Going Where He Sends Us

Jeremiah 1: 1-10

           Imagine being eighteen or twenty years old and getting a very clear, pressing, non-negotiable call…from God. At any time, it is life changing. I can attest to that in my own life. But imagine at such a young age. Jeremiah had such an experience. He was called before he had an opportunity to do much living. God wanted him early.  He had big plans for Jeremiah as a prophet to God’s people.

          I’ve always thought that if I were given a choice between judge and prophet, I would take judge hands down. Judges had power. They were leaders. They could effect change. They had armies under their command. On the other hand, prophets were mouthpieces. They were like Doppler radar. They were the early warning systems for the people of Israel, but they weren’t predicting the weather. They did predict climate change, but it was the religious and political climate with which they were concerned.

          The Old Testament contains seventeen books written or attributed to the prophets. Twelve of them are called Minor Prophets, not because of their message, but because of their length. Five others, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel and Daniel, are called major because they are longer. They were called prophets not because they could see the future, but rather to call attention to the present. They were commissioned by God to warn God’s people that disobedience would come at a cost.

          Jeremiah, also called the weeping prophet because of all the bad news and times he lived through and prophesied about, covered a lot of ground. Some commentators characterize him as the persevering prophet. I think that is more accurate when we examine the life of this servant of God. His ministry, and yes it was most definitely a ministry, lasted a long time. It started in the year 627, about midway through the reign of King Josiah, the last “good” king of Judah, and ended in Egypt some forty one years later, when Jeremiah and his scribe Baruch were forced to go there with the leaders of the coup against Gedaliah, the governor of Judah appointed by the king of Babylon.

Jeremiah’s ministry witnessed the reign of good king Josiah, the fall of Assyria to the Babylonians, the rise of Egypt while the Babylonians consolidated their power, the further rise of the Babylonians, and a succession of kings of Judah including Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoichin and Zedekiah, followed by the appointment of Gedaliah, a Judean, by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.

          Confused? Don’t worry. Think of it this way, that Jeremiah was around at the fall of the Southern Kingdom (Judah) and that he prophesied to God’s people during the reigns of five kings and an appointed governor. The world changed greatly in the time of Jeremiah, and that indeed is part of his message, that God’s loyalty and justice never change, even in the midst of earthly turmoil.

          When God called Jeremiah, it was in the middle of good times. Josiah, the boy king, had united the people. He listened to God. Yet just twenty years or so after Josiah’s reign had ended, the country was mired in political, social, moral and spiritual decay. 

          I started out in the Navy as a deck officer aboard a ship. Part of my duties were to take care of the “aft” portion of the ship; the fantail, the stern, the back end, so to speak. What that entailed was, among other things,  painting. My division trained for many tasks, but before and after the training, there was painting. First, we painted with red lead, a red primer designed to seal rust. Then, we painted with Navy gray paint. That was one of my first lessons that much of what we do in this world is maintenance. It’s not glamorous, but it has to be done. “Red-leading” kept the rust off my ship.

Now what has my job as a painting superintendent got to do with prophecy? More than meets the eye at first blush. Think about your own experiences. What parts of your life need “red-leading?” Red-leading keeps the rust off your children and the way you do business with your life. The people of Israel forgot to do the maintenance of their culture and it rusted.

          Jeremiah was of the tribe of Benjamin, which was one of the two priestly tribes. He was born to go into the priesthood. But being called to be God’s prophet was entirely different. It would change Jeremiah’s life. If you look at the scripture for today, you can see four related but separate actions that God took when calling Jeremiah. First, we are told that that God knew Jeremiah. He knew him before he was born, before he was even formed in his mother’s womb. Before Jeremiah ever drew a breath on this earth, God had already begun a relationship with him.  Not only that, the “before” used here applies to Jeremiah’s call as well. God has claimed Jeremiah for his divine purpose before he enters the world. Thirdly, the scripture says that before he was formed or born, he was consecrated; and fourth, that again, before he was formed or born, he was appointed by God. Before Jeremiah was ever conceived by man, he was in relationship with God; he was claimed, consecrated and appointed by God…for kingdom work.

