When God Calls
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series III, Cycle C
Today, and for the next several weeks, the Revised Common Lectionary devotes attention to one of the most intriguing figures in all of the Old Testament -- the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah began his work as the bearer of God's word to the nation of Judah during the time of King Josiah's reign in 627 BC. His prophesying continued even as Judah's brightest and best were forced to leave their homeland for exile in Babylon in approximately 586 BC.
Jeremiah is sometimes called "the weeping prophet" because, as the message of prophets goes, he had some of the worst news to deliver to his listeners. Jeremiah has also been called the "prophet of the midnight hour," because the message he is given to preach comes just as his countrymen and women are experiencing the horrors of which he preaches. The time to listen to the prophets' words, to repent and return to the Lord has come and gone, and God's people have made no real effort toward reconciliation. Jeremiah is the one called by God to let Judah know that the jig is up. God's judgment on Judah's sin is going to come upon them, and they will not be able to escape it.
Our reading from Jeremiah 1 introduces us to this young man, the son of a priest from Anathoth in the land of Benjamin. As Jeremiah tells it, God initiates the conversation, seemingly from out of the blue.
Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, "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."
-- Jeremiah 1:4-5
There was a time when at least one son in a family was determined to be the one to assume the family business. In many Roman Catholic families, it was common practice in early times to strongly urge at least one son into the priesthood, and/or one daughter to enter a religious order in service to the church. Today our sons and daughters would not be too keen on the idea of their occupation in life being determined for them. But according to God, Jeremiah's vocation was determined even before he was born.
I was not reared in the Wesleyan tradition, but I know that there is a phrase that describes the way God works with Jeremiah. It is called prevenient grace. Prevenient grace is grace that comes before -- before anything you or I can do or even think about doing. Before Jeremiah even knows that there is such a being as God, God already knows Jeremiah personally. By the way, the apostle Paul testifies to this same prenatal knowledge and appointment by God as he describes his own call:
But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.
-- Galatians 1:15-17
Before Jeremiah can even ask the question, "What am I going to be when I grow up, Daddy?" God takes steps to equip and prepare him for the ministry of prophecy that he will be called to fulfill. God grants Jeremiah great insight into the human condition. God equips Jeremiah with great tenacity. God gifts Jeremiah with deep compassion -- a willingness to truly suffer with God's people as they enter into the painful experience of exile. And God even puts the words Jeremiah is to say into his mouth for him. The prevenient nature of God's grace is one of the things that makes God's grace so amazing.
Then I said, "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy."
-- Jeremiah 1:6
God also is quite persistent when it comes to calling Jeremiah to ministry. When God calls Jeremiah, there is none of the "Here I am, Lord; send me!" enthusiasm that Isaiah expresses in response to his call. In fact, Jeremiah's response mirrors those of the great prophet/leader Moses and the prophet/judge Gideon. Jeremiah is initially quite resistant to the idea of being God's mouthpiece to the people of Judah. He protests that he is too young, too immature to be able to carry out this call. But God is persistent, and although we hear no acceptance speech from Jeremiah, he apparently agrees to serve.
Consider what aspects of your own sense of call might illustrate God's persistence. When I entered Trinity Luther Seminary in the early 1980s, I was a young woman, barely 21 years old. My sense of call had developed slowly and almost imperceptibly as I became involved with campus ministry during college. In fact, having grown up as a Roman Catholic, I was not even fully aware that women were being ordained in the denomination that I had begun to call home while at college. In conversation with our campus pastors and a seminary senior who had been very active in the campus ministry, I began to explore the idea of a seminary degree but was still somewhat reticent about the idea of being a pastor.
At the opening convocation, the president of the seminary, Dr. Fred Meuser, addressed the student body. I remember thinking, "I am sure that this address will help to guide me toward embracing ordained ministry." So you can imagine how Dr. Meuser confounded me when he said very emphatically, "If there is any other career you think you would be happy doing, you really should leave now and try that out. Then, after you have tried out those other vocations, if you still have a call to be a pastor, we will welcome you back. There will be a place here for you."
