Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's August 15, 2004 Sunday Morning worship service.

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Several years ago, I received a letter asking me to reflect on my experience of ministry in a church that I served as pastor in the early ‘90s, before leaving 10 years ago this month. I knew the congregation had experienced problems since I had left, that their pastor had been asked to leave, that Presbytery had gotten involved, that things were not going all that well. The questions in the letter were straightforward enough: comment on the strengths and weaknesses of the church; did you think they handled conflict in a healthy fashion? Were you aware of any deep-seated or unhealthy issues? How did the session and the congregation get things done? How well was the mission of the church carried out?

Simple questions, but not easy to answer, to recall enough specific people and relationships and events in the church’s life to enable me to write down some more general remarks. Since there was never any dark shadow of conflict or disharmony that hung over the church while I was there, I didn’t see how my experiential perspective would be all that helpful.

But responding to that letter did cause me to wonder: “What if?” What if I had done some things differently, would that church have gone through a season of problems and conflict? What if I had tried to start certain kinds of programs, or challenged this person to be more vocal in his or her leadership, or tried to find ways to address the anxiety in certain prominent families, or found new ways to encourage an openness to change within the congregation as a whole? Alll churches have a culture, a systemic nature, a way of being together – was there something I missed about that church’s culture that should have been challenged? If so, what might have been different today? The “What if” question is, the one, more than any other, that can keep us awake at night.

It is not hard for me to imagine that Jeremiah also wondered “what if” during the course of his career as a prophet. What if I had said this instead of that, made this choice, used language more conciliatory instead of abrasive – would things have been different in my life, in the city of Jerusalem, for the nation? Or, would everyone, including me, be better off if I hadn’t answered the call in the first place? What if?

Most of the prophetic books of the Old Testament open with the prophet having to give some justification for his forthcoming prophesy. On what basis does the prophet speak? What gives the prophet authority to criticize the political and religious status quo? Jeremiah says, quite simply, “the word of the Lord came to me.” Presumably, Jeremiah had not sought this word. The word intruded into his life as an act of God. In fact, we are next told that Jeremiah’s vocation occurred before he was born, when he was still in the womb. We don’t know how old he was when he came to terms with his vocation as a prophet. But we do know that his first words are words of protest: I am too young and no good at public speaking, he says.

Courses in leadership development are all the rage in colleges and universities these days. The premise is that you can teach someone how to be a leader. Students generally flock to these courses for, after all, who among them does not enjoy thinking of themselves as potential leaders of something. Leadership training becomes a code word for prophet spelled not with a “phe” in the middle but an “fi.” I know enough about leadership not naively to believe that leaders are born, not made. But I also wonder if talk about the “science of leadership” when applied to the church doesn’t sell God short – God is going to do what God is going to do regardless of our protests, and often it will redefine our views of success.

The story about Jeremiah and his call goes out of its way to assert that nothing about young Jeremiah – no talent, no inclination, no natural ability – suggests that his call makes sense. In fact, when told of his call to be a prophet, Jeremiah protests, “I don’t know how to do public speaking! God, don’t you know I haven’t taken that class yet? I’m only a kid. I get nervous in front of crowds. My SAT scores were 200 points better on the math than the verbal.”

God says to Jeremiah, “don’t pull that ‘but I’m only a kid stuff’ or we might substitute, “but I’m too old stuff” or “but I’m too busy stuff.” Don’t try any of that nonsense. I am God. You are the creature. You will go where I send you. You’ll speak what I tell you. I’ll watch over you.”

The call of God tends to tell us more about God than about the recipient of the call. Isn’t it odd that God needs someone, particularly an inept young person like Jeremiah, to do what God wants done? One might think that being God means having the ability to work solo. No. Something about the God of Israel and the Church reaches out to ordinary people, like Jeremiah, to get the job done.

Like all of us, Jeremiah is a reluctant prophet. Yet, despite his reservations, God’s call was finally irresistible. And so, Jeremiah took on the vocation of a prophet. A true prophet of God boldly announced the word of the Lord to whomever God sent him. It didn’t matter if people got angry or upset or refused to listen.

I had two interesting visitors to my office this week – Elijah and Isaiah. No kidding. Talk about prophetic visitation! Two young men in our community who, I can assure you, are not reluctant prophets! Elijah and Isaiah dropped by for a chat about their vision of saving the world for Christ. The initial focus will be University of Tennessee home football games, I guess because, if anything, football is the rival god in these parts and the stadium is the sanctuary for many. Their plan, which they believe God has called them to be doing, is to recruit whole congregations from the East TN area to distribute 40,000 tracts per football game announcing the plan of salvation and the need to choose now between heaven and hell. Isaiah, who did the talking, had had a vision, and this is what every Christian should be doing, he said. Would my congregation help?

Meanwhile, last week, an 84 year old woman is arrested in Oak Ridge on the anniversary of our dropping of the A bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshema, for protesting our continuing reliance on nuclear armaments, and among those other 12 or so arrested that day was a Presbyterian minister, a member of our Presbytery. Which can leave one wondering, what with some wanting to convert the heathen and others being arrested for civil disobedience, just who are the prophets today and who truly has a word from the Lord?

It was Jeremiah’s vocation, his calling, to place himself over against the political and religious status quo and to declare God’s word of judgment to a sinful people. He also pronounced words of hope about the future, but first came the bad news of persistent sin and lack of allegiance to God.

Jeremiah ‘s call came in the year 627 BC, a time when the international balance of power in the Mediterranean world was shifting from Assyria to Babylon. By 587 BC, some 30 years later, Jerusalem had fallen: the Babylonian armies had seized the holy city, looted the temple, burned the city, and marched its citizens away captive.