          All this is revealed to Jeremiah. The word of the Lord comes to him and tells him this much. And yet, Jeremiah acts in the way that you and I would most probably act. Put yourself in the shoes of Jeremiah. You’re walking home and the voice of God comes to you and tells you that you are appointed a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah starts with the disclaimers. Come on, God, I’m just a kid. This is special work. I don’t have the verbal skills. I just got out of high school. I’m just getting started here. I don’t know how to be a prophet.

          And what did God say? No sweat. Don’t even say all that stuff. I’m God, remember? “For to all to whom I send you, you shall go,” No fear! I’ve got your back. I’m with you. I will deliver you.

          For Jeremiah, God’s reassurance was swift and tangible. God reached out and touched Jeremiah’s mouth. One gets the impression of a physical act. Jeremiah is touched by God. It is reminiscent of the Incarnation of Christ, for here, divine meets human. In the case of Jeremiah, the human will never be the same.

          I don’t know about you, but I could use a sendoff like that. God says to Jeremiah that he is there; that he will deliver Jeremiah.

Wow! If only he would talk to me like that. Then I would know what to do.  

Jeremiah was lucky. He heard from God himself and it is inspirational to read about that event in his life. But for us to say that such is not available to us is to ignore the Scripture, the written Word of God. God’s promises are everywhere in the Bible. We can hardly turn a page without finding an example. Here are just a few.

Are you depressed? Wondering who cares? Look at Isaiah 41:10: “fear not, for I am with you…I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you.” Or Isaiah 54:10: “For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love will not depart from you.”

Are you scared? Is there something or someone that threatens you? Call on Deuteronomy 31:8 as did Moses: “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you.” Or claim the promise of Jesus himself in John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you…Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

Do you have questions about financial decisions? Look at Philippians 4:19: “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” How about health questions? You might want to claim God’s promise in Jeremiah 30:17: “For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the Lord.” If God can restore a nation, he can handle you and me.

How do we get these messages from God? How do we begin to claim his promises? In the eleventh chapter of Luke’s gospel, Jesus has taught his disciples how to pray. Then he moves on to the subject of claiming God’s promises. He tells his disciples to: “ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” [Luke 11: 9]. That same promise remains an invitation to all who seek it. And Jesus goes on in that same story to explain that our heavenly father wants us to ask, wants us to seek, wants us to knock.  Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will be given to us in more abundance than even the love of a father for his own child.

So…while God may have not touched our mouths in the same way that he touched those of Jeremiah, he does find very effective ways to communicate with us, if only we are paying attention. Certainly one of the richest sources to mine his promises is the Bible. There are literally hundreds of promises to claim. The apostle Paul claimed them all. He was called, not at the beginning of his life, like Jeremiah, but well into his career as a persecutor of Christians. Writing to the church in Rome, he gives us this promise to add to our list: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” [Romans 8: 38].

We are all called. Most of us will not prophesy to the nations like Jeremiah, but we might prophesy to our children or others with whom we come in contact. We might do quite a bit more if we will claim the promises that God has given us, for God’s loyalty and justice never change. God does put words in our mouths in the sense that he puts thoughts in our minds, in the way that the Holy Spirit can speak to our inner life.

Do not say, I am only a youth, or only one person, or old or weak or untrained. Do not be so presumptuous as to think that God cannot give you every tool required to do his bidding. Listen to what he is saying: “for to all whom I send you, you shall go.”

If All Are the Same Member, then Where Is the Body?

                   1 Corinthians 12: 4-27

           What’s more important? The organization or the individual? Who’s more important? The star or the team? Is Cam Newton the heartbeat of the Carolina Panthers? Or are the Panthers the heartbeat that gives Cam life for his talent? My mechanic used to tell me that an automobile is the only machine in the world that costs $25,000 assembled or $100,000 unassembled. So which is more important…the body or its members? If you use the logic of my mechanic and if you assign importance by monetary value alone, then the parts are  more important than the vehicle they help assemble. But if that is true, then what do you tell all those thousands of parts when the steering wheel is missing? Are they now unimportant? They can’t do what they were designed to do because there is nothing there to steer them. The car is useless without the steering wheel. So which is more important, the thing or its components?