Those words sound quite different from the words God spoke to Jeremiah -- but Dr. Meuser commended them to us because he knew that God is persistent. He knew that no matter how far or wide we might wander, or how many different types of employment we might attempt, if we are called by God to be pastors or associates in ministry, God will ultimately guide us to that type of service. In fact, my graduating class was one of the first in which nearly half of the men and women were second-career students. They had, knowingly or unknowingly, done exactly what Dr. Meuser had directed, and the persistence of God's call had ultimately brought them to seminary in preparation for service as ordained and lay ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
When God calls people into ministry, it is a very personal call. God's call is not to a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter type of ministry. Nor is the call God issues always specifically directed toward maintaining the programs or projects of a specific congregation. Frederick Buechner, in his book, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC writes:
The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done.... The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.1
Earlier today, I shared this quote with a couple who are members of the congregation I serve. In the thirteen years that I have been with this congregation, I have been blessed with the privilege of walking with them through good times and at least one very sorrowful one -- the untimely death of their adult daughter. The grief one feels at a child's death is like no other -- no matter how old that child may be. We simply are not prepared to bury our children. But God has held these two people in his promises and provided strength and healing for them over the years. And one of the ways that God has ministered to them and then prepared them for a very personal ministry is through two very high-spirited Portuguese Water Dogs that they now have as members of their household.
Bill discovered his call to ministry in companionship with their dogs rather quickly. Another lover of the breed and member of our congregation invited Bill to train their "Murphy" to be a therapy dog. Bill, retired from a career in human resources, was a natural in training Murphy to be patient and attentive to the needs of others, and soon he and Murphy were certified for therapy visits with hospitalized children and elderly residents of nursing centers. As Bill was discovering this very personal calling, I could see a joy return to his grieving heart. He and Murphy are a team -- there is a deep gladness that emanates from them as they visit with sick and lonely people who have a deep hunger for connection and joy.
Judy, Bill's wife, was not drawn to this ministry. She is energetic and had especially enjoyed learning how to lead the dogs through agility exercises that included running, jumping, and making their way through a series of weave poles. As you might guess, this kind of energetic dog handling doesn't work in hospitals or libraries or senior residences.
Yesterday, Judy received a call from a friend with Portuguese Water Dogs who had injured her back and needed someone to take her and her dog's place at a very new kind of ministry. For about a month, several dogs and their owners have been visiting with a group of autistic children and showing them how dogs can run an agility course. Judy was hesitant at first, but she knew that she was needed and agreed to go. Although she and her dog had not run an agility course for several months, both of them knew exactly what to do. Judy watched in amazement as the children responded to the dogs and even attempted in some cases to run the agility course set up in the backyard with them. As Judy told me this story, I could hear the joy in her heart, as she, too, has discovered where her deep gladness and the deep hunger of parents with autistic children are meeting.
When God calls us, it is a very personal calling for the sake of a person or a community or a world in need. It is a Spirit-breathed opportunity where our skills, interests and, in many cases, our experience are just what is needed to bless and enliven a life or minister to a specific situation. And as the situation we are ministering to changes or our lives change, the nature or shape of our call will change, too.
Jeremiah will experience this as his prophetic ministry with the people of Judah proceeds. In the beginning he will implore God's people to repent of their idolatry and corruption. In graphic detail, he will describe the invasion of Babylon and the drought through which they will suffer. Intermittently he will plead with the Lord to be patient and gentle with the nation, and he will join his people in mourning the righteous judgment they are enduring. Jeremiah will suffer for his testimony, as the priests in Jerusalem try to silence his prophecies of doom and gloom. In his suffering, he will even rail at God for seducing him into prophetic ministry. He will point to a day when God will deliver Judah from its suffering, when they will return from exile to be re-established in the land of their ancestors. In all of it, he will not be a distant bystander, pointing to these things, but he will live them. In so doing, he points those of us who are joined to God's people through the new covenant, to Jesus, the founder of that new covenant. For Jesus also fulfills God's call with his whole person, with his whole life, and also with his death on the cross, and his descent to the dead. Just as God's promise to deliver the exiled people of Judah to their home, so too Jesus is raised to life as a pledge of the promise that all who trust him will know the joy of life with God. Both Jeremiah and Jesus carry out a very personal ministry, putting their bodies where their (and God's) hearts are.
In an entry of her blog on preaching, Dr. Mary Hinkle Shore, a professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, writes:
Putting our bodies where our hearts are is more than the old "ministry of presence." It is offering a physical, visual account of the hope that is in us. A friend of mine commented in a sermon once that he noticed as his parishioners served a meal at a homeless shelter an "invisible line." The homeless men stayed on one side of the table, and the church workers stayed on the other side. "What would it be like if we mixed that up?" my friend wondered out loud. What message -- what word of God, even -- might we be embodying if we walked around the table to the other side, or if we stood together on the serving side with men who lived at the shelter? Jeremiah will do this sort of embodiment throughout his career. Jesus will too.2
May you hear the call of God in your life -- a call that is grounded in prevenient grace, persistently spoken, and personally issued to you for the sake of a world in need. And may your faith, breathed into your heart by the Holy Spirit, guide you to answer that call in the name of Jesus. Amen.
