August 22, 2010 - Proper 16, Year C (RCL)
It’s another week, and another prophet.
All this summer
we’ve been hearing the words
of the prophets of ancient Israel.
This week, and for the next month or so, it’s Jeremiah.
Jeremiah, like Isaiah,
is one of the big name prophets in the bible.
He lived about a hundred years later than Isaiah,
in the same general area, down around Jerusalem, in the kingdom of Judah. It was still the iron age;
Assyria was still the overlord of the people of Judah, though the Babylonian empire was beginning to rise, and across the sea, the Athenian city state was being established.
Jeremiah
lived in a small town
a couple of miles from Jerusalem.
He was the son of a priest,
and so unlike a lot of the other prophets,
came from a family tradition of religion.
And maybe that’s why
the story of his call
is a little different
from some of the others.
This time
it doesn’t come out of nowhere,
this time
it’s just one more step
in a life journey
that has always been woven through
with faith.
And so that’s where
God begins.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you.”
God has known Jeremiah
since he was just a possibility,
God has known Jeremiah
since he was conceived.
There was not a time
that God didn’t know Jeremiah,
and not a time
when God didn’t watch over him.
No one
knows Jeremiah
like God does.
Just imagine you are Jeremiah,
and you suddenly hear
God talking to you.
And what God says
is these words.
You feel warm and safe and secure.
Though you might just wonder
what’s going on.
After all, you’ve grown up in a religious family.
You’ve heard the stories.
You’ve even met some of the prophets.
And you know that it’s pretty unusual
for God to come talk to people.
And even more unusual -
in fact unheard of -
for God to come to someone
just to say “I know you.”
And so if you were Jeremiah,
you might just wonder, what’s next.
And God goes on,
“before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
Okay. Here we are. What God really wants to say.
The other stuff was just softening me up.
God wants me
to go be a prophet.
No.
Way.
“No, God,
I’m not the right person for this job.
Not at all.
I’m too young. I’m just a kid.
I don’t know how to speak. No one will listen to me.”
And you can imagine God saying,
“Jeremiah, didn’t you hear what I just said to you?
‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you.’
I know how old you are.
Exactly, to the second.
You’re old enough.
And I know what you’re capable of.
Quit making excuses.
I know
what I’m doing.
“Don’t say, ‘I’m too young.’”
I’ll tell you where to go;
I’ll tell you what to say.
Don’t be afraid. I’ll be with you.”
And then, before Jeremiah has a chance
to come up with any more objections,
God reaches out
and touches his mouth.
And gives him the bad news.
“I’m putting the words in your mouth, words for nations and kingdoms,
to pluck up and pull down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant.”
It’s a message
that’s not so different from Isaiah’s, last week.
Remember Isaiah’s story of the vineyard?
Planted in the best location
on the side of a hill, with sun, shade and good drainage,
the soil dug over and sifted and raked and mulched,
and then planted
with the best quality vines
that money could buy.
The sun shone and the rain fell,
and the vines grew up their trellises,
and the vine grower pulled weeds and scared away birds.
And the grapes began to swell,
and everyone predicted
a bountiful harvest
and a great vintage that year.
But harvest time came,
and the grapes were surprisingly small,
just the size of a currant,
and the vine grower went out and picked a bunch,
and where they should have been large and juicy and sweet,
they were small,
sour, and almost dry,
And the vine-grower ripped out the vines, and plowed them over, and let the land go fallow.
That’s the job of Jeremiah’s words,
to pluck up the roots and pull down the vines,
to totally destroy the vineyard.
But there’s more, more than the vine-grower of Isaiah.
Because his job is also
to build and to plant.
Jeremiah’s work
is not simply to prophesy doom and gloom and destruction,
but to offer hope, planting and reconstruction
and a gloriously fruitful future.
That’s the story of Jeremiah.
So what about us?
As I was working on this sermon
I found myself constantly being pulled
in two directions.
One was the message that Jeremiah is to tell, of plucking up and pulling down, of destroying and overthrowing,
of building and planting.
A message of judgement
and of hope.
How might God be preaching that same message to us today?
And the other was the story of Jeremiah himself,
the story of one man
who was called to serve God.
How are we like Jeremiah, called to serve?
For the rest of this sermon,
I’m going to follow up on the call of Jeremiah.
But don’t forget the other part, his message, God’s message,
because we’ll come back to it in the next few weeks.
So back to Jeremiah, and his call.
but what happens
Time after time in the Old Testament,
God calls individuals to act on his behalf.
Sometimes it’s leading the people on long journeys,
like Abraham and Moses.
Sometimes
it’s leading their society as judges and kings
like the Gideon and Samson and Deborah
and Saul and David and Solomon.
Summits it’s leading their religious life, like Samuel and Nathan.
And sometimes it’s speaking out as prophets,
like Elijah and Isaiah and Jeremiah.
All of them are great leaders
shaping the history of a nation.
Each time God calls,
and they respond,
and God is faithful to them.
But they are the minority;
the reality is that the rest of the people of God
are busy just getting on with their lives.
And so it’s a bit tenuous
to simply jump
from stories like today’s, the call of a prophet
to us.
After all, few, if any, of us
are likely to be the next
Jeremiah.
But before you think
you’re off the hook,
remember that something happened between Jeremiah and us.
And that something
is Jesus.
Jesus showed up,
and began calling people to follow him. Not just a chosen few,
but anyone and everyone
who happened to be listening.
The tax collector,
and the leper,
and the woman at the well.
There were the twelve, called apostles,
but Jesus called everyone
to be disciples.
And that’s why, after his resurrection,
he commissioned the apostles
to go and make disciples.
All across the world.
People who would hear Christ's call
and become his followers, his disciples.
People who were willing to take a risk,
to give up their security
to join with Christ,
to lose their lives
in order to win eternal life.
People wanted to be part of this new thing, the church,
where everyone was given gifts
to build up the church was a whole.
They discovered how wonderful it was
to be part of something
bigger than themselves,
to serve God
and serve one another.
For some,
they gave up their day jobs
and supported by the community,
served both God and the church
full time.
For others, they served God in what they did everyday,
and served the church
in smaller, but no less important ways.
Preaching, teaching, offering hospitality, encouraging.
All responses
to the call of God.
And that’s still the way it works.
The call of God
comes in all sorts of ways,
and often
where our gifts,
and the needs of the church
coincide.
For some of us,
that call may lead us to theological study and ordained ministry.
For most of us,
God’s call to us is to continue with our daily lives,
to serve God in everything we do,
and alongside that
to use our gifts for the church.
Let me say very clearly,
this is not about doing more.
It’s about listening to God
and seeing where God wants you to be serving.
It might mean giving up something
even something that you’ve been doing for years,
in order to take on what God is calling you to right now.
So listen to what God is calling you to.
It’s not about doing more.
It’s about doing what God
is calling us to do,
about using our gifts
where God and the church
need them most.
And you may just hear God,
saying something like this.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you.
I’m calling you.”
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010