Preaching Notes for the Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany, Year C (January 31, 2016)
The Rev. Dr. Dawn Chesser
These are the final three installments in each of the three-week miniseries tracks. Next week is a transition Sunday in which we celebrate the Transfiguration of the Lord, after which we call people to observe a holy Lent at Ash Wednesday services.
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Old Testament Track: Our Saving God.
My father, who is a retired United Methodist minister in Arkansas, used to call his parishioners on the telephone and identify himself by saying, "This is the Lord." After a while, of course, everybody in his church knew that when the Lord called them, it wasn't really the Lord, but their rather odd preacher. And oftentimes, as it turns out, when the Lord called, the people who got the call were not that thrilled, because they figured “the Lord” was only calling because he wanted them to do something.
It occurred to me this week, as I thought about what happened when the Lord called Jeremiah to be a prophet, that Jeremiah's reaction was not so very different from the reaction of my father's church members when the Lord called them: "Who is this again? The Lord?? Ah! Lord God! Good to hear from you. Yes, well, I appreciate the thought, I really do, but the truth is, I think you're calling the wrong person. Why don't you try somebody who is older than I, somebody with more experience, somebody with more time, somebody who is a better speaker? Why don’t you call somebody else?"
But of course, my father's parishioners in Arkansas and the prophet Jeremiah are not the only ones in history to have responded to the Lord's call in a negative way. After all, a call from the Lord is not generally thought of as something everyone expects or hopes to receive. That is, if we think of a call from the Lord mostly in terms of those called to professional ministry.
Before I started seminary, back in 1990, I think, I took my first step toward entering into professional ministry. The process leading toward ordination in the Methodist church is long and arduous, as some of you know. It begins with candidacy, which is a fancy name for what they call "exploring your call to ministry." But even before you begin the exploration process, you have to be recommended.
The way you get recommended is you meet with the staff-parish committee of your local church, the church in which you hold membership, for an interview about whether or not the folks in your church, usually folks who know you pretty well, believe you to be truly called to ministry. It is only after you are able to persuade them that your calling is sincere that you are able to become a candidate for exploration.
I remember my staff-parish interview. It was at St. Paul United Methodist Church in El Dorado, Arkansas, where I was working as a youth director at the time. I think I was twenty-four years old. What I remember about that interview, and what reminded me of it as I thought this week about the Scripture lesson from Jeremiah, is that it was the first time I had to try to explain to someone why I felt called to the ministry. I remember telling the committee that I couldn't pinpoint the exact moment in which I felt the Lord's call. There wasn't any specific event that I could name for them that would sound convincing. The almighty God didn't speak to me. There was no phone call from the Lord. There wasn't any sudden, unmistakable, blinding vision like Paul had on the road to Damascus. There was only a long history of involvement with the church, and a feeling that the church was where I truly belonged.
And of course, that was only the beginning of my struggle to describe my calling. After I was accepted as an exploring candidate, there were more interviews, with district and conference committees. And in addition to the interviews, there were numerous applications to fill out in which I had to try to explain my call to the ministry on paper. These applications were going to be read by lots of people, including laity and clergy, my mother and father, seminary professors and admissions directors and decision-making boards. I think there was a sense in which I felt a real need to legitimize my calling to myself. How could I know for certain that I was called? And, perhaps more important, what exactly was it that I was being called to do?
I imagine that the prophet Jeremiah must have asked himself those very same questions. Otherwise, why would he have bothered to make sure that his scribe, Baruch, wrote down these words that are surely meant to legitimize Jeremiah's call, and certify him for future generations as a true prophet commissioned to speak on behalf of the Lord.
Once I got into seminary, I had to begin describing my call not only to my professors, but to other students, other people who also felt called to the ministry, and the task became even more uncertain and difficult for me. Over and over, I found myself in groups of people who described their calls to the ministry in much more legitimate and convincing ways than my own feeble attempts to explain why I was there. There were people who talked about special visions. There were people who spoke of trying for years and years to avoid God's clear and certain call on their lives, until finally they could fight God no more and had given in, oh so reluctantly, to what was unquestionably God's will for their lives. It was as if all of their calls were a parallel of Jeremiah's. It was as if the Lord had spoken to each one of them directly and said: "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." I would sit there and listen to their stories and think, "Either these people are crazy, or I really don’t belong here."
