Mission: Impossible? Jeremiah 1:1-10 - Second Sunday after Pentecost

How young is too young? How old is too old?

Would you undergo open heart surgery performed by a twelve-year-old surgeon?

Would you fly on an airplane with a 100-year-old pilot in the cockpit?

Will a 41-year-old quarterback lead the Pittsburgh Steelers to the Super Bowl?

The Old Testament matriarch Sara was 65 years old when God promised to give her and her husband Abraham a son and make them a great nation.

God sent Moses to pharaoh to demand the release of his people, even though Moses had a speech impediment. The apostle Paul persecuted Christians before Jesus called him to be his apostle.

All throughout the Scriptures, God calls unqualified people.

Jeremiah was, by his own admission, “just a boy,” when God called him to be a prophet.

Photo by Aatik Tasneem on Unsplash

Before you go thinking that being a prophet was a prize, think again.

Unlike priests, who lived opulently and held considerable authority, prophets didn’t hold any official office within the temple establishment. Even though they spoke truths on God’s behalf, they weren’t held in high regard when they spoke truth that people didn’t want to hear. As a result, they were frequent targets for persecution and execution.

What was it, exactly, that God was calling him to do? The Lord said, “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.”

God sees the wickedness, the injustice, the violence of his chosen people. Their wickedness exceeds that of the godless nations that surround them.

My Old Testament, professor and seminary used to say that a profit does not so much predict the future as tell people what time it is. Jeremiah is sent to God’s people are about to reap what they have sown.

As you would imagine, people did not welcome Jeremiah’s proclamations, especially those in power. There are a few who will recognize the divine truth of his words, but not enough to make his prophetic vocation a life of comfort and ease.

So why did he do it? God’s call was the very essence of a Mission: Impossible.

For starters, when God calls someone, God doesn’t take no for an answer. Just ask the prophet Jonah, who almost became fish food.

Ultimately, God calls you because God is faithful. God‘s faithfulness empowers your obedience. In turn, your obedience reveals God‘s faithfulness.

You cannot speak divine truth, let alone believe it or obey it, without closeness with God. God cannot abide in you unless you abide in God. Jeremia obeyed God because he desired God. Fortunately, for Jeremiah, there were other prophets who trusted and obeyed God as he did, and their fellowship was a source of strength for all of them. Even though Jeremiah will be persecuted, beaten, and imprisoned; even though God’s chosen people will be conquered and exiled and the temple destroyed, Jeremiah’s prophetic vocation will not be a failure, any more than God’s mission in the world will be a failure. God’s work is never done in vain. There is always more to what God is doing than what meets the eye.

There will always be reasons to doubt God’s working in the world, and even more reasons to doubt yourself and your ability to carry out what God has called you to do.

Jeremiah said, “I’m just a boy.” We say, “we’re just a small church in a small town. We’re not as big as we used to be. How can we grow?” One could easily conclude that our best days are behind us and that God has moved on to more modern and more charismatic churches. Consider your own life. Do you believe it is possible for you to have a close, intimate walk with Jesus? To be at peace when everything is in chaos? To have wisdom amid all the confusion? Do you believe a transformed life is possible for you? Do you even want it?

The tragedy of Jeremiah’s prophetic career isn’t in what happened to him. He trusted God, and God never failed him.

The tragedy of Jeremiah’s prophetic career was the people, young and old, rich and poor, powerful and ordinary, who closed their ears to his preaching; who decided they were content with the way things were or didn’t believe a transformed life was possible for them; people who decided that the world and its pursuits were more important.

These are the tragedies we confront, not only in the absence of our sisters and brothers from church, but in our own absences from God. I loathe to imagine how many times during a day I decide against prayer, against reading Scripture, against doing for others,

This is why we need God to speak not only to comfort us in our afflictions but to afflict us in our comforts. This is why we need God “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” Only then can you live in God’s faithfulness. Only then can you live a life that matters.

Never doubt what God can accomplish in you and through you. In God’s eyes, you’re not just a boy or a girl; we’re not just a small church. You are loved. You are called. Thanks be to God that God is more persistent than our doubts about ourselves or about him. Thanks be to God that God will not lose us to the idols we embrace. Thanks be to God, God will show us his faithfulness in “plucking up and pulling down, destroying and overthrowing, building and planting” if that’s what it takes for you for me, and for our church to fulfill our purposes in his Kingdom.

Jeremiah 1:1-10

The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, ² to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of King Josiah son of Amon of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. ³ It came also in the days of King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of Judah until the end of the eleventh year of King Zedekiah son of Josiah of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.

⁴ Now the word of the Lord came to me saying,

⁵ “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.”

⁶ Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” ⁷ 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.
⁸ Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
            says the Lord.”

⁹ 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.
¹⁰ 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.”