          Paul writes to the church in Corinth. He’s trying to get those folks to understand the importance of unity. He talks about the trinity, though he doesn’t use the word. He says one God, one Spirit, one Lord, meaning Jesus. He says no matter what kind of gifts you may possess, they manifest themselves as the presence of the Holy Spirit, of God and his grace.

          One body. The concept is of immense significance. Here, Paul is talking about the church, the body of Christ, but he certainly is in good company. Paul’s concept of unity has been applied in other contexts for centuries. You hear it in conference rooms, boardrooms, judge’s chambers and dugouts. You hear it sitting around kitchen tables. Wherever there is something to be accomplished and more than one person involved, the cry is heard for cooperation, for teamwork, for unity!

          In Genesis, we are told that a man will leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Easier said than done, but God’s point is unity. In the book of Deuteronomy appears the Shema, the first two words of the most important prayer of the nation of Israel. It calls the people to “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” We understand God as Trinitarian, but even in that community of deity Father, Son and Holy Spirit), there is but one God.

          The secular world tries to emulate these principles of unity. Our American union is a republic of United States. Companies band together under an invention called the corporation, whereby individuals join for a common purpose, issuing stock certificates to evidence their collective ownership of the whole. Churches and denominations also join for common purposes, making constitutions and charters to bind them as they exist in a multitude of locations under one common umbrella. Sports provide yet another example of how we group our individual selves for the good of the whole, the team.

          So it would seem that the whole is of more importance than the sum of its parts, the car more valuable than its individual components. Paul tells the church in Corinth, which is having all kinds of troubles, that “just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” We are all made to drink of, to answer to, one Spirit, the Spirit of God.

          In this passage, Paul is specifically talking about the Spirit of God bringing Jews and Gentiles together in one faith. But his thoughts have many other applications. Look again at Paul’s words and what they should mean to us today. It’s not just Jew and Greek, but rich and poor. It’s not just Pharisee and Scribe, but soldier and fisherman.  It’s not just Presbyterians and Baptists, but Christians. The church becomes the manifestation of the risen Christ on earth. Paul points out to us that as surely as a hand cannot operate without the body to which it is attached, so equally does the body require the hand…and the foot and every other part and system…to be whole and working efficiently.

          Look at my hand. It works great. It can grasp. It can squeeze. It can carry. Squeeze my wrist just right and you can feel my pulse. You can feel the blood flowing throughout my hand. It’s alive and vital and integral to what I am capable of doing.

          Now, cut it off. The moment it is severed, it begins to die. In a very short while, it will wither, and turn blue and become useless. That’s not all. Look at the stump where my hand was severed. If it is not treated, and with some careful attention and haste, I could bleed out. The act of cutting off my hand could cause my death.

          What if the hand represents you? What if the body represents the church? What if you are cut off from the church, the bride of Christ? Can you continue to be a vital, active Christian outside of the fellowship of the Church?

          Paul says that God has composed the body (the Church) that there is no division in it, that the members all have the same care for one another; that if one member suffers, all suffer; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

          But aren’t some parts are more important than others? Paul says no.  Even the seemingly weaker parts are indispensable. Take the liver as an example. Who wants to be a liver! Livers get no headlines. All they do are secret bile to carry waste away and make a little protein. But try living without a liver.

          Yes, the body can function without all its original parts. You can lose an eye and still see. But with each loss, the body is damaged and function is compromised. And the part, unless harvested for transplant, is lost. So, says Paul, the hand needs the eye; they both need the foot. Each member performs different functions, but all are needed. So it is with the church. God wills gifts for us, then gives them to us. Individuals come together, share those gifts and the bride of Christ can dance all night. Through the Spirit that unites us and guides us, we become unified in our incredible variety of gifts and diversity to do God’s will!

