Jeremiah 1:4-10
Luke 12:10-17
Jeremiah had a rough time of it. He begins his ministry at the ripe old age of thirteen. As a cause of that there are a lot of youth pastors out there who use the calling of Jeremiah as a jumping off point to inspire young people to take the call of the Lord seriously, and to not take lightly the ministries that they can undertake as young people. And that is a great use of the verse. But it only works if you go no further into the book of Jeremiah. The beginning of the story is great. It begins in jolly old Anathoth where Jeremiah has just come of age and is under the priesthood there, and he receives this special calling, one that the Lord validates and supports. But the later God tells Jeremiah that no one is going to listen to his prophecies. For this reason Jeremiah is known as the broken hearted prophet. His portrait in the Sistine Chapel ceiling is one of stricken grief: Jeremiah sitting with his hand over his mouth, sunken eyes turned down, shoulders slumped.
He does of course do some good. He works with King Josiah for a good long while trying to put the faith of the Jewish nation back in order. But then he starts seeing invasion from the North and the successors to Josiah’s throne don’t want to hear about it. He greets the second Babylonian invasion from the comfort of Jerusalem’s prison.
You have to wonder if, at the end of his life, Jeremiah looked back over it all and thought, “Did I do any good?”
It makes me think of what our goals are in ministry. And, by ministry I mean both the huge over reaching ministry of the Church as a whole and our own private callings in everyday life.
Our callings can come in a wide variety of ways. From a simple tug to do something, to hearing actual voices of instruction. And there are no rules that you get Big callings for Big ministries. One of the greatest ministries I know is a friend of mine that serves in a small Palestinian town. He went there to be the priest as a stopgap measure while they found a more permanent replacement and to date he has been there almost 40 years.
I wonder what Jeremiah thought of when he was called. To be called at a young age we might think that he had all the optimism that comes with youthful endeavors. He has the God given words within him now. He has the power. And yet we look at him later in life and he is lamenting the moral degradation of Jerusalem. In chapter 5 he writes poetry sharing his utter disappointment with the people and her leaders. Jeremiah is the prophet that gets so fed up with things that resorts to brass demonstrations. He wears an ox yoke around his neck walking around the town trying to remind people that they should be tied to the Lord’s purpose. He was willing to do anything to get people to hear the message that he fully believed and knew in his heart.
I’ve been like Jeremiah. Not necessarily have I had my lips touched by the hand of God, but I have felt that desperation in ministry. And I want you to understand that I felt it long before I ever actually started working in the church. I felt it in regard to my ministry and calling as a layperson. I’m sure you all have felt it as well. And I’ve been like Jeremiah and lamented to God, I’ve called out for just ONE good person in a city. I’ve also been angry like Jeremiah. Jeremiah not only rails at his people, but he also cries out at God. There have been times in life when I have been good and angry with God. I know God can take it. I will strike a bet to say that we have all been like Jeremiah.
A lot of the time we do a lot of celebrating as a Christian community, and that is great, but we have to be able to know and bear that there are a host of other feelings that get into the mix when trying to live the life of Christ. I we do nothing but talk about all the wonderful things about being a Christian we tend to think that the other emotions involved are something to be hidden away or suppressed.
That’s why I like the book of Jeremiah. Here was a prophet that served for 40 years and ran the gamut of human emotion. He goes from spunky fresh and excited, to buckle down hard working revivalist, to prophesying outcast, to lamenting angry thunderhead. And it was all ok. It was ok to feel like that. Because through all that Jeremiah keeps the faith. He rails and cries and rips his clothes, but through all of that he is in prayer. He prays angry, he prays sad, and he prays when he is just about ready to give up. He stays in constant communication with his God. He never looses site of where he belongs. (Dumbledore’s Man) That’s loyalty for you.
That kind of loyalty is what Jesus is talking about in the Gospel lesson.
It’s easy to get hung up on this verse. Just the idea of an unforgivable sin doesn’t seem to ring right with what the rest of Christ’s teachings say about forgiveness and what Paul teaches about Grace. The real point of Jesus’ comparison though is this; you can’t be forgiven if you can’t accept the forgiveness.
Forgiveness is an opening of the door. An extending of the bridge across the moat. What has to happen for there to be real forgiveness is for the forgivee to accept what the forgiver is doing.
Say you bash someone’s TV. And you pay for it, and they say that it’s all right and all is forgiven. But you go on paying them for it, and apologizing, and feeling horrible for doing it. Have you been forgiven?
The same thing is going on here. Jesus is simply saying that anything is forgivable. Even cursing Christ Himself is forgivable. But the Holy Spirit, the representation of God, is what is giving the forgiveness. So, if we in our hearts set our minds and life against God, then there can be no forgiveness because we are refusing to accept it. It is our setting our hearts against God that causes us to live an un-forgiven life.
So often this is what happens when times get REALLY tough. Not just stressful, but, hey, I’ve been abandon by God feelings.
Jesus’ very next words speak to this. He talks to us about loyalty in times of trouble. In times of persecution (and remember these are the Jews living under the Romans that he is talking to, they KNOW persecution), but he says not to fear persecution or trials.
He says that the Spirit will give power to those who are the friend of the Lord, and moreover give them strength to bear and words to speak. And this is counting the times of the mildest ridicule to full on martyrdom.
This is what the life of Jeremiah was a witness to. This awesome ideal is what he tasted and fought to hold on to his entire life. This knowledge that God CAN be trusted in the hour of trial. Or the week or the month or the year of trial.
Jeremiah is a real live human being with all our passions and questions and needs. His struggles and pains are clearly evident in his ministry and through that all he keeps in tune with the knowledge that God’s hand has not left his lips. That His presence has not left his side.
And Christ promises the same to us.
And how did Jeremiah keep this vigilance? Through constant prayer. Through down-time with the almighty. Through his awesome Honesty with God! He knew full well that nothing was hidden from God and so daily brought all his gripes and complaints right out there along side of his Joys and thanksgivings. Cause God KNOWS. There wouldn’t be all these promises of aid in times of need if God didn’t expect us to struggle with things all the time! We don’t get demerits in the heavenly book for not keeping our composure drawn up around us in a façade of what we think a good Christian is like.
I have a feeling I know what Jeremiah thought at the end of his life. Looking back at what, to some, might be a kind of failure – it did after all end with the exile of his people—but I think he looked back and was pleased. Because he knew his whole life what was going on, but he knew that the most important thing was for him to be close to God and to do the ministries that he called him to do. And he did it with real emotion and real struggle and real dependence on God.
Jeremiah is not a man of iron. He is a man of emotion and empathy. He cries out because he feels what the people could be. He cries out because he knows the amazing and fulfilling purpose that comes with the True Life God calls us to. And in the midst of these emotions and turbulence he continues to pray and preach to God’s people, because of the strength that is supplied to him.
We all have callings in life. They can change, they can be short or long term. Each member of the body has been given gifts and a call in which to use them.
So, whatever that ministry call is in your life take a note from the life of Jeremiah and while you fulfill that call make it real and earnest. Stand on the promise that God is able and willing to handle our emotion, that He wants us to be real with him before we are perfect before him, and that He can be trusted in our trials.
God can never promise us the life of a perfect Christian, but he can and does promise to attend to us and our needs at every step along the way. And I’ll take that over trying to be perfect any day.
