Sermon for August 21, 2022 – 11th Sunday after Pentecost

by The Rev. Robert Schoeck

I love our Old Testament reading from Jeremiah this morning. It is one of my favorite passages of scripture. It is a passage that I continue to return to time and again; like a well of water or a well-worn book. There are several threads that are woven into this story that resonate with my own story and my journey with God; threads like intimacy, knowing, calling, vocation, self-doubt, and God’s enduring, abiding presence.

I love this story because these threads are also woven into my story. There have been times when I have felt known by God. When I spent several summers working at a diocesan summer camp, my heart felt on fire for God. I have followed God’s call on my heart as it lead me towards ordained ministry. Even through the ups and downs, and through my own self-doubts and inability to realize my call on my own I still followed God’s call on my heart. I could have given up. I could have walked away and settled for something else. But I didn’t. I stuck with it and now looking back, I can see that God stuck with me through it all. I may not have had the words or the experience, but I trusted in God’s enduring and abiding presence. I trusted that I was doing what God desired for me in my life.

In our story today, God calls Jeremiah to a life of purpose and meaning: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” I love this illustration of Jeremiah’s call, this intimacy that God knows each and everyone of us before we are born. Before we have any sense of our self, before we have any markers of identity, God knows us. God loves us. Before we take our first breaths, God has desires and purposes for us to discover during a life lived seeking God in the world around us.

Jeremiah’s life was about something bigger than himself, something bigger than his own desires; it was about God’s work, and, according to the text, God claimed him even before he was born.

While we are not Jeremiah, the prophet’s call story can serve to illuminate our own vocations, our own calls to discipleship. God, who knows Jeremiah in utero, calls him to a life lived for the sake of God’s mission in the world. As Eugene Peterson puts it in his discussion of this passage:

We are known before we know … We enter a world we didn’t create. We grow into a life already provided for us. We arrive in a complex of relationships with other wills and destinies that are already in full operation before we are introduced. If we are going to live appropriately, we must be aware that we are living in the middle of a story that was begun and will be concluded by another. And this other is God.1

And what does this story entail for Jeremiah? Living during a time of political and religious upheaval, Jeremiah is called to speak an uncomfortable word, a dangerous word…a word that will call people to account. Jeremiah is given the vocation “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” Judgment and mercy are the two sides of Jeremiah’s message to his people. While it seems a little more heavy handed on the judgement side, the restoration side, the mercy side is still present.

In response to his calling, Jeremiah tries to get out of it. “Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” He cannot see beyond the horizon of his own self-limitations. It is a common reaction from those called to be prophets; they feel inadequate and ill-prepared.

And we have all been there. We have stood in Jeremiah’s shoes. How many times have we embarked on something new, walked into a new season of our lives and felt the exact same way? A colleague once said to me, his greatest fear was feeling like a fraud. Though he was tremendously gifted as a priest, and most certainly the right person for the job, nevertheless his greatest fear was that he was not adequate enough to do what was asked or required of him. His self-doubt was a crippling fear, that prevented him from living into the fullness of who he was created to be.

Now, God’s response to Jeremiah’s protest and self-doubt is two-fold: 1) I am with you; and 2) I will give you the words to speak. “‘Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.’ Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth.’”

Jeremiah is called to a task bigger than himself, but the good news is that it is not his task alone to complete. It is God’s mission, and God will provide him the words to speak. Even more to the point, God will be with him in the midst of the struggle. When I was furthest from my call to ordained ministry, when my life seemed to be going in another direction and my heart was heavy with sadness and anger, God was still with me. I tried to do things on my own, but when I let go of my will, and let myself go into the flow of God, I realized I wasn’t alone and I wasn’t meant to do this alone.

Of course, that doesn’t make it any less of a struggle. Jeremiah’s message did not endear him to his people. He was put into stocks, thrown into a pit, mocked and derided. Many people called for his execution on charges of treason. He was deeply unpopular. When he passed by in the marketplace, people pointed at him and laughed.

That is why, many years into his ministry, Jeremiah tried to quit. He handed in his notice: “I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ but within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” 2

Following God’s call, following where God leads is not easy. It takes its toll. We are offered easy ways out. We can choose to abandon our calls. We can choose to abandon God. We can even ignore the call altogether, turn inwardly, and build up an outer wall to keep God and others out. But that is not what God wants for us. That is not God’s desire for us. Though we may travel through darkness in the valleys of the shadow of death, God is still leading us. God is still with us.

And this is where God’s call leads: In spite of the trouble he encounters, Jeremiah can’t quit. The call of God is so strong upon his life that to deny it is to be consumed by fire from the inside. No matter the cost, he must speak the word that God gives him to speak.

In this lament, Jeremiah speaks of a fearful part of life with God, a part we’d rather not think about: the fact that God’s call on our lives may cost us everything that we hold dear. Jesus speaks of the same uncomfortable truth in the gospels: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” 3

But even at this low point, years into his ministry, Jeremiah realizes the truth of the promise God gave to him right at the beginning of that ministry. God will not abandon him; he is not alone. After Jeremiah calls God out for coercing him into this job, after Jeremiah laments bitterly to this God who will not let him off the hook, he says this: “The Lord is with me like a mighty warrior.” 4 God is with him. The God who will not let him off the hook is also the God who will not let him go.

Jeremiah’s call and his subsequent ministry illustrate the risk of discipleship. But they also testify to the joy of such discipleship. Jeremiah’s witness, and that of the saints through the ages, teaches us this: The life that we find when we give up our lives to follow God’s call, is, after all is said and done, the life most worth living. To become the people that God calls us to be, to become disciples of Jesus Christ, is to become really and truly human at last.

We see that witness in Jeremiah’s call and in his ministry, an example of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning in a world where too many people settle for so much less. The time has come for us to choose. Will we take up our cross and follow God where God calls us? Will persevere in the midst of hardship and conflict? Will we be the light in the darkness when all other lights go out? Now is the time to choose. It is never too late. The choose is yours, but remember no matter what happens, God loves you and will be with you always.  Amen.