________________________
1. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 75.
2. Mary Hinkle Shore, Pilgrim Preaching.
Jeremiah is sometimes called "the weeping prophet" because, as the message of prophets goes, he had some of the worst news to deliver to his listeners. Jeremiah has also been called the "prophet of the midnight hour," because the message he is given to preach comes just as his countrymen and women are experiencing the horrors of which he preaches. The time to listen to the prophets' words, to repent and return to the Lord has come and gone, and God's people have made no real effort toward reconciliation. Jeremiah is the one called by God to let Judah know that the jig is up. God's judgment on Judah's sin is going to come upon them, and they will not be able to escape it.
Our reading from Jeremiah 1 introduces us to this young man, the son of a priest from Anathoth in the land of Benjamin. As Jeremiah tells it, God initiates the conversation, seemingly from out of the blue.
Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, "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."
-- Jeremiah 1:4-5
There was a time when at least one son in a family was determined to be the one to assume the family business. In many Roman Catholic families, it was common practice in early times to strongly urge at least one son into the priesthood, and/or one daughter to enter a religious order in service to the church. Today our sons and daughters would not be too keen on the idea of their occupation in life being determined for them. But according to God, Jeremiah's vocation was determined even before he was born.
I was not reared in the Wesleyan tradition, but I know that there is a phrase that describes the way God works with Jeremiah. It is called prevenient grace. Prevenient grace is grace that comes before -- before anything you or I can do or even think about doing. Before Jeremiah even knows that there is such a being as God, God already knows Jeremiah personally. By the way, the apostle Paul testifies to this same prenatal knowledge and appointment by God as he describes his own call:
But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.
-- Galatians 1:15-17
Before Jeremiah can even ask the question, "What am I going to be when I grow up, Daddy?" God takes steps to equip and prepare him for the ministry of prophecy that he will be called to fulfill. God grants Jeremiah great insight into the human condition. God equips Jeremiah with great tenacity. God gifts Jeremiah with deep compassion -- a willingness to truly suffer with God's people as they enter into the painful experience of exile. And God even puts the words Jeremiah is to say into his mouth for him. The prevenient nature of God's grace is one of the things that makes God's grace so amazing.
Then I said, "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy."
-- Jeremiah 1:6
God also is quite persistent when it comes to calling Jeremiah to ministry. When God calls Jeremiah, there is none of the "Here I am, Lord; send me!" enthusiasm that Isaiah expresses in response to his call. In fact, Jeremiah's response mirrors those of the great prophet/leader Moses and the prophet/judge Gideon. Jeremiah is initially quite resistant to the idea of being God's mouthpiece to the people of Judah. He protests that he is too young, too immature to be able to carry out this call. But God is persistent, and although we hear no acceptance speech from Jeremiah, he apparently agrees to serve.
Consider what aspects of your own sense of call might illustrate God's persistence. When I entered Trinity Luther Seminary in the early 1980s, I was a young woman, barely 21 years old. My sense of call had developed slowly and almost imperceptibly as I became involved with campus ministry during college. In fact, having grown up as a Roman Catholic, I was not even fully aware that women were being ordained in the denomination that I had begun to call home while at college. In conversation with our campus pastors and a seminary senior who had been very active in the campus ministry, I began to explore the idea of a seminary degree but was still somewhat reticent about the idea of being a pastor.
At the opening convocation, the president of the seminary, Dr. Fred Meuser, addressed the student body. I remember thinking, "I am sure that this address will help to guide me toward embracing ordained ministry." So you can imagine how Dr. Meuser confounded me when he said very emphatically, "If there is any other career you think you would be happy doing, you really should leave now and try that out. Then, after you have tried out those other vocations, if you still have a call to be a pastor, we will welcome you back. There will be a place here for you."
Those words sound quite different from the words God spoke to Jeremiah -- but Dr. Meuser commended them to us because he knew that God is persistent. He knew that no matter how far or wide we might wander, or how many different types of employment we might attempt, if we are called by God to be pastors or associates in ministry, God will ultimately guide us to that type of service. In fact, my graduating class was one of the first in which nearly half of the men and women were second-career students. They had, knowingly or unknowingly, done exactly what Dr. Meuser had directed, and the persistence of God's call had ultimately brought them to seminary in preparation for service as ordained and lay ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
When God calls people into ministry, it is a very personal call. God's call is not to a one-size-fits-all, cookie-cutter type of ministry. Nor is the call God issues always specifically directed toward maintaining the programs or projects of a specific congregation. Frederick Buechner, in his book, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC writes:
The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done.... The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.1
Earlier today, I shared this quote with a couple who are members of the congregation I serve. In the thirteen years that I have been with this congregation, I have been blessed with the privilege of walking with them through good times and at least one very sorrowful one -- the untimely death of their adult daughter. The grief one feels at a child's death is like no other -- no matter how old that child may be. We simply are not prepared to bury our children. But God has held these two people in his promises and provided strength and healing for them over the years. And one of the ways that God has ministered to them and then prepared them for a very personal ministry is through two very high-spirited Portuguese Water Dogs that they now have as members of their household.
