The Light Touch
Sermon
The Presence In The Promise
First Lesson Sermons For Advent/Christmas/Epiphany Cycle C
Robert Bly has given us a painful and scathing analysis of our present American society. He titled his work The Sibling Society. Bly confesses he began this work in a lighthearted vein. He employed poetry, fairy tales, and legends to highlight the contradictions he noted all around him. However, he soon discovered that he was into some really serious business. Essentially, what he uncovered was that we are all swimming in a tank of half-adults. For Bly, Elvis and Woodstock were watersheds at which time all parents lost their children. That is to say, the society in which we live cannot be considered paternalistic or materialistic. Authority, boundaries, limits, and traditions are gone. Adolescence starts earlier and lasts all the way to age 35. Even then we have our ability to mature to the stature that commands respect.
We are all equals, all brothers and sisters, all siblings. We keep slipping back into adolescence. We are confused by what is going on around us, because structure and boundaries are missing. In addition, as we struggle with the foibles of the sibling society, we have mixed feelings. We have difficulty mounting the courage and mettle to deal with many issues that require not only maturity but also commitment, bravery, and firmness of mind to deal with the serious issues that confront us. In the First Lesson appointed for today we hear that kind of confession from Jeremiah who protests a call from God to serve as God's prophet to the people of Judah. Jeremiah struggles against the call from God, arguing that he is still a boy, a youth, a tender lad who could not handle such a high calling.
The Context
Jeremiah had good reason to think twice about answering the call of God to minister to the people of Judah. Jeremiah was a highly sensitive man. He was emotional and felt deeply for his people. It did not take a ton of bricks to fall on his head for him to take note of the fact that his people were highly vulnerable to attack from other world powers. As now, the Israelites were in a strategic location in the Middle East that made them a crossroad to the sea, the Mediterranean. The situation was somewhat different for them than from the conditions today in the Middle East. Today, Israel is surrounded by smaller powers of Arab nations. However, it is Iraq which seems to be obsessed with the notion that if it were to destroy Israel with atomic weapons, it would be the toast of the rest of the Arab nations. In Jeremiah's day, the threat came to Judah from other nations, but there was always a superpower like Babylonia looking for ways to extend its domination and influence in the world.
Judah should have learned from the Northern Kingdom of Israel what kind of fate awaited a people of its own tradition when they did not heed the word of God. Judah and Israel had suffered great mutual antagonisms, because they were so strongly related both by blood and by the word they had from God. At times they joined forces to ward off common enemies. Yet the Northern Kingdom fell, because the nation had been indifferent to the word of God the prophets witnessed to it. Now the Southern Kingdom of Judah was inviting disaster and judgment because of the same kind of hard-hearted attitudes toward the word of God.
Jeremiah's Resistance
One can appreciate why Jeremiah would be reluctant to be excited about the call that he received from God to minister to the people of Judah. Jeremiah was not yet twenty years old when he sensed he was being called by God. Someone else may have been flattered by the notion that he was being drawn into God's service at a youthful age. Not Jeremiah. He would have had good reason for feeling at home and comfortable in the work of the Lord, because he had grown up in a rectory, the home of his father Hilkiah, a village priest in Anatoth in the land of the tribe of Benjamin. That meant he came from a long line of priests. However, that did not prompt Jeremiah to give a quick affirmative reply to God's call to the office of prophet.
It was not simply Jeremiah's youth that kept him from responding enthusiastically to the prophetic task. The young man complained that he did not know how to speak. Translated that meant he did not know what he could say under the circumstances. He did not have experience in this field. It was one thing to absorb the practices of the priesthood from his father, grandfather, and uncles. Those tasks were prescribed carefully, and he undoubtedly relished the privilege of the clinical experiences of priestly routines right within his own home. How would he acquire the ability to articulate words that would represent the thoughts of God for his people? In an era of high devotion and loyalty to God that might be easy, but Jeremiah had great misgivings about his people.
God's Call
It was typical of the prophetic calling that those who assumed the high calling of representing God to God's people did so with a good measure of reluctance. God drags the candidates for the prophetic roles into divine service in spite of their protests, their yelling and screaming about inadequacies, and their fear for their lives. What God has to say to them, however, far outweighs any objections the ill-prepared candidates can muster to make themselves exempt from service. Even before Jeremiah mounted his protestation, God made a convincing argument as to why Jeremiah was chosen. God had an eye on Jeremiah before Jeremiah was born. This was a pre-natal determination on the part of God, because God foresaw that Jeremiah would be properly prepared by his parents for the task to which God could consecrate him for the nations.
