The Salmon Are Running!

There was a death along the Grand River this Wednesday past.  I was an eye witness. She put up a good fight. She fought hard. Thirty-minutes worth of determined resistance. Maybe it was the journey from the waters of her Lake Michigan habitat that tired her out even before she went for the fisherman’s bait. It was an amazing battle, fish against man. Not exactly a Hemingway-esque struggle on par with the Old Man and the Sea, but a classic struggle nonetheless -- a salmon in the Grand River and a teenage boy leaning over the railing of the Bridge Street bridge.

I was cheering for the kid all the way, the same way I cheered for the Cleveland Indians to eliminate the New York Yankees.  “Stay with her!” I yelled.  “Don’t let her get away! Hang in there!” His fiberglass fishing pole was bent like an inverted “U.”  The fishing line was straight and taut as it disappeared into the river’s current.  Early on, the salmon was clearly in control of the situation.  Literally, she pulled the kid from the east end of the bridge, to the middle of the bridge, and then from the middle of the bridge to the west end of the bridge.

When the salmon swam with the current in a southerly direction, it pulled the kid down the west embankment of the Grand River, forcing him to run through shrubbery and jump over rocks.  He stumbled and fell, scraping his knee, then finally regained his footing and stopped at the water’s edge.

There he began to take control, reeling in that powerful salmon.   Slowly.  Methodically. Not too fast.  Not overanxious.  Just the right tension in the line.  Just the right pace. It was a beautiful sight.  This teenage angler knew what he was doing, and the fish -- all thirty-inches of fresh water, Lake Michigan salmon, I think a steelhead -- seemed to know, as if instinctively, that it was time to yield.

When he finally reeled her in, and the salmon flopped on the flat rock, I gave the kid a thumbs up. Then he said to me, “Watch this.” With two fingers under the gill, he hoisted his prized catch in the air, and then I witnessed something I had never before seen.  All her eggs dropped from her bloated belly.  Orange eggs.  Bright, translucent orange eggs, each one bigger than a pea and smaller than a marble.  First one fell to the cement landing, then another, and another. Then ten, then twenty, then forty, then sixty, then seventy. A cascade of luminous eggs, each one sticking to the cement platform.

When the rainfall of eggs stopped, the kid dropped the exhausted fish to the cement, and I have to admit, I wasn’t at all prepared for what he did next. He proceeded to stomp on each orange egg with his boot as if stamping out burning embers.  And then, as if harboring a grudge for having fallen down the embankment, he finished the job by stomping once and stomping hard on the salmon’s head.  Walking away, leaving his catch to rot, he muttered triumphantly, “Fishwich!”

It occurred to me, as I stood speechless and dumbfounded on the Bridge Street bridge that I had been rooting for the wrong contestant. 

With a belly full of eggs, the female salmon is by nature a hopeful creature. Swimming miles and miles.  Upstream against the current.  Conquering rapids, jumping up waterfalls and negotiating fish ladders.  If it completes the journey, and there is no guarantee that she will, she lays her eggs, and then she dies.

I don’t know if the prophet Jeremiah ever fished, but he was certainly as hopeful as any

female salmon to swim up the Grand River. The most hopeful, the most outrageous act to which this prophet commits himself is recorded the 32^nd chapter of the book that bears his name.  Jeremiah enters into a real estate transaction.  Jeremiah buys a plot of land.  He weighs out seventeen pieces of silver for a field in the town of Anathoth, a mere three miles north of Jerusalem.  He signs a legal agreement, has it publicly recorded at the county clerk’s office.  He purchases a patch of earth in the besieged village of Anathoth.

What made this act both hopeful and outrageous was the fact that at the time Jeremiah was in prison, actually more like house-arrest.  Branded as a traitor, and told he was unpatriotic, he found himself with limited freedoms and limitless restrictions, and he had no idea when, if ever, he would be a free man again.  And what does he do while under house arrest?  He purchases a field in the town of Anathoth.

If that wasn’t irrational enough, add this factor to his maddening behavior.  The land he purchased was currently occupied by the Babylonian army.  The enemy was knocking on the door and exerting a choke-hold siege around the city of Jerusalem, which would eventually fall to the great army of Nebuchadnezzar. 

Why would Jeremiah commit himself to such an outrageous act? Why did he do it?  Was it the advice of his financial advisor that he should diversify his investments?  Was he hoping to keep the family name intact?  Was his cousin just too good a salesman?  Had he recently attended a $300-Get-Rich-In-Real-Estate seminar?

Why did he do it?  Why?  Jeremiah buys a field because he’s a person of hope.  As a person of hope, he’s convinced that the present difficulties which will soon lead to the captivity of the nation, would be used by God to bring about the return of the nation again to their homeland.  Jeremiah trusts in the promises of God, he believes in the faithfulness of the One who foretells, “I will bring them back to this place, and I will settle them in safety.  They shall be my people, and I will be their God” (32:37b-38). 

Despite the darkness of the present circumstances, Jeremiah believes in an alternative reality, and lives by two rules within this alternative reality.  Rule #1 states that the world belongs to God. The world does not belong to Nebuchadnezzar, not to the Babylonians, not to the Chaldeans, not to the Egyptians, not even to the Hebrew nation.  The world belongs to God.  Rule #2 in this alternative reality states: Nothing can change rule #1.  The world has always belonged to God and will always belong to God.

So convinced is the prophet Jeremiah that he puts his money where his mouth is, he takes a step in the direction of faith and purchases a field on which he personally will never plant a tree or till the soil or harvest a crop or hang a hammock.   

Anathoth.  I wonder if we all have some Anathoth in our lives.  That place, that condition, that circumstance, something that requires of us a specific, concrete, direct action. Anathoth.  Not just saying things, not just spouting words, not just mouthing platitudes, not just reciting ancient creeds but doing something about it.  Staking our claim. You can talk about an addiction for a lifetime, and nothing’s going to change unless you buy into that field of hope called Anathoth and take some direct action. People can bemoan ever bad break they’ve gotten in life, but nothing’s going to be different until they put the same energy into a field of hope called Anathoth, and make a change. Who cares about every insult I’ve ever received?  Who really wants to hear the full story about every misfortune you had to endure?  Where’s your Anathoth?  What are you willing to stake your future on?  Your marriage on.  Your career on?  Your health on? What lasting values, what worthy institutions, what earthly causes for justice prompt you to weigh out your seventeen shekels of silver?  Where is your Anathoth?  

What reality determines our behavior?  Is it the reality of life’s circumstances?  If that’s the case, may all your luck be good, because you’re going to need a ton of it. Or do we choose to live according to an alternative reality?  A reality that believes that God is always faithful.     

Faith’s challenge always comes down to acting upon our beliefs.  For Jeremiah it meant purchasing a field in Anathoth because he could resist no longer the alternative reality of God.  What will it mean for you and me?  Where will we find our Anathoths today?  And what will our Anathoths commit us to do when we find them?