There is an ancient Chinese curse which goes: "May you live in interesting times."

That certainly describes the life of the prophet Jeremiah. The kingdom of Israel, which later split into the Northern and Southern Kingdoms,

was established during a relatively boring time. There were no major powers building competing empires.

But that all changed about the time Jeremiah was born. To protect itself from its neighbors, including the Northern Kingdom,

the Southern Kingdom of Judah agreed to become a vassal of the rising empire of Assyria.

In subsequent years tiny Judah was tossed back and forth like a poker chip on a table

between the empires of Assyria, Egypt, Babylon and Persia. Part of being a vassal in the ancient world

meant you had to accept the gods of your patron state. There were statues of foreign gods in the Jerusalem temple,

and shrines all over the city and throughout the countryside. The prophet Jeremiah thundered against this widespread idolatry

and preached that since Judah had abandoned God, God would abandon his people and they would be utterly destroyed.

This morning’s scripture reading takes place during the final days  of the destruction of Judah by the Babylonians.

The capital city of Jerusalem was surrounded and under siege. People were starving. Jeremiah was under arrest

because his preaching made him a security threat. At this time God spoke to Jeremiah, and informed him

that his cousin was about to offer to sell a field to him. Sure enough, it happened just as the Lord had told him.

Jeremiah bought the field. He paid the money, and signed and sealed the deed

all in front of witnesses as the custom of the day required. He also instructed that the deed be placed in an earthenware pot,

so it would be preserved for a very long time. To call this a risky investment would be an understatement.

With an army about to swarm over your city walls you would not want to invest in a bunch of green bananas,

let alone real estate. The Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar wasn’t going to honor that deed.

His armies had taken possession of all the land. They were about to take all the people and either kill them

or haul them off into exile. So why make this risky investment? It was one of a series of symbolic acts

that God instructed Jeremiah to perform. Many were to announce the impending doom that was about to befall Judah.

But this one carried a message of hope. Yes, Jerusalem would fall. 

Yes, the kingdom would be destroyed and its people given into the hands of their enemies.

They would pay the price for their sins. But this would not be forever.

It would be seventy years, but the captives would return. Just as God brought the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt,

God would again act to save his people in Babylon. Fields would again be bought and sold in the land God had given them.

The people of Judah were the victims of their own folly, messing with dangerous international forces, and

at the same time abandoning God who was their only protection. We would never be so foolish to continue for decades

down a path that could only lead to destruction. Or maybe we would.

These past weeks Pastor Carolyn has been preaching on a number of social and political issues.

At the same time the contemporary issues Sunday School class  has been studying our United Methodist Social Principles.

A week ago we addressed economics under the leadership of Dick Vietor, who teaches at Harvard Business School.

I was reminded of Jeremiah, warning his people of impending danger, and I was so struck by what was said

I felt bound to share part of it with you this morning. Just as I sure Dick would never presume

to call himself a prophet, like Jeremiah, I would never presume to call myself an economist.

I could never balance my own checkbook without the aid of a computer. So this morning I am way, way outside my comfort zone as a preacher.

When you balance your checkbook every month, you add in all the money you deposited, and then you subtract the amounts for each check you wrote.

If you spent more than you put in that’s bad. If you continue to spend more than you take in eventually you have to borrow money.

If month after month your spending habits are such that you have to borrow more and more month after month,

that’s worse than bad. If it continues it means financial disaster. Now, it is no different for a nation than it is for a household.

As a nation we make stuff like planes and computers and sell them to other countries. Other countries make stuff like cars and clothes and toys

and shoes and TV’s and cameras and appliances and so on and sell them to us. If what goes out is the same or a bit more than what comes in,

that’s good. There’s a balance between what we earn and what we spend. If we spend more on foreign goods than we get from selling our products abroad,

that’s bad. If we do this year after year at an accelerating rate that’s worse than bad. That is a catastrophe in the making.