Bill discovered his call to ministry in companionship with their dogs rather quickly. Another lover of the breed and member of our congregation invited Bill to train their "Murphy" to be a therapy dog. Bill, retired from a career in human resources, was a natural in training Murphy to be patient and attentive to the needs of others, and soon he and Murphy were certified for therapy visits with hospitalized children and elderly residents of nursing centers. As Bill was discovering this very personal calling, I could see a joy return to his grieving heart. He and Murphy are a team -- there is a deep gladness that emanates from them as they visit with sick and lonely people who have a deep hunger for connection and joy.
Judy, Bill's wife, was not drawn to this ministry. She is energetic and had especially enjoyed learning how to lead the dogs through agility exercises that included running, jumping, and making their way through a series of weave poles. As you might guess, this kind of energetic dog handling doesn't work in hospitals or libraries or senior residences.
Yesterday, Judy received a call from a friend with Portuguese Water Dogs who had injured her back and needed someone to take her and her dog's place at a very new kind of ministry. For about a month, several dogs and their owners have been visiting with a group of autistic children and showing them how dogs can run an agility course. Judy was hesitant at first, but she knew that she was needed and agreed to go. Although she and her dog had not run an agility course for several months, both of them knew exactly what to do. Judy watched in amazement as the children responded to the dogs and even attempted in some cases to run the agility course set up in the backyard with them. As Judy told me this story, I could hear the joy in her heart, as she, too, has discovered where her deep gladness and the deep hunger of parents with autistic children are meeting.
When God calls us, it is a very personal calling for the sake of a person or a community or a world in need. It is a Spirit-breathed opportunity where our skills, interests and, in many cases, our experience are just what is needed to bless and enliven a life or minister to a specific situation. And as the situation we are ministering to changes or our lives change, the nature or shape of our call will change, too.
Jeremiah will experience this as his prophetic ministry with the people of Judah proceeds. In the beginning he will implore God's people to repent of their idolatry and corruption. In graphic detail, he will describe the invasion of Babylon and the drought through which they will suffer. Intermittently he will plead with the Lord to be patient and gentle with the nation, and he will join his people in mourning the righteous judgment they are enduring. Jeremiah will suffer for his testimony, as the priests in Jerusalem try to silence his prophecies of doom and gloom. In his suffering, he will even rail at God for seducing him into prophetic ministry. He will point to a day when God will deliver Judah from its suffering, when they will return from exile to be re-established in the land of their ancestors. In all of it, he will not be a distant bystander, pointing to these things, but he will live them. In so doing, he points those of us who are joined to God's people through the new covenant, to Jesus, the founder of that new covenant. For Jesus also fulfills God's call with his whole person, with his whole life, and also with his death on the cross, and his descent to the dead. Just as God's promise to deliver the exiled people of Judah to their home, so too Jesus is raised to life as a pledge of the promise that all who trust him will know the joy of life with God. Both Jeremiah and Jesus carry out a very personal ministry, putting their bodies where their (and God's) hearts are.
In an entry of her blog on preaching, Dr. Mary Hinkle Shore, a professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, writes:
Putting our bodies where our hearts are is more than the old "ministry of presence." It is offering a physical, visual account of the hope that is in us. A friend of mine commented in a sermon once that he noticed as his parishioners served a meal at a homeless shelter an "invisible line." The homeless men stayed on one side of the table, and the church workers stayed on the other side. "What would it be like if we mixed that up?" my friend wondered out loud. What message -- what word of God, even -- might we be embodying if we walked around the table to the other side, or if we stood together on the serving side with men who lived at the shelter? Jeremiah will do this sort of embodiment throughout his career. Jesus will too.2
May you hear the call of God in your life -- a call that is grounded in prevenient grace, persistently spoken, and personally issued to you for the sake of a world in need. And may your faith, breathed into your heart by the Holy Spirit, guide you to answer that call in the name of Jesus. Amen.
________________________
1. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 75.
2. Mary Hinkle Shore, Pilgrim Preaching.