When Jeremiah did try to object to the call of God by relying on the crutch of his youthfulness, God had a ready answer. God indicated that all this talk about boyishness was beside the point, because God was the one who was sending Jeremiah. God would pick the targets for Jeremiah, and God would also make clear what Jeremiah should declare to his audience. The clincher was that God could say, "Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you." The prophetic office was God's work. God would choose the mission, God would provide the words, and God would be present to make the work effective. The young boy Jeremiah could take up this calling with supreme confidence.
God's Touch
As an affirmation and confirmation of the calling which God laid upon Jeremiah, Jeremiah relates, "Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth." We do not know in what manner or way that this took place. However, we do know that this symbolic action was highly significant. Later God says to Jeremiah, "You shall serve as my mouth" (15:19). We know also that in the call of the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 9:6), God does the same thing by touching the prophet with a coal to purify the mouth for the task of sharing the word. The important item for us to understand is that the word is to be shared by word of mouth. The word is to be proclaimed, dialogued, preached, taught, pored over in seminars, and meditated on in groups.
Luther asserted that the word is a mundhaus, that is a "mouth house." He found that preferable to a federhouse, that is the "feather house." By that he meant that the word is to be shared more by speaking than by writing. The Hebrew rabbis also have said that it would be far more preferable that the word remain in an oral tradition than in a written tradition. The reason for these preferences for the oral word is that the word is to be personally applied and personally witnessed. We all know that to be true. We feel much more efficient in a learning situation when the teacher is present to explain and to give the assignment meaning and life.
God's Word
In addition to a personal application of the word, the prophetic task was to be effective, because it was involved with the word of God. God said to the prophet Jeremiah, "Now I have put my words in your mouth." The prophet was Jeremiah. The word was God's. The very title "prophet," means to "speak on behalf of." Jeremiah would speak on behalf of God. The Hebrew name by which the prophets were called is nabim. The exact origin of that name is not known, but it came to mean "announcer." The prophet announced what God wanted the people to hear. The term nabim also came to connote someone inspired by the Spirit of God. The prophets were regarded as the "insane," that is, "out of their own minds," because they represented the mind of God or the Spirit of God.
The word which the prophet Jeremiah was to share on behalf of God was a lively word, because God would accomplish what the word has to say. Later Jeremiah could say that the word of God is a fire which can devour the people (5:14). Or again the people could understand that the word is a hammer that shatters the most stubborn rock (23:29). What is most important is that God's word is always fulfilled. God accomplishes what God says God will do. God keeps God's word. When God promises anything, it is as good as done. The greatest accomplishment, the most difficult miracle God performs through the word, is to make believers out of people. That is the prophetic task and calling.
Our Calling
No doubt, all of us have in one way or another sensed the inadequacy Jeremiah felt when he was called to the prophetic office. We think of the many times we hope that no one will call on us to serve on an evangelism committee or team. Or we may have offered feeble excuses when asked to serve in some capacity in which we would have to speak out about the word or the church. We feel our ineptitude, our lack of experience, and our conviction that we just won't have the right words to say. Most of us do not feel we have the ability to talk about anything publicly, let alone our faith. Nor do we feel that we can sell anything, least of all our faith. It is highly unlikely that God finds those answers acceptable, though they are so very, very true.
What God would expect of us, in whatever opportunity we have to share the word, is to share exactly what Jeremiah was called to share. Jeremiah was not called to share his word, but the word of God, and God gave that to him. Just so, God has given the word to us. We know God's love and grace in the Person of Jesus Christ, who lived, died, and rose again for us. All that we are ever asked to proclaim in speaking on behalf of God is just what that has meant to us and means to us. We know what forgiveness means. We know what it means to be loved by God. And we know that God is perfectly willing to share eternity with us. Those are the words God has put in your heart, and God will also put them on your lips.
A Superior Calling
Jeremiah's timidity about speaking on behalf of God faded with God's assurance that God would equip him with the message to speak to others. Likewise we should not really have a problem deciding what we should say. Ben Bradlee, former editor of the Washington Post, relates in his autobiography A Good Life what difficult choices an editor has to make in deciding what to print. An intimate friend of President Jack Kennedy, Bradlee was reminded by Jacqueline Kennedy that he had to protect the privacy of the White House family. Bradlee's most famous decision was to push on with the exposure of the Watergate fiasco which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Someone told Bradlee that editors are simply writing a rough draft of history. Editorial choices are not easy. That is not our problem when it comes to sharing the news and the word about God.
God has written the script and made the editorial choices for us. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself is the Word of God Incarnate. What Jesus has done for us says it all. Too often our problem is that we think that we must find new, clever, or heady ways to express it. That is the opposite of the timidity that is usually our first excuse. By thinking that we have to have special wordsmiths to do the job we make new excuses for ourselves. We do not have to do that. What we need to do is simply share the experience of being loved and cared for by God. When God was finished getting that point across to Jeremiah, God could say to him that God would appoint him over nations and kingdoms "to pluck up and to pull down." Jeremiah was able to speak not only about the lot of the people Israel, but he could also announce how God ruled in the history of the other nations of his day. We can take heart that the word which we do share as the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ has that kind of force and power in the lives of people. Jeremiah went on to do the work of God. All of us know we will not match what he achieved. Nor is it likely that we will have to suffer what he did. Yet because, he did what he did, we can take heart that what we do in the name of our God will also take effect.
