Which Altar Will It Be?

 

Now the word of the LORD came to me saying,
“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 1:4-5].

Perhaps like me, you were “raised up” in a world that taught—that teaches—lessons in self-construction. To the extent that your own youth was anything like mine, you often heard statements like this from adults: “If you just put your mind to it, you can do or be anything you want.”

Believing the wisdom in that statement, I studied hard through high school so that I could go to a first-rate college (Go Deacs!); studied hard in college so that I could go a first-rate law school (again, Go Deacs!); and really studied hard in law school so that I could get a job with a top-tier law firm. All through those years, and for several years thereafter, it never occurred to me that I might not be “the master of my fate;” indeed, that I was not “the captain of my soul” [from Invictus—my favorite poem during my teens and twenties—by William Ernest Henley].

You see, I hadn’t spent much time reading the prophet Jeremiah, whose opening verses make up the OT reading for this upcoming Sunday, [Jeremiah 1:4-10, the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year C]. And so, unfamiliar with Jeremiah as I was for the first 35 years of my life, I thought that the deepest possible question was something like, “What should I do with my life?” At the time, it never occurred to me that “It’s not really my life.”

As we read this week’s OT selection, we see that the LORD has some rather unconventional ideas when it comes to “our” lives. In fact, the LORD is rather impertinent. With words guaranteed to make many a 21st century mainline Protestant uncomfortable, the LORD reaches back before the hallowed second trimester and announces to Jeremiah, “Before you were born I set you apart; I made you a prophet to the nations.”

Jeremiah may well have been thinking, “But LORD, I had sort of thought I’d go on to be a CPA.” Jeremiah comes up with excuses. “I don’t know how to speak because I’m only a child” [1:6].

The LORD responds, “Don’t say, ‘I’m only a child.’ Where I send you, you must go; what I tell you, you must say. Don’t be afraid of them, because I’m with you to rescue you” [1:7-8]. We might remember that the LORD had some similar words for Moses [Exodus 3:11-12].

As we read or hear the LORD’s startling news for Jeremiah, we may wince, for it sounds as if it might be startling news for us as well. As our friend, the Reverend Dr. Will Willimon, puts it as he contemplates this Jeremiah passage, “The life you are living is not your own” [Pulpit Resource, by Will Willimon (Abingdon Press)].

We belong to the LORD. The LORD can (and will) use us as He pleases. As John Wesley so clearly crafted in his Covenant Prayer, “Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee, ….” Either way, it’s the LORD’s choice, not ours.

Our Faith teaches that since our baptisms, all of us have been called to serve Christ, and not only to serve Him, but to serve Him in everything we do. If you’re a bricklayer, you are called upon to serve Him as you labor. If you are a university librarian, you are called upon to serve Him in all that you do. If you serve as a pastor, you are called upon to serve Him, not your career. And for those friends who think they have retired. Serving the LORD isn’t something from which you can retire. You’re never off the hook!

Indeed, we aren’t called upon to serve Him if, and when, it suits us. We aren’t to serve Him if the job He gives us utilizes our strengths and is consistent with our sensibilities. We can’t say, “I know that the Blacknall Session has called for all members of the church to help our in our nursery, but I’m just not good at it.” Nor are we called to serve Him with the least possible effort that assuages our consciences—“I’m a pretty good donor and, hey, I served as an usher twice last year.” We aren’t called to serve Him after we have equipped ourselves with the skills that we think are necessary. We are to serve Him, as the folks in Washington, D.C. like to say, “Full stop.”

“Well,” one might think. “At least when we serve the LORD, it gives us such a feeling of contentment. We’re fulfilled.” Such contentment may indeed follow, but the LORD makes no such promises. Mother Teresa wrote that for nearly 50 years after she had favorably responded to the LORD’s call and had committed herself to serve the poor and sick in India, she endured a “dark night of the soul,” a period in which she sometimes wondered if, at the very moment of her profound, “Yes,” she had not been abandoned by her LORD. But, of course, Mother Teresa had read Jeremiah. She knew what her LORD has said to the ill-equipped prophet so long ago: that “her” life did not belong to her; it belonged solely to her LORD. And so, in spite of her lack of fulfillment, she continued on.

As much as it can sometimes irk us, the LORD doesn’t wait for “our” ideas. The LORD approached Jeremiah; he did not volunteer. Indeed, he want to run. Jonah didn’t ask the LORD if he could go preach to the Ninevites; he boarded a boat in the other direction after the LORD told him to go do it.

Just as in last week’s meditation, I stressed that the promise always precedes faith, so also the LORD’s action in reaching out to us, in drafting us for the LORD’s purposes, always comes before our answer to Him. And, as several of us have learned over the years, the LORD doesn’t take “No” for an answer. We may try to hide in the background; we may think we’re safe, that the LORD hasn’t seen us, that the LORD doesn’t have a mind to pluck us from our carefully planned everyday lives for some duty that we’d prefer to avoid. Let me tell you from personal experience—when we think that way, we are wrong.

The woman at the well [John 4:7] thought it was safe to get a drink of water. To be sure, she had some skeletons in the closet; who doesn’t? She was in control of her spiraling life, or so she thought. She did not anticipate her encounter with the Messiah. Going back to her neighbors, she said, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did” [John 4:29].

Nicodemus was sure of his own faith [John 3]. He came to the Messiah at night to have what he thought would be an interesting, informative theological discussion. He’d throw this man named Jesus some flattery. He’d confront this uneducated “rabbi” with some questions. He’d get this whole entire affair sorted out rather quickly. Or so he thought. Jesus would rock Nicodemus’ self-assurance—Nicodemus’ sense of self-construction.

Nathanael had heard about Jesus. He had addressed Philip, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip had responded, “Come and see” [John 1:46]. Jesus, always the one with the initiative, confronts Nathanael:

Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these …. Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man [John 1:50-51].

Jeremiah, Moses, Jonah, Mother Teresa, the woman at the well, Philip, Nathanael, the other disciples, the larger band of first century followers who committed themselves to sojourn with their LORD, each of them had at least one thing in common. When the LORD initiated contact with them, telling them that the lives they thought they were living didn’t belong to them, but rather to the LORD, they stepped forward. Some, like Jonah, actually stepped in the other direction. “How’d that one work out for you Jonah?” They didn’t continue in their delusional notions that they were in control, that “their” lives were theirs.

And so, our LORD confronts each of us in perhaps a different way. Our world teaches that your life is yours, that mine is mine, that the so-called choices that we have before us are ours to weigh and decide. That is because the world is good at offering us gods other than the LORD to worship. We can worship at the altar of self-construction, deluding ourselves into thinking that we’re in control, that the choices are ours, that we’re willing to take responsibility for our actions because we, after all, are in the best position to determine what is right and good to do. Or we can give in to the LORD.

Our friend, Will Willimon, has put it straight and to the point, “Which God am I worshipping and how is that God having God’s way with me?”