I’m going to show you a picture and ask you to think about who the artist might
be. Slide. Now the detail is exquisite, the colors are incredibly well blended,
and I’m starting to sound like an art critic, which I’m not. But most of us can
usually tell a good piece of art when we see it.
I used to have a poster of a Monet painting in my bedroom that looked a lot like
this one. Now the artist who painted this painting, along with many others, is
quickly becoming a real celebrity in England, where he lives.
This month, his second exhibition in a gallery in his home town of Holt,
Norfolk, sold out in 14 minutes. The sale of 16 new paintings swelled his bank
account by $30,000. On the morning when he opened his home for potential buyers
to come in and look, there were people on his doorstep waiting to come in as
soon as he let them in.
There are now 680 people on a waiting list for one of his originals. Art lovers
have driven from London to buy his work. Agents buzz around the town. People
offer to buy his schoolbooks. The starting price for a simple pastel picture is
almost $1700.
What’s the catch? Well, the artist’s name is Kieron Williamson. Let me show you
his picture. Slide. Kieron is seven years old. You might say to yourself, “He’s
just a boy. How can he produce such wonderful art?”
The thing is, everyone once in a while someone this young shows this much
promise. Kieron is being compared to a young Picasso. Personally, Kieron would
rather become more like Monet. But hey, you can’t have everything.
The response most people have when they hear this story is kind of like the
response Jeremiah has to his calling by God in today’s passage. Jeremiah felt
too inexperienced and inadequate to do what God was asking, and God said, “Don’t
sell yourself short. Remember that I’m involved here.”
Jeremiah is one of the major prophets in the Old Testament. He lived in the late
600’s and early 500’s BC in Judah. He came from a small town outside of
Jerusalem, from a priestly family. He spoke God’s word to kings and to the
people for forty years, right up to and after the nation was invaded by the
Babylonians and the people were taken into exile for fifty years.
Here’s the situation Jeremiah was in at the time. Jeremiah was born near the end
of the fifty year reign of a king in Judah who was widely regarded as a
nightmare. Instead of following the covenant that the people had made with God
to follow all the laws of Moses, King Manasseh introduced practices from
neighboring religions and dealt severely with anyone who criticized him.
You can imagine what it might have been like for a boy growing up in a priestly
family to watch as the king, who was supposed to have received his authority
from God, went and did the exact opposite of what God wanted him to do.
Manasseh’s son Amon became king after Manasseh died, but Amon continued the same
practices as his father, worshipping gods from other religions and building
statues to other gods in the temple and in public places.
But Amon was assassinated by his own staff after serving only two years. His
staff were executed by the people of Judah, and Amon’s son Josiah, who was just
a year older than young Kieron the artist, became king. Josiah is widely
regarded as a good king who, despite his youth, got rid of pagan religious
practices and worked with the people to make sure everyone followed God’s laws
again.
But young Josiah had many challenges. He was trying to reunite a nation that had
been fractured by war. And he had to face the fact that after more than fifty
years of rule by Manasseh and Amon, most people didn’t know how to follow God’s
laws anymore.
In fact, Josiah himself was not that knowledgeable. In the course of his reforms
he is notified that someone found a book of the law in the temple. It’s like no
one knows about this law. So Josiah’s secretary comes and brings him the book
and says, “Um boss, someone found this book in the temple. We really need to
follow what’s in this book if we want to make God happy.”
This was the time when Jeremiah received his calling from God to begin speaking
to the people, and to King Josiah. Jeremiah doesn’t really say that he supports
or opposes Josiah’s reforms, but they both seem to want the same thing: They
want to people to get back to following all of God’s laws. And Jeremiah sees
grave consequences for the nation if they don’t.
Today’s passage is about the day when, in Jeremiah’s youth, God spoke to him and
said, “Son there’s something I want you to do for me.” God tells Jeremiah that
God has set him apart, from before his birth, to speak to people on God’s
behalf.
It’s not that Jeremiah was such a great, godly guy. God didn’t choose Jeremiah
because he got good grades or obeyed his parents or avoided all the troubles
teenagers usually get into. We aren’t told what Jeremiah did or didn’t do. For
all we know, he could have been a total rebel. God could have spoken to him in
his cell at juvenile hall.
My point is that Jeremiah didn’t become a prophet because he had worked for it
or deserved it. He became a prophet because God appointed him to do so. Now as
you might imagine, the first thought to pop into Jeremiah’s head was, “I can’t
do this. I’m just a kid. I’m not even good at speaking to people.”
Have you ever had that feeling where you were being asked to do something you
really didn’t feel prepared to do? But the person asking you was someone you
love or respect, and you just didn’t want to disappoint him or her? I imagine
that’s how Jeremiah felt when he got the news that God had chosen him to be a
prophet.
By the way, the career of a prophet is not on filled with income potential or
job security. Prophets made nothing unless they had disciples who followed and
supported them. And when you say something on God’s behalf to a king, you’d
better hope it’s something pleasing because many prophets had been killed for
saying something the king didn’t like.
So on its surface, this wonderful calling by God doesn’t sound like such a great
deal after all. But God tells Jeremiah not to write himself off because he’s
young and doesn’t speak well. God promises in some way to protect Jeremiah on
his travels and to tell Jeremiah what to say. Hey, at least he doesn’t have to
come up with his own material, right?
Then, in a kind of symbolic gesture, God puts God’s hand over Jeremiah’s mouth
and touches it. That was God’s way of giving Jeremiah the words to speak. Then
God tells Jeremiah that he has been given power over nations and kingdoms.