We are all equals, all brothers and sisters, all siblings. We keep slipping back into adolescence. We are confused by what is going on around us, because structure and boundaries are missing. In addition, as we struggle with the foibles of the sibling society, we have mixed feelings. We have difficulty mounting the courage and mettle to deal with many issues that require not only maturity but also commitment, bravery, and firmness of mind to deal with the serious issues that confront us. In the First Lesson appointed for today we hear that kind of confession from Jeremiah who protests a call from God to serve as God's prophet to the people of Judah. Jeremiah struggles against the call from God, arguing that he is still a boy, a youth, a tender lad who could not handle such a high calling.
The Context
Jeremiah had good reason to think twice about answering the call of God to minister to the people of Judah. Jeremiah was a highly sensitive man. He was emotional and felt deeply for his people. It did not take a ton of bricks to fall on his head for him to take note of the fact that his people were highly vulnerable to attack from other world powers. As now, the Israelites were in a strategic location in the Middle East that made them a crossroad to the sea, the Mediterranean. The situation was somewhat different for them than from the conditions today in the Middle East. Today, Israel is surrounded by smaller powers of Arab nations. However, it is Iraq which seems to be obsessed with the notion that if it were to destroy Israel with atomic weapons, it would be the toast of the rest of the Arab nations. In Jeremiah's day, the threat came to Judah from other nations, but there was always a superpower like Babylonia looking for ways to extend its domination and influence in the world.
Judah should have learned from the Northern Kingdom of Israel what kind of fate awaited a people of its own tradition when they did not heed the word of God. Judah and Israel had suffered great mutual antagonisms, because they were so strongly related both by blood and by the word they had from God. At times they joined forces to ward off common enemies. Yet the Northern Kingdom fell, because the nation had been indifferent to the word of God the prophets witnessed to it. Now the Southern Kingdom of Judah was inviting disaster and judgment because of the same kind of hard-hearted attitudes toward the word of God.
Jeremiah's Resistance
One can appreciate why Jeremiah would be reluctant to be excited about the call that he received from God to minister to the people of Judah. Jeremiah was not yet twenty years old when he sensed he was being called by God. Someone else may have been flattered by the notion that he was being drawn into God's service at a youthful age. Not Jeremiah. He would have had good reason for feeling at home and comfortable in the work of the Lord, because he had grown up in a rectory, the home of his father Hilkiah, a village priest in Anatoth in the land of the tribe of Benjamin. That meant he came from a long line of priests. However, that did not prompt Jeremiah to give a quick affirmative reply to God's call to the office of prophet.
It was not simply Jeremiah's youth that kept him from responding enthusiastically to the prophetic task. The young man complained that he did not know how to speak. Translated that meant he did not know what he could say under the circumstances. He did not have experience in this field. It was one thing to absorb the practices of the priesthood from his father, grandfather, and uncles. Those tasks were prescribed carefully, and he undoubtedly relished the privilege of the clinical experiences of priestly routines right within his own home. How would he acquire the ability to articulate words that would represent the thoughts of God for his people? In an era of high devotion and loyalty to God that might be easy, but Jeremiah had great misgivings about his people.
God's Call
It was typical of the prophetic calling that those who assumed the high calling of representing God to God's people did so with a good measure of reluctance. God drags the candidates for the prophetic roles into divine service in spite of their protests, their yelling and screaming about inadequacies, and their fear for their lives. What God has to say to them, however, far outweighs any objections the ill-prepared candidates can muster to make themselves exempt from service. Even before Jeremiah mounted his protestation, God made a convincing argument as to why Jeremiah was chosen. God had an eye on Jeremiah before Jeremiah was born. This was a pre-natal determination on the part of God, because God foresaw that Jeremiah would be properly prepared by his parents for the task to which God could consecrate him for the nations.
When Jeremiah did try to object to the call of God by relying on the crutch of his youthfulness, God had a ready answer. God indicated that all this talk about boyishness was beside the point, because God was the one who was sending Jeremiah. God would pick the targets for Jeremiah, and God would also make clear what Jeremiah should declare to his audience. The clincher was that God could say, "Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you." The prophetic office was God's work. God would choose the mission, God would provide the words, and God would be present to make the work effective. The young boy Jeremiah could take up this calling with supreme confidence.