Twenty-five years ago there was a balance between our exports and foreign imports. By 2000 our annual account balance was over four hundred billion in the hole,

that’s billion with a "b". In 2006 it was double that:  eight hundred and eleven billion for one year.

Now here’s the part that I did not know about until last week:

The countries that have surpluses, the biggest being China, take their surplus American dollars, because they have to do something with them,

and they mostly use them to buy U.S. Treasury bonds and other American investments. When the U.S. government sells a bond, it is exactly the same as if you or I take out a loan.

Someone like a bank gives us money on the understanding that we will pay them back with interest later. Government bonds are the exact same thing.

 If we buy more from other countries than we sell abroad it is the same as if I spend more than I earn. One must borrow to make up the difference.

 And every year our government goes further into debt to pay for our collectively buying more from abroad

than we as a nation sell abroad. This is not sustainable, anymore than you or I can get away

with spending more than we earn year after year. It’s especially bad when it gets to the point

that all you can afford to do is pay off the interest on the loan and not the principle.

It would be bad enough if we were just doing it to ourselves,

but in fact we are doing this to our children, and their children.

In the Sermon on the Mount  Jesus asked if anyone who had a child who asked for bread

would they give a stone, or if they asked for a fish would they give them a snake?

Well, our spending habits are tying a stone around our children’s necks

in the form of foreign debt, and we are throwing our children into a poison snake pit

in the form of interest on those debts. That’s the moral, ethical dimension to this.

Our consumerism is so out of control it is poisoning our children’s future

in a way that is far more toxic than the lead paint in their Chinese-made toys.

There is no quick fix for this. You can’t just say "Buy American" anymore

because so much of our manufacturing is gone overseas. In fact imagine that everything in this room

that was foreign made should suddenly disintegrate. Well, my robe and the choir robes are all made in America

so we’re sitting pretty up here. How are you sitting? You see the problem.

A lot of the things we buy like clothes and electronics are not made in the U.S. anymore.

We can at least try to buy American whenever possible. But more important

is Americans need to spend less and save more. We save a tiny percentage of our yearly earnings,

and its getting worse each year Last year it was down to less than one percent.

We are by far the worse savers in the developed world. This is particularly shameful for us

who claim to be part of the Methodist tradition, given John Wesley’s admonition to earn all you can,

save all you can, give all you can.

My son Ben is twenty-one and entering the workplace next year.

I have been writing him a series of epistles on finances. I began by saying these were the things I wish someone

had told me when I was his age. I will share some of this with you and I hope especially

those of you who are at or near my son’s age will pay heed. Savings you put aside in your twenties

are exponentially more important than what you save in later life.

That’s because it has more time to earn interest and for the interest to earn interest.

The other reason that savings, in particular tax deferred savings, are important to Ben at his age

is that it the only defense he has against the tax man. When you put one hundred dollars

in a 401k through your employer it does not actually cost you one hundred dollars.

About one third of your paycheck gets eaten up by federal and state withholding taxes.

Putting one hundred dollars aside means that money is not taxed this year

so you save thirty three dollars when you pay your taxes.

So a tax-deferred investment of one hundred dollars only costs you sixty-seven dollars.

That’s an instant, guaranteed return on your investment

of thirty-three percent. It is folly to pass up that kind of opportunity.

I told Ben he should make it his ultimate goal to save twenty-five percent of his salary.

That’s the maximum on which the IRS will let you defer taxes.

To the people of my son’s generation  I wish to beg your forgiveness for my generation saddling you

with hundreds of billions of debt every year. We need to atone by changing our habits of spending and saving.

You who are near the beginning of your working years need to save this country from the folly of your elders

by transforming yourselves from a generation of consumers to a generation of savers.

After Jeremiah’s time, God’s people ultimately recovered from their folly,

though it took decades to do it. I believe with God’s help we too can recover,

and as individuals and a nation, be empowered to do great things for God.