And against the backdrop of this future calamity, God called a youth, probably in his late teens, Jeremiah by name, son of the priest Hilkiah, to be his prophet. Jeremiah pleaded inexperience and asked to be excused, yet soon he was taking the people and the political leaders of Judah to task for their disloyalty to Yahweh, for their sinful preoccupations, for their blatant disregard for the covenant that bound the nation to their God. The people bowed down before the idol Baal and not the Lord; leaders as well as people spoke falsely of one another; the rich exploited or ignored the poor; violence was the hallmark of society; military alliances had been forged with Egypt; rulers lavished money upon themselves; and the prophets could not be trusted. In all of this God had been taken for granted, or worse, God had become marginal in the people’s thinking.

As his prophetic career unfolded, Jeremiah came to realize the self-deception that characterized the people. Without fear, he publicly attacked the faults of leaders; he exposed the pitfalls of a civil religion that uncritically aligned the political order with the rule of God; he critiqued the authority of kings and he blasted the people for their falsehoods and insincerities. He was, in our terms today, a visionary or a social activist – challenging the powerful and the rich, working to reform society, calling for change and repentance. No one, from the lowest to the highest in that society, was immune from the Word of the Lord coming out of the mouth of Jeremiah. He knew that repentance was more than merely saying, “I’m sorry” or even saying “I have sinned.” Repentance meant that the nation needed to turn itself completely around and head in a new spiritual direction; there needed to be a total transformation in behavior and attitude and practice.

It was a daunting, unpopular task, to be the bearer of bad tidings, of judgment and condemnation, of calling the people into accountability for their sinful actions. But all this had to happen before the words of God’s deliverance and hope could be pronounced. Such was the call to Jeremiah, the reluctant prophet.

And so, when we read from this first chapter of Jeremiah, perhaps we can understand the hesitation he felt in responding to such an awesome, demanding challenge. Who among us would not shrink before it?

“Ah, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.”

But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, “ I am only a child.” You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you.”

The confirmation of his call comes as God touches Jeremiah’s mouth, symbolically placing the divine words upon his tongue. The reluctant prophet will speak no longer his own words but rather now, he will speak the word of the Lord.

Despite his desire to turn aside from God’s voice, Jeremiah has no choice but to submit as God’s spokesman. It is part of the revealing of God’s eternal purposes: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

The “what ifs” would surely come in Jeremiah’s life. He must separate himself from friends and family, suffer torture from the priests, and rejection by the king. All because the call from the Lord came in a way that he could not resist.

I know that it is possible that a litany of excuses will spring up within us when we think about the discipline of speaking aloud the words that God has placed in our mouths. We might repeat with Jeremiah: I’m too young. Or, it might be, I’m too shy; I’m not spiritual enough to say anything meaningful; I’ve already done my share, it’s somebody else’s turn; somebody should come and ask me; everyone should already know how I feel. And on and on the string of excuses could go.

Jeremiah had his excuse ready, too. Only that wasn’t good enough. In spite of his resistance, God called this reluctant prophet to be his mouthpiece.

In the reformed tradition, we have always made much of Martin Luther’s belief in the priesthood of all believers, that we need no longer confess our sins to a priest but rather each believer is a priest to every other believer, and each one of us is now empowered to hear and to absolve the sins of any other brother and sister in the faith. You are empowered to pronounce words of forgiveness to me just as I am to you. The priesthood of all believers. That’s one of the reasons we have a corporate prayer of confession each Sunday.

Well, perhaps we also need to talk about the prophethood of all believers. A prophet delivers God’s word to God’s people, even if that word is unpopular, finding a way to challenge that which is wrong, to stand with those who are the victims and the oppressed, to subvert the customs and practices that set up devotion to false gods in place of loyalty to the God of Exodus, the God of deliverance, the God of the cross and of the resurrection. A prophet finds a way, as Paul wrote to the Ephesian Christians, “to speak the truth in love.”

And a prophet asks the question, again and again and again, if necessary, “what if?”

According to Luke, after Jesus had set his face to go up to Jerusalem for the final time, he told a story about a banquet to which many people had been invited. But those who were invited made one excuse after another: I’ve just bought some property; I’ve just acquired some new oxen; I’ve just gotten married. None of them came to the banquet. And so, others were invited in to take their places. It was a moment of grace for those who came, but for those who did not have the time, the master delivered his word of judgment: “None of these others who were invited shall taste my banquet.”

It is a demanding, even frightening call to young Jeremiah. But with it, comes an astounding promise: I will put you over kingdoms and nations, I will give you authority to pull down empires and make new kingdoms” (v.10).

The absurdity of telling something like this to this kid! You will go up to the palace and bring this whole kingdom to its knees so that I might plant a new kingdom in its place. What absurd ambitions!

Yet, do we not know that this is an absurdly gracious God? The God who would create the world out of nothing, on the basis of nothing but words, the God who would make a chosen people out of a rag tag tribe of nomads, a God who would raise Jesus from the dead – is just the sort of God who would think it cool to call a kid to speak words that shake the whole world. Would be just the sort of God who would think it fun to make a claim on a life like yours, to have your name since you were in the womb, to have plans for you, a job to fill, a task to undertake.

Jesus begins his ministry by assembling a motley crew of ex-fishermen, tax collectors, and assorted peasants. He turns to 12 of them, calls them each by name and says, “I’m going to take over the world. And guess who’s going to help me?”