God's Touch
As an affirmation and confirmation of the calling which God laid upon Jeremiah, Jeremiah relates, "Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth." We do not know in what manner or way that this took place. However, we do know that this symbolic action was highly significant. Later God says to Jeremiah, "You shall serve as my mouth" (15:19). We know also that in the call of the Prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 9:6), God does the same thing by touching the prophet with a coal to purify the mouth for the task of sharing the word. The important item for us to understand is that the word is to be shared by word of mouth. The word is to be proclaimed, dialogued, preached, taught, pored over in seminars, and meditated on in groups.
Luther asserted that the word is a mundhaus, that is a "mouth house." He found that preferable to a federhouse, that is the "feather house." By that he meant that the word is to be shared more by speaking than by writing. The Hebrew rabbis also have said that it would be far more preferable that the word remain in an oral tradition than in a written tradition. The reason for these preferences for the oral word is that the word is to be personally applied and personally witnessed. We all know that to be true. We feel much more efficient in a learning situation when the teacher is present to explain and to give the assignment meaning and life.
God's Word
In addition to a personal application of the word, the prophetic task was to be effective, because it was involved with the word of God. God said to the prophet Jeremiah, "Now I have put my words in your mouth." The prophet was Jeremiah. The word was God's. The very title "prophet," means to "speak on behalf of." Jeremiah would speak on behalf of God. The Hebrew name by which the prophets were called is nabim. The exact origin of that name is not known, but it came to mean "announcer." The prophet announced what God wanted the people to hear. The term nabim also came to connote someone inspired by the Spirit of God. The prophets were regarded as the "insane," that is, "out of their own minds," because they represented the mind of God or the Spirit of God.
The word which the prophet Jeremiah was to share on behalf of God was a lively word, because God would accomplish what the word has to say. Later Jeremiah could say that the word of God is a fire which can devour the people (5:14). Or again the people could understand that the word is a hammer that shatters the most stubborn rock (23:29). What is most important is that God's word is always fulfilled. God accomplishes what God says God will do. God keeps God's word. When God promises anything, it is as good as done. The greatest accomplishment, the most difficult miracle God performs through the word, is to make believers out of people. That is the prophetic task and calling.
Our Calling
No doubt, all of us have in one way or another sensed the inadequacy Jeremiah felt when he was called to the prophetic office. We think of the many times we hope that no one will call on us to serve on an evangelism committee or team. Or we may have offered feeble excuses when asked to serve in some capacity in which we would have to speak out about the word or the church. We feel our ineptitude, our lack of experience, and our conviction that we just won't have the right words to say. Most of us do not feel we have the ability to talk about anything publicly, let alone our faith. Nor do we feel that we can sell anything, least of all our faith. It is highly unlikely that God finds those answers acceptable, though they are so very, very true.
What God would expect of us, in whatever opportunity we have to share the word, is to share exactly what Jeremiah was called to share. Jeremiah was not called to share his word, but the word of God, and God gave that to him. Just so, God has given the word to us. We know God's love and grace in the Person of Jesus Christ, who lived, died, and rose again for us. All that we are ever asked to proclaim in speaking on behalf of God is just what that has meant to us and means to us. We know what forgiveness means. We know what it means to be loved by God. And we know that God is perfectly willing to share eternity with us. Those are the words God has put in your heart, and God will also put them on your lips.
A Superior Calling
Jeremiah's timidity about speaking on behalf of God faded with God's assurance that God would equip him with the message to speak to others. Likewise we should not really have a problem deciding what we should say. Ben Bradlee, former editor of the Washington Post, relates in his autobiography A Good Life what difficult choices an editor has to make in deciding what to print. An intimate friend of President Jack Kennedy, Bradlee was reminded by Jacqueline Kennedy that he had to protect the privacy of the White House family. Bradlee's most famous decision was to push on with the exposure of the Watergate fiasco which led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Someone told Bradlee that editors are simply writing a rough draft of history. Editorial choices are not easy. That is not our problem when it comes to sharing the news and the word about God.
God has written the script and made the editorial choices for us. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself is the Word of God Incarnate. What Jesus has done for us says it all. Too often our problem is that we think that we must find new, clever, or heady ways to express it. That is the opposite of the timidity that is usually our first excuse. By thinking that we have to have special wordsmiths to do the job we make new excuses for ourselves. We do not have to do that. What we need to do is simply share the experience of being loved and cared for by God. When God was finished getting that point across to Jeremiah, God could say to him that God would appoint him over nations and kingdoms "to pluck up and to pull down." Jeremiah was able to speak not only about the lot of the people Israel, but he could also announce how God ruled in the history of the other nations of his day. We can take heart that the word which we do share as the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ has that kind of force and power in the lives of people. Jeremiah went on to do the work of God. All of us know we will not match what he achieved. Nor is it likely that we will have to suffer what he did. Yet because, he did what he did, we can take heart that what we do in the name of our God will also take effect.
