committed to Jubilee. They do not provide us with tidy answers or pithy slogans. While it may be tempting to gesture vaguely in their direction while shouting, “see? Capitalism bad!” there is much more to be gleaned for the careful reader.

In Jeremiah, the word of the Lord comes to declare God’s intent “to provide a future beyond the present judgment.”[1] Jeremiah buys a field from his uncle for which he has the right of redemption spelled out in Leviticus. God’s word once again requires prophetic performance, like Ezekiel laying on one side for over a year, or cooking his food over cow dung. In this instance, God requires his prophet to place a literal down payment on the future, to bet that the future will be better than the past. This act requires trust and hope that the “tendency of the Lord of Israel and the creator of the universe is toward promising and keeping promises.”[2]

To live a life of Jubilee is to make the same bet. When we place our own down payments on the future, when we put our own trust in God by laying our money on the line, we declare that we trust God more than we trust money. We declare that our future is in God’s hands, rather than ours, and we trust God’s promise that God will provide a future beyond any present difficulties.

It is difficult to live with this kind of trust in God’s radical reversal of the present reality. The preacher must handle this exegesis with care, knowing her congregation’s financial status. Wealthy congregations may find this word harder to hear, but it may be more necessary for them. Congregations where there are more in material-need may find it easier to trust God than money, but may also wonder why the rich continue to prosper and how long until the Lord of Israel and the creator of the universe will keep this promise and make good on our down payment. Regardless of context, exhorting Christians to trust God more than money remains our calling. Preachers seeking to build up this theme of trust will find more support in the Psalm.

Turning to the New Testament, we find two all-time great selections to help us think about a Christian relationship with God, our neighbours, and money. Indeed, one of the most misquoted lines in all Scripture is that “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” Usually we hear this as “money is the root of all evil.” But that is not what the author of this letter to Timothy is saying. Money itself is neutral, like all other inanimate objects. What is good or evil is the use it’s put to. Love of money, or let’s call it greed, can be compared to an addiction and like all addictions and idolatries it can lead to all kinds of evil.

Jubilee is about freedom, always, for the rich as well as the poor. Freedom for those addicted to money looks like taking money away from them. When the rich do not distribute their resources well, then it is good and proper to take that wealth they don’t know what to do with for the common good of humanity. A world that practices Jubilee prevents the amassing of huge, unequal amounts of wealth, and when such hoards do appear, it returns those goods to the land, to the original owners, and restores balance that is lifegiving for all.

The Gospel is perhaps the harshest of the readings appointed for today. We hear little of freedom or mercy for the rich man (traditionally called Dives). This man, who had astronomical levels of wealth that enabled him to eat well every day of his life, had no mercy for Lazarus who sat by his front gate. This parable hits particularly deeply for me, as my parish is in a season when many Lazarus’s sit by our front gate, resting in the shade for a moment, charging their phones, enjoying a cigarette in peace. The neighbours would prefer we take the Dives route: ignore them, or better still, chase them away. As Robert Farrar Capon writes, “their program for turning earth back into Eden has consistently been to shun the sick, to lock the poor in ghettos, to disenfranchise those whose skin was the wrong color, and to exterminate those whose religion was inconvenient.”[3]

But Jesus isn’t about that. Jesus doesn’t revive corpses to the same old scheme of self-improvement, Capon continues. Jesus resurrects us to new life, to a new world order, to a completely new way of being. And the reason that Dives seems to receive little mercy is that he is still trapped in this old way of thinking. The chasm between Abraham’s bosom and his place of torment can only be crossed by the cross, by the life of God laid down to break apart all divisions, all inequalities. By Jubilee, in other words. The way forward for Dives is not to double down on the dead old way but to embrace the freedom of this new world order, where those whom society rejected are held tightly in Abraham’s arms. Instead, we are invited to put our down payment on the future that God promises to bring, where the last shall be first and the first shall be last. For the One who promises will keep his promises, we can trust.

Jordan Haynie Ware serves as Archdeacon for Justice for the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton and Rector of Good Shepherd in north Edmonton. She is the author of The Ultimate Quest: A Geek’s Guide to Church, and co-hosted the Two Feminists Annotate series of podcasts.

[1]     Patrick D. Miller, “Jeremiah,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible: General Articles & Introduction, Commentary, & Reflections for Each Book of the Bible including the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books in Twelve Volumes (Volume VI), edited by Leander E. Keck et. al., Abingdon Press, 2001, pp. 819-823.

[2]     Miller, ibid.

[3]     Robert Farrar Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 310-316.