Jeremiah
1:4-10
Ordinary
4
February
3, 2013
William G. Carter
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.” Then I
said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a
boy’; 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, says the Lord.” Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and
the Lord said to me, “Now I have put my words in
your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and
over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to
build and to plant.”
Why are you here? That’s the question
for today. Why are you here?
I don’t mean to interrogate your
attendance. Who knows what you might say? “I’m here because I believe,” or “I’m
here because I want to believe,” or “I’m here out of habit,” or “I’m here
because my friends are here,” or “I’m here because I want something,” or
because “I don’t know where else to go.” Oh, that’s not what I’m asking.
I’m not asking about your attendance in
church, but rather your attendance on the planet: Why are you here? For what
purpose are you alive? That’s the mystery behind these opening words from
Jeremiah.
God speaks to a young boy and says, “I
have something I want you to do.” These opening words of Jeremiah’s book bring
us into the mystery of God’s calling upon our lives. At the beginning of a very
long record of his life and work, a great prophet of Israel remembers how everything
began. God had a hand on Jeremiah’s shoulder. God said, “I have something that
I want you to do.”
Some people have a strong response to a
story like that. Perhaps they say, “Jeremiah was lucky. God had a direct
pipeline to his heart. The message got through.” Or others may say, “I’m glad
that didn’t happen to me. I have no intention of thinking my orders come from
heaven. I want to do what I want to do.” Or maybe they confess, “I don’t want
God to make me into a prophet. I’ve seen enough history to know how poorly that
usually turns out.”
But the story that we have is both brief
and realistic. We do not know God got through with the message. Nobody can say
if it was a dream, direct speech in a vision, or simply a growing awareness
that Jeremiah had a greater purpose for his life, that a heavenly casting director
selected him to play a role. As for realism, Jeremiah did push back; “I’m only
a youth,” he said, “and I don’t know what to say.” God promises to stay after
him for years to come, to give him the words when the time is right, and to put
him in the places where he needed to make a difference. God’s hand will lead
him – and God’s fingers will touch his lips.
We don’t need to let this be a spooky
story. Actually it offer a dramatization of a deep and important question for
every single person: why am I here? What purpose for my life does God set me
before me?
I have asked those questions in seasons
of my life; I imagine you have asked them on occasion. The issue is always more
than a job. It’s a matter of purpose. Anybody can get a job. Look at the want
ads: there is no shortage of jobs. But as all of us know, so many of those jobs
have no purpose. Who declares, “The reason that I was put on this planet was to
dry off cars when they come through the car wash?” Or who says, “God gave me
this life on earth so I can sell nutritional drinks at the local gym?” Perhaps
there are a few fortunate ones for whom this is true, but for most workers, it
is merely a job, an unnecessary job if it weren’t for the money. As the bumper
sticker announced, “I owe, I owe, it’s off to work to go.”
But what would you do if money were not
the issue? How would you spend your time? What difference do you believe you
could make in the time that God still sets before you?
The truth is, if we have any abilities
at all, there is no perfect job anywhere that we can use all our skills. In
fact, there are jobs where the employer does not want you to do some of the
things that you are able to do. To survive, you put some of abilities on the
shelf and focus where you need to focus. Or you find other ways to utilize
those gifts that God has given and you have cultivated.
And late at night, when nobody but God
is around, perhaps the holy voice will say, “I have work that I appoint you to
do.” The appointment is there, regardless of how the people at your job feel
about it, or whatever they think they are paying you to do.
There is a distinction between a job and
a vocation. A job is where somebody pays you to do what they need you to do.
Vocation is literally a “calling,” God’s calling, God’s invitation for you to
do what God put you on the planet to do. Sometimes job and vocation overlap,
sometimes they don’t. But one thing I know for certain: life flourishes when it
intersects with our life’s work.
If you have not heard any holy voices
lately to give you an assignment, there is a simple test that you might try. It
comes from frequently quoted advice from writer Frederick Buechner, who spells
out the word “vocation.” Vocation, he says,
. . . comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the
work a [person] is called to by God. There are all difference kinds of voices
calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out
which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Superego, or
Self-interest.
By and large a good rule for finding out
is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that
you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done.
If you get a kick out of your work,
you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant
commercials, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the other hand,
if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met
requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the
chances are you have not only bypassed (a), but probably aren’t helping your
patients much either. Neither the hair shirt not the soft berth will do.
The place God calls you to is the place
where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.[1]
God knows us intimately. God made us the
way we are. What strikes us as interests and inclinations can be holy invitations
to find our calling --- or for our calling to find us. The challenge is to not
think too highly of ourselves – nor to think too lowly – but to sink into the
daily tasks that give life both to us and to God’s world. For that is where God
calls us to be.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[1] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC (New
York: Harper and Row)
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