A thousand feet can walk nowhere, climb nothing. But one unified body? It can scale mountains and swim oceans. “If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.”

There is one exception. Every body needs a guidance system, a mission control. We think of it as the brain or the head, the place where decisions are made, plans formulated. Without the head, the body is useless and will die. Christians understand that Jesus Christ fulfills that role for us. Writing to the church in Colossae, Paul acknowledges as much, saying that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation…and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church.”

Through Christ, we receive…gifts of all kinds, talents of all colors. Through Christ, we manifest those gifts, apply those gifts, glorify his gift to us. Through Christ we have unity in diversity, diversity in unity. No one part can dismiss another. No one part can be more proud than another. God organized the church the same way he organized the body. It is interdependent. The church is its members and its members are the church. They, and it…rise to serve, and in that service, act out their loving duty as the children of God.

What are you? A hand, a foot, a finger, a toe, a liver? It doesn’t matter. You are needed. Jesus is counting on the Church—and we are the Church! We are his manifestation. We are his voice. Let’s speak!

                         Sojourning In a Foreign Land

     Exodus 2: 22, Matthew 2; 13-15

 

 

          Have you ever been a sojourner? Chances are excellent that you have. A sojourner is a temporary resident. Sojourners are college students staying in dormitories. Sojourners are infantrymen in tents or barracks, sailors on board ships, missionaries working far afield from their homes.

          Sojourner just means temporary visitor. Add to it “in a foreign land” and you have a familiar Biblical concept. The Hebrew word (ger) that we usually translate as “sojourner,” or sometimes “stranger,” occurs about 160 times in Scripture as either a noun or verb. It’s used a lot because it’s common in scripture for people to find themselves in a temporary place.

          In the Book of Exodus, Moses has spent the first chapter of his life as a sojourner in the land of Egypt, where he is Pharaoh’s adopted prince. He doesn’t know he’s a sojourner. He thinks he is home. As time passes, he realizes what God has in store for him. In the second chapter of his life, banished from Egypt, Moses finds himself in the region of Midian. He goes to work for Jethro, the priest of Midian. Moses marries Jethro’s daughter and his first son is called Gershom, meaning sojourner in a foreign land. As you know, Moses was to experience a couple more significant chapters in his life. He was not done with either sojourning or doing so in a foreign land. God had a lot in store for Moses.

          Sojourning is a common Biblical theme. Look at Abraham. He was the king of the sojourners. He moved from the land of Ur to a nomadic life which would eventually bring him to the land of Canaan. His grandson Jacob would later flee to another land after stealing his brother’s birthright. When famine came, Jacob’s family ended up in Goshen, right outside the Egyptian capital. More sojourning. This time, it lasted about four hundred years, as God’s people became enslaved to the Egyptians, but it still was God’s people sojourning in a foreign land.

          King David spent a lot of time knocking around. It was a dozen years between his anointing and his assuming the throne as king. The prophet Elijah spent about as much time running away to the wilderness and the desert as he did trying to wake up the nation of Israel. The Israelites didn’t just wander through the Exodus years; they were also exiled in Babylon, far from home for several generations. It seems that in many instances, sojourning in a foreign land was a way of life for God’s people.

          But, you might say, that was the Old Testament. It was different in the New Testament, wasn’t it? Things began to settle down. God’s people were back in Israel.  Not really. That’s tells only part of the story. For instance, the book of Matthew reports that after Jesus was born, wise men came from the east to Jerusalem. There, they found out Jesus had been born in Bethlehem and they traveled there, finding Jesus in a house. The nativity scene we display every year has the characters right, but not the timing. The wise men, or magi, came later, probably months later. Maybe more. That’s why Herod had all the male children less than two years old killed. Jesus was sure to have been in that group.

          But Jesus wasn’t in that group. Joseph had been warned by an angel and Jesus and his family had fled quickly to Egypt, where they stayed until Herod died. So Jesus started out his life as a sojourner in a foreign land. Even when they returned, they started over in a new town where they were not known.