His ministry will involve destroying some nations while building up others. I
imagine he thought to himself, “Destroying and building kingdoms. Thank goodness
I don’t have to do anything all that controversial!” The point is that what he
was going to do would matter greatly. It would affect history. It would change
lives in a significant way.
Now, imagine yourself in his place. Can you picture yourself having a great
impact on history? Would you really want to? Are you really in a position to do
so? How can you be sure that what you’re going to do will affect history in a
good way?
These are the kinds of questions that most people ask themselves as they wrestle
with a sense of calling by God. Have you ever felt that before? Have you ever
had this nagging suspicion that God wanted you to do something? How do you deal
with it?
I think every one of us, if we’re honest, regardless of our age, has wrestled
with this issue. I remember wrestling with it in high school and college because
I was sure God was calling me to something. But I didn’t know what. And I
believed that somehow it was my responsibility to make it happen.
I worked so hard on getting prepared and trying to understand what God wanted me
to do. And I tended to lose sight of God’s own role in my calling. I know – it
sounds kind of silly, but that’s how I thought about things.
That isn’t the way a divine calling works, as this passage from Jeremiah shows
us. Jeremiah found out that it starts with God, not with him. God chooses us,
and in some mysterious way that no one has been able to quantify, God makes us
aware of that call.
Now we may not feel worthy or prepared or qualified or whatever. And honestly,
all the preparation and schooling in the world isn’t going to help much if you
don’t remember that you are responding to God’s calling, not your own need to be
loved or admired or respected.
The point here is that if we’re honest, most of us have or are dealing with a
sense of calling. And what Jeremiah experienced was that despite his sense of
inadequacy, he ended up being surprised at just how much God could do through
him.
You may not feel capable. You may look at people who are gifted and have
followed their calling and said to yourself, “I could never be like that. I
could never do what she does. I could never represent God to people the way he
does.”
That’s the point. You’re not being called to do what someone else does. If you
are struggling with a sense of calling, then God has a special purpose for you.
And you are the only one who can carry out that purpose in your own unique way.
Only you are gifted in your own unique way so that you can do what you’re called
to do.
So it doesn’t matter if you can’t imagine yourself doing the incredible things
you see others doing. What God calls you to do is pretty incredible in itself.
You may not envision yourself destroying kingdoms and building nations.
But you will be able to do whatever God calls you to do because God will empower
you to do it, and God will give you the resources you need to prepare yourself.
Don’t fall into the trap of selling yourself short. And don’t cheat yourself by
telling yourself, “I’d better do something else because I can’t see myself doing
this.” That sense of calling will never go away.
I remember the church that ordained me, a small church in the Chicago suburbs
about 15 minutes away from the seminary I attended. What was amazing to me was
that there were a number of retired ministers in the congregation.
There was a seminary professor who attended, as well as someone who had moved
from ministry into another field. He eventually went back into the pastorate and
is now at a church near where Michelle grew up.
Just imagine how intimidating that could have been for me. Here I was, this
young seminary student, surrounded by all these incredible, knowledgeable people
who had spent their careers doing exactly what I felt called to do.
I’m sure they chuckled when they heard me say something that a more experienced
minister would know better than to say. I remember sitting with Michelle in
Sunday School class one day and her remarking just how lucky we were to be
preparing for a career in ministry in an environment where there were so many
accomplished people to emulate and so many examples to follow.
I remember saying to myself, “Someday I want to be like them. I don’t know if I
could ever accomplish what they’ve done. I’d probably find a way to screw it up.
I’m so young.”
Now when I look back at that time, I realize that I was indeed lucky to have
been ordained in that kind of congregation. But I also realize that the point
was not for me to try to do what they did or become what they became.
The idea was for me to do whatever God was calling me to do. And if it looked
like what they did, fine. And if not, that’s fine too. I couldn’t comprehend at
the time that I was gifted in a unique way, that I was appointed by God to do
something unique, and that wherever my calling took me, it was from God, and
that made it special.
If I had simply tried to be like those people I admired so much, and believe me,
I tried for a long time to be just like them, I could not have spoken the words
I needed to speak in the places to which I was called.
If those of us who struggle with a sense of calling are going to follow that
calling, we have to have an undying faith that regardless of what happens, God
is working in and through us, despite our feelings of inadequacy, to accomplish
God’s own purpose.
OR let me put it another way: sometimes, when you feel called to do something,
you have to start working on it even before you’ve convinced yourself that
you’re capable of doing it. Following your call in many ways involves suspending
your own disbelief in yourself. That’s what Jeremiah had to do.
It’s not a matter of looking at all the options, considering the costs and
figuring out how you’re going to get where you God wants you to go. Because if
you do it that way, you’re not going to be working from this absolute certainty
about God’s purpose.
Jeremiah may have not believed he was capable of doing what God called him to
do, but he had no doubt about what God was going to do. And since God had called
him there was no uncertainty about whether or not he had to do it.
If you want to be prophetic in this day and age, you have to have that kind of a
sense of purpose. Your belief has to be not so much in yourself, but in what God
is going to do through you and in spite of you.
I want to close by asking you to think about what it would be like for God to
speak some prophetic word to our community through you. What do you think God
would say? What is it that only you can say on God’s behalf?
Take a moment to write a prophetic word on the pieces of paper that you’ve been
handed. And as we sing the final hymn, if you feel so moved, come up front and
pin that paper on the board here. And later on we’ll talk about what kinds of
prophetic message our church has for our community.