I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point in my seminary career I reached a turning point. The change came when I stopped thinking about and trying to describe my call as an event that had happened in the past, and began to understand God's call on my life as a kind of ongoing process. I began to think that God doesn't call people one time to perform some particular task and that's the end of it. God's call is more of a dialogue that goes on throughout our lives, a part of an intimate relationship between each person and God.
Think about Jeremiah. Lots of Bibles are divided into little sections, and the sections are given titles. For example, thisScripture passage from Jeremiah is described in my Bible as "Jeremiah's call and commission." But when you start to read the rest of Jeremiah, you realize that the Lord didn't just come to Jeremiah one time and say, "Okay Jeremiah, I want you to be a prophet and go out and speak for me," and then go away. That's not what happened at all.
What happened is that the Lord came to Jeremiah again and again, all throughout his life. Sometimes the Lord told Jeremiah to go and do something, like go out and tell the people of Jerusalem that if they didn't end their wicked ways, their nation was going to be destroyed. Other times, the Lord went on and on to Jeremiah in a tirade of disappointment about Israel, much like you or I might complain to a good friend about something we are upset over. And then, there are times in the book of Jeremiah when Jeremiah complains to the Lord about what he thinks are unfair conditions that the Lord created: "Why do guilty persons enjoy success? Why are evildoers so happy?" (Jeremiah 12:1, CEB) he asks the Lord at one point. Why have you created a situation where people suffer, where life seems completely unfair, and then call upon me to go out and tell everybody you're going to destroy this nation because the people are so wicked?
I think about Jeremiah and his relationship with God. I think about God's call on Jeremiah's life, and God's expectations about what Jeremiah could accomplish. I think about all the things that God calls each one of us to deal with. And I think about all the things God has called me to do in my life so far.
God has called me to do many different things at many different times in many different places in my own life. At one point, God called me to be a child, to explore and play and grow and learn. Later on, God called me to test my wings as an adult. God has called me to be a friend to some people and a parent to others. Sometimes God calls me to be a listener, and other times God calls me to speak. God has called me many times to respond to situations that I judged to be unfair or difficult. And at times, of course, just like Jeremiah, God has called me to go and do things that I really didn’t want to do or thought I couldn't do.
I remember when I was pretty new to the ministry and serving as the associate pastor at a large suburban church in Illinois. Every year during the months of January and July, the senior pastor would go on vacation for a month, leaving me alone to lead the church. One year when he was gone, I received a phone call from a family who needed me to conduct a funeral for their seventeen-year-old daughter. The circumstances of the death were already familiar to me because I’d seen the story on the news the night before. A young lady, the cousin of the deceased girl’s family for whom I was being called to be in ministry, had too much alcohol to drink and she ran the car she was driving into a tree, instantly killing everyone in the car but herself. Three teenagers were dead, and the driver had survived with hardly a scratch. And to make matters worse, the two girls were not just cousins. They were very close friends. It was a terrible situation for which seminary, and indeed life itself, had not prepared me adequately to handle. I remember feeling terrified, just like Jeremiah, as I went to God in prayer. "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a child." And miraculously, somehow, in my moment of deepest doubt and fear, our saving Godcame to me with words of reassurance: "Do not say, 'I am only a child'; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you, Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you" (Jeremiah 4:7-8, NRSV, adapted by author).
How many times have you been in that kind of situation? How many times in your life have you been called to do what you thought you could never do or respond to a situation that you hoped you would never find yourself in? How many times has the Lord called you to sit with a person in need, to have courage in the face of a storm, to take a risk and stand up against the crowd to speak the truth? To fight for something that you knew in your heart to be right?
How many times have you felt like Jeremiah and said, "No, Lord, please. Not me. I'm not ready to answer your call right now. I don't have the time. I don't have any experience"? And how many times have you complained to the Lord about what you were being called to do? "Why me, Oh Lord, why is this happening to me? How can you be so unfair?"
How many times have you experienced the sting of pain and fear and disappointment? How many times have you found yourself searching for the right words to say to someone who was hurting? How many times has the Lord called you?
I think what I have finally learned after all this time in professional ministry is that the Lord calls all of us. The Lord has called us in the past, and the Lord is calling us today to respond to a world filled with pain and need. No one person's call is any more special or significant than another's. Those people in seminary, with all their impressive tales, why, their calls were no more special or serious than mine is, just as mine is no more special or serious than any one of yours. All of us are important. Each of us has something special to offer. Every single one of us is called to be in ministry.
In the words of Paul, there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of services but the same Lord, and there are varieties of activities but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?” (1 Corinthians 12:14-18, NRSV)
The Lord doesn’t just call the pastor to be in ministry. The Lord calls every single follower of Jesus Christ to be in ministry. So what is our task? To invite our members to pray about it, to listen for God’s leading, to discern what the Lord is calling them to do, and then to go out there and do it.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Reconciliation in Christ
The church at Corinth was notorious for its conflicts and divisions. They just could not get along with one another. They were constantly quarrelling and competing for power and control of the church, trying to form into little cliques and groups and to rally troops to support their positions.Paul makes this clear in his opening chapter, where he names the divisions directly:
It has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul’ or ‘I belong to Apollos’ or ‘I belong to Cephas’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’ Has Christ been divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized not one of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that none of you can say you were baptized in my name…for Christ did not send me to baptize, but to proclaim, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power (1 Corinthians 1:11-17, NRSV).
Paul’s letter to the people in Corinth was written as a warning to a church in trouble.Even though we often hear chapter thirteen read on its own, apart from the rest of the letter, it is important to understand that it was never intended to stand alone, as if it were a fully developed lesson about the beauty of love.It is not a complete unit of thought, but rather a continuation of what he has been saying in the preceding chapter. Chapter thirteen is only some more of the same argument against this divisive sense of self-importance that had apparently sprung up in the hearts of some of the members.
Paul introduces the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians by saying, "Let me show you a more excellent way," and he ends by saying that love is the greatest gift of all—better even than faith, which the writer of Hebrews notes is the "substance of things hoped for"—better even than hope itself.
These varied gifts that each member of the body has, and which manifest themselves in us in different ways, these things that divide us and that we argue over, are in fact the very things that Paul is talking about.
The fact is, if we look closely at the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, it becomes quite evident that Paul is engaged not only in downplaying the individual gifts of the Holy Spirit in the name of love, but also in trying to make us feel the very opposite of "holier-than-thou."
- Doesn't he argue that gifted speakers are, after all, quite shallow if they are without love?
- Doesn't he convince us that even the greatest faith amounts to nothing without love?
- Doesn't he open our eyes to the revelation that self-sacrifice, no matter how much is given, is wasted without love?
Or just take the complex of emotions that makes up love as Paul describes it and compare them with the attitudes of those who flaunt how many gifts the Holy Spirit has given them:
- If love is patient, think of how impatient some Christians are in their expectations of how things ought to go, and how quickly things ought to happen.
- If love is kind, think of how some, in the name of their own beliefs,put down other people’s beliefs.
- If love is not jealous or boastful, think how some can never seem to take a rest from pointing out how much more genuine and heartfelt and spirit-filled their faith is in comparison to the faith of others.
- If love does not insist on its own way, think of how one-sided some are when they tell people what the Bible says or how the church ought to be run.
- If love is not arrogant or rude, think of how some do all the talking and never listen to the wisdom of their brothers and sisters in the faith.
- If love is not irritable or resentful, think of how those very attitudes are evoked by the narrow-minded and self-righteous posture that some Christians take.
Paul says people who are guided by the love of Christ don't act the way some in the Corinthian church had been acting; that is, impatient, unkind, jealous, boastful, insistent about having one's own way, irritable, resentful, and crowing about those having the wrong qualities. Paul says that the only quality worth bragging about is the love that comes from Christ Jesus. Only the love that comes from Christ lasts from now on. Other gifts, like being prophetic or silver-tongued or knowledgeable, these individual gifts will pass away even before we ourselves pass away. None of us sees the whole picture alone. We are like people looking in a dull mirror, or like children just starting to school. What we know about Christ is very limited.The important thing is not what we think we know. The important thing is what Christ knows about us.