Jeremiah 4:1-9; Hebrew 12:28, 29

Experiencing calling

Last week the sermon was a bit of a downer perhaps.  We talked about what our Bible texts had to say about our inability to show judgment in caring for our planet as well as to reconcile.  We talked also about just like the Hebrews in Isaiah’s time and the Jews of Jesus’ time we do not understand our times. This is a fact: we do not know what our times mean.  Today the subject is different, but perhaps relevant to last week’s.  We go to Jeremiah, the reluctant prophet who tries to make excuses so he can get out of serving and out of being the bearer of uncomfortable messages.  What’s so interesting about Jeremiah as we have already seen is not what he is called to, but the call itself and how it comes to him.  There is something we can learn about how it progresses and it can help us re-examine our own sense of calling.

Dear friends, there are moments in Jeremiah’s calling: God reminds Jeremiah that before he was formed you, God knew him, and that in fact God had consecrated him, blessed him for the task.  This does not phase Jeremiah.  He is not that emotional or does he seem to be particularly spiritual and he doesn’t appear to feel to guilty.  It’s more like: “thanks but no thanks.  Sorry, I don’t know how to speak, I am just a boy.” It is a lame excuse and the excuse is immediately rejected:  “do not say ‘I am just a boy,’” God says. “I will put your words in my mouth.” And then come the exact words Jeremiah does not want to hear:  I will give the power to break down and build up,” with his words that is.  It shows us that a call or a calling can have moments, can have stages.  It also shows us that call and calling are not necessarily the same as desire.  When I looked back on my church and missionary work there have been times that my calling and my desire came together with perfect timing, but these moments have been few and far between.  I have been honest with you, for example, that it was never my wish or desire to be the pastor of a congregation, yet I have spent twenty years of my life doing just that.  Not that I disliked it or anything, but there were other things I wanted to do.  Yet at the same time I felt a call or calling to serve in this congregation and in the other congregations where I served.  So this confirms what we see in the text, that we may resistant to a call, but sooner or later it comes and gets you.  We talked about the calling of Churchill to finish his father’s work in politics. We looked at the crystal clear vision of Martin Luther King who was touched by the life of Gandhi.  We saw how Queen Liluoakalani felt the calling to resist the new American colonial power. We also saw that Victoria who reigned during that period felt a calling to spread the message of upstanding moral family life that came to characterize the Victorian era.   With those people there may not have been a real resistance to calling, maybe because they were born into it.  A number of them felt it was their destiny.

I think the text does not completely tell us that calling and destiny is the same. Jeremiah is given the chance to reject his calling. He is not forced. He can say no.  He may have been rebuffed by God and been overwhelmed by God’s sense of purpose, but in no way was it all was the goose cooked already.  Destiny is something you cannot escape.  Sooner or later it gets you. In the film the Adjustment Bureau there is a life journey that is laid out for a New York senatorial candidate. He would win the senate race easily and even become President as long as he gives up the woman he has fallen in love with. With her love he would be too happy and lose his hunger for power. But an old version of his life’s script keeps popping up and they keep meeting each other.  They can’t shake each other.  The premise of the movie is that perhaps all things are predetermined, like you being here this morning in a Hawaiian shirt or dress, the amount of food for the potluck, the dances of the Hawaiian dance group, the words I am saying right now. But the text of Jeremiah does not appear to tell us that.  Destiny and calling are different. In fact there may not be such a thing as destiny in the traditional sense of the word, for destiny would take away free will.  But there is calling.  My point today is that in these crazy times which we do not understand, perhaps what we must do is be open to our calling and when we hear it not come up with some excuse like Jeremiah.  Even though the calling may change over time, Just follow it, just do it.

Friends, one of the most famous sayings of author and theologian Frederick Buechner is:” calling is where our skills and the needs of the world meet.”  That is a good way to out it perhaps. Our skills may change and the needs of the world may change, so our calling may change.  But it is there for the discovering, that calling of ours.  May we be open and may God help us find it.