          Where did the great apostle Paul live? On the road. How about Philip? Try Africa. The same is true for so many of Jesus’ disciples. They found themselves sojourners in a foreign land for the sake of the gospel

          Yet as great a commitment as it is to leave your home or familiar surroundings and strike out for some unfamiliar place, it is by far a greater commitment, indeed the ultimate act of obedience, to stay right where you are, but change your allegiance. Want to try it out? Want to be a sojourner in a foreign land? Just try to follow Jesus!

First, you might want to take an inventory. Is there anything you might have to change?  Look at what you have. Let’s just take a quick tour of the average person in this community. You would say you’re pretty average, wouldn’t you? You’re certainly not rich and you aren’t poor either.

Okay. Do you own a car? Jesus didn’t. Do you own your own home? Jesus didn’t. How many pairs of shoes do you own? Jesus owned a pair of sandals. How many changes of clothes sit in your closet unworn for months or even years? Jesus owned a robe.  

          How do you support God’s church? Do you give money? The widow Jesus saw at the temple gave a mite. That’s less than a penny. It’s also a fortune, for it was all she had. How much time do you give each week? An hour, two, five?  Paul gave his life to God and paid his own way as a tentmaker to boot.  

My point is not to disparage anyone. We all fall short of Jesus and we already know that. My point is this. Jesus showed us the way to live in this world with our eyes on the kingdom.  

          It’s very difficult to live in this world and keep your eyes on the prize. We are constantly being told by every message on every billboard, in every newspaper or magazine, in every  commercial, that we need to be taller and thinner and prettier, that we can do so if we just use the right drugs, wear the right clothes, drive the right cars. The idols the media promotes are bachelors and bachelorettes, quarterbacks and singers. Even when religion is front and center, it revolves around the bigness of the ministry, the size of the purse.

          If we can turn away from such massive promotion, such a penetrating social message, then we will indeed find ourselves  sojourners in a foreign land. Almost everything in our society points us in another way, a selfish way. But Jesus is calling, too.  We live with one foot balanced precariously in the reality of place, of the here and now, of time and space and yes, consumerism.

But as Christians, we must reach. We must thrust that other foot into a spiritual land that day by day, hour by hour, begins to make us realize that the ground on which we walk is quicksand. It is only the firm ground of the cross where reality really exists. That is where we find home. That is where we can hang up the shoes of the sojourner and take our rest.

The apostle Paul, writing to the Roman church, encouraged them to present themselves as living sacrifices acceptable, not to their friends or co-workers or classmates, but to God. He entreated them to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of their minds…to discern the will of God.” He was asking them to do what Jesus alluded to in the seventeenth chapter of John. Jesus, praying to God during the Passion Week. asked God that his disciples could be “in this world, but not of it.”

What does Paul mean? What does Jesus mean? Jesus goes on to say that he is sending his disciples into the world, not withdrawing them from it. He asks God for their protection from evil, not for a place to hide. I think the message here is that we are always to be guided by Christ, by God’s grace, that we are always to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. We Christians are the answer. We just need to keep reminding the world of what the true questions are.

Yes, if we are Christians, then we are called upon to be sojourners in a foreign land. It is a land full of temptation, ripe with idols, loaded with pressure from all around us to conform to its ways. But we know better. It’s only temporary.

Why should we do such a thing, make such a commitment? Why should we make life so hard? Don’t be misled. Hard can be good; even easy. Jesus promises us that his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

It’s time to recognize that even while we sit at home surrounded by family, relaxed in all our earthly rituals, we are just sojourners, passing through this place on the way to eternity. The place we live, the space we occupy, is only temporary. We cannot find real lasting stability on such a foundation. It just can’t hold but so long.

We can find that stability in Jesus. We can find that foundation in him. There’s nothing temporary about Jesus. Where do you stand, and how will you serve? On Christ the solid rock we stand. All other ground…is sinking sand!