How To Speak
Jeremiah 1:4-10; Luke 4:21-30
January 31, 2010
Today seems to be all about prophecy: the original call to prophecy of one of the greatest of literary prophets, Jeremiah; and the first authentically prophetic and dangerous words of Jesus in his hometown Nazareth synagogue. I do not intend to recruit prophets, however. Strictly speaking in the Biblical sense, we have no choice about being a prophet. No one decides to become a prophet as if your ego could do so. Nevertheless, we are called to be something, to be a child of God with a special and specific task.
One of the most significant innovations of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century was Martin Luther’s insistence that all people are called, that all people possess a God-given vocation, not just the priests. Often this has been reduced down to the idea that whatever your occupation is your vocation, but that is far from the case for many people. A lot of people have discovered that their avocation is more of an authentic calling from God than how they have earned their living.
One of the most intriguing and rewarding part of what I do is to listen to people tell me the story of when, how and why they embarked upon their life’s work. It is just as interesting hearing it from a 30-something as it is from a 60-something. Truck drivers and foresters, physical therapists and accountants, lawyers and teachers, doctors and dentists and secretaries and engineers - all have talked with a barely hidden glee when asked why did you want to do this?
My father was one of the first people in the business of repairing radios and then televisions. One day when we were visiting his parents and walking around the small village where he had grown up, my father pointed out a house. “That’s where old man so-and-so helped me to build my first transistor radio in 1922. The only station you could get in was KDKA-Pittsburgh (approximately 400 kilometers to the west).”
My dad was on a roll and then told me that in Grade 11 in 1927 his high school principal took him into his office and suggested that he leave school for a while and work full-time at radio repairing, for which he had already gained quite a little reputation. Then come back to school and finish your degree, the principal said, but Dad said he never did. But I grew up surrounded by radios and TV’s in every nook of the house and workshop and store beneath us. This was no job, and it certainly was not a lucrative one, but it was a calling about which my father was proud. His story was supposed to be the typical fatherly tale about urging me to continue my education, but by then he didn’t need to do that. Instead, I gleaned something more precious from what he said and showed me than “stay in school.”
Those were my father’s words, perhaps not the awesome Word of the Lord that came to all the Old Testament prophets. No one bothers to describe the medium here, but the Word of the Lord is rendered in human words, lilting poetically, yet irresistibly inside its recipient’s head. To the young Jeremiah, a teenager living in a troubled time in a troubled land, the words sounded impossible, yet non-negotiable. “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.”
Jeremiah responded just as firmly, “Ah, Lord God, look, I d not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” “Don’t tell me, ‘I’m only a boy,” God retorted immediately. You have no choice, but don’t worry, I have put my words in your mouth. Look, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”
No wonder Jeremiah was hesitant to take on the task, but the Word of the Lord kept coming to him, so he had to speak. I am convinced that most of us have been called to do something you have not fully agreed to do, but recognize that without doing it your life would not be fulfilled, would be vastly emptier, would have less meaning and purpose. Sure, some of you are just about to raise your hands, “OK, tell me what it is, because I certainly don’t know.” I cannot tell you either, for it is not a public conversation that I can assess. A human-divine conversation and you are the human. I believe you have been called by God, but either you weren’t listening or were listening to too many other people’s opinions and couldn’t believe what you had heard.
Garrison Keillor talks a lot about calling and meaning in the midst of very ordinary lives on each week on A Prairie Home Companion. Recently, Keillor responded to a letter in the weekly newsletter that says it simply and humbly well.
Dear Mr. Keillor, As a longtime fan of A Prairie Home Companion, I find both comfort and encouragement in your fatherly sign-off for program: “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.” But I’ve often wondered what you mean when you say, “Be well.” How do you define well-being? What do you do to achieve it? Steve, Wabash College. Keillor answered:
“You’re a college guy and I’m an old writer, Steve, so we’re looking at this from different angles. I’m more aware of decline and decrepitude than you possibly could be. I’m at the age when people tell me, “You’re looking good” in that tone of voice that says “for a guy your age.” For me, well-being has a lot to do with forward motion. I need to have deadlines, a list of projects, people who rely on me, some ambition on my back like an outboard motor. Good health is good, of course, and you don’t want big black splotches showing up on the CAT scan, but my sense of well-being comes from waking up each day with work to do. It was different when I was in college: the work was imposed by teachers and so much of it seemed irrelevant, make-work, a lot of pointless exercises. What you hope for in life is a sense of a calling, a vocation, which simply means that one goes to one’s work gratefully, not out of fear or habit but with a whole heart. It’s the whole-heartedness that makes for well-being. Everyone has to live with a degree of doubt and restlessness, but there’s nothing like enthusiasm, especially when you’re 67. I have a plumber in my house right now, working to repair a pipe that broke when it froze and rebuild part of a jerry-rigged heating system, and it is so clear to me that this man loves his work. So does my internist. So do the women who care for my ancient mother. So do the musicians on the radio show.”
So do many of us. How are you supposed to speak? Just by talking and trusting that God, not your ego, will supply the words. Being enthusiastic, Keillor recommends, is not bad advice and subtle. For the word “enthusiasm” literally means to be filled by God.
Jeremiah had to go out there and preach his calling and his preaching found him in frequent trouble, including beatings and jail time. Your calling may not be so dangerous, but it is just as precious, and it requires you to speak - at the right and appropriate moment - about what it has meant and is meaning for your life to be called.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan