The Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

JEREMIAH 1:4-10: Jeremiah was a very young man in a society that did not value young men. Age and wisdom were related in ancient society's like that of Judah in the 7^th century before Christ. Who would listen if a young man spoke to them in the name of God?

Jeremiah's lineage was as proud as anyone's in Judah. His father was Hilkiah the priest at Anathoth, a village that is just three miles northeast of Jerusalem. Hilkiah traced his priestly lineage back to Abiathar and Eli (I Kings 2:26-27). That ancestry is important to the ministry of Jeremiah. Abiathar and Eli were priests in Shiloh, 20 miles north of Anathoth, who had presided at the shrine of Shiloh. Not only that, these men lived by and transmitted the traditions about Moses and God's covenant with the people that centered in Shiloh and circulated through the northern tribes of Israel. Through his father Jeremiah had been taught those great traditions from his earliest day. Jeremiah was probably born in the year 627 B.C.

Great things were happening in the days of Jeremiah's childhood. Josiah the king of Judah was breaking away from the power of Assyria, and he started a movement to take all Assyrian symbols of power out of the temple at Jerusalem. During this cleansing of the temple, a scroll was found hidden in it. The scroll was read to the king, who was so struck by it that he wanted it read to the people as well. This reading took place in 622 B.C. Jeremiah was five years old at the time.

This scroll decreed that all worship of the people of Judah was to take place in the temple at Jerusalem. Josiah graciously invited priests from the outlying areas to move to Jerusalem in order to continue performing sacrifices there. Hilkiah moved his family to Jerusalem so that he could carry on his priestly work. Hilkiah, being of the priestly family from Shiloh, took part in the religious reforms that Josiah was carrying out. These reforms were made in the name of a group we call today "The Deuteronomists." This group was intent on reforming all the religious practices of Judah, its sacrifices, its law, the great narratives of its faith. Jeremiah was raised in the shadow of this reforming group.

When he was 12 years old, in 615, Jeremiah attended the second public reading of the law. (I am following the chronology set out by William Holladay in Jeremiah, A Fresh Reading.) This took place in the precincts of the temple. While he was participating in this public ceremony, the call of the Lord came heavy upon him. He described it this way:

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! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth."
7: But the LORD said to me,
"Do not say, `I am only a youth';
for to all to whom I send you you shall go,
and whatever I command you you shall speak.
8: Be not afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD."
9: Then the LORD put forth his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me, "Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.
10: See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant."

As might be expected of a young boy raised with stories of Moses resonating in his life, Jeremiah's call was much like that of Moses.

-- It was the same God who called both, Yahweh, the God of Israel. "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."

-- God had promised, Deuteronomy 18:18, that "I will raise up a prophet like you, Moses, from among your brethren"; the young man Jeremiah was the prophet whom God was calling to fulfill that vocation.

-- Like Moses, Jeremiah was reluctant to accept the call. "I am too young," he said.

-- In answer God's words from the second part of Deuteronomy 18:18 resounded in Jeremiah's ears: "I will put my words in your mouth," said the Lord.

-- When Israel was in Egypt, Yahweh had called Moses to deliver God's people from slavery. Six centuries later, in another time of danger for God's people, God called Jeremiah to his dangerous ministry. God said to Jeremiah what he had formerly said to Moses: "I am with you to deliver you."

In the moment of this call God gave Jeremiah his job description:

"See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant."

Jeremiah's task was no local matter. God set him "over nations and over kingdoms." The words "to destroy and to overthrow" are interpolations. They come probably from the hand of an editor, one of those Deuteronomists who during the exile in Babylon edited all the writings from Genesis to Second Kings and also worked over prophecies from Amos to Jeremiah. The other two lines of this description are poetry and go back to Jeremiah himself: "to pluck up and to break down, to built and to plant". "Pluck up and plant" are agricultural terms. The farmer has to plant seeds and to pluck up some of the plants that have grown. The carpenter would talk about "breaking down and building up"; those were functions of his trade. Together they describe the vocation of Jeremiah within Judah. His message would deal with the hard things of plucking up and breaking down, especially as he dealt with the siege of Jerusalem by Babylon. After having done this, he would have the opportunity to build and to plant, to recall Judah to its task as the servant of God.

The harsh call that Jeremiah received from God was fulfilled in his life. During his ministry Jeremiah was clapped in stocks overnight. He was forbidden to enter the temple. He was jeered at, cursed, and ostracized by the people of his nation. He was exiled by his king. The citizens of his own town resolved to kill him; even members of his own family were implicated in this plot. Jeremiah ended his life as an exile in Egypt. He died when he was forty years old. No prophet we know was called to a life of more derision and danger than was Jeremiah, the son of a priestly family from Anathoth.

PSALM 71:1-6: This psalm contains a new set of images in order to underscore its affirmations of faith and trust. God is our deliverer (1-2), our rescuer and savior. God is a rock of refuge (3) to whose strength and stability I can return in time of trouble, my strong fortress to protect me from enemies. God is the one upon whom I have leaned from my birth until today (6).

This psalm relates easily to the life and call of Jeremiah. The psalmist feels that his enemies are plotting against him; that they are ready to seize him whom, they say, God has forsaken. He calls upon God to be near him, to hasten to help him.

The words of the psalm reflect the deepest experience of Jeremiah. "Thou, O Lord, art my hope, my trust, O Lord. Upon thee have I leaned from my birth; thou art he who took me from my mother's womb." His trust and his confidence are summed up in the final words of our text: "My praise is continually before you."

HEBREWS 12:18-29: Who is the God we meet in worship and how do we meet this God? These are the subjects of this passage in Hebrews.

You have not come to a God who cannot be approached, says this author. The God of Jesus Christ is not like the God before whom Moses trembled. That God came in blazing fire, darkness, gloom and tempest, and a voice so fearsome that the worshipers asked that God not address them again. He could not be touched. If even an animal touched the mountain where God came to them, Sinai of old, it would be stoned. But we come in worship not to Mount Sinai but to Mount Zion. It is the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. Innumerable angels attend its festal gathering, and all the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, to a judge who is God of all and whose judgements are therefore righteous and merciful, to the spirits of just persons made perfect. Above all, we come to Jesus Christ who is the mediator of the new covenant. He shed his blood for us, as Abel's blood was shed. But Abel's blood cried out for revenge. The blood of Jesus Christ means redemption for all.

His kingdom cannot be shaken. This unshakable kingdom is offered to us. In return let us offer to God acceptable worship. For our God, though merciful, remains a consuming fire, and we approach him only with reverence and awe.

What did this mean to the people in Alexandria, Egypt, to whom the letter was first written? We can only surmise. At the very least it meant that as they approached the synagogue in worship (for they had not yet built churches of their own; they had appropriated Jewish synagogues for that earliest Christ worship), they came in the spirit that God was there, and Christ, and those who had borne witness to God in Christ but had now been taken into heaven, and all God's heavenly messengers. They could feel their presence as they came to worship; they were surrounded with all these witnesses and martyrs. But they should never come in a half-hearted manner, or casually, glibly, breezily or blase'. For God remains a consuming fire who burns those who treat him in such a way. And Christ, who died for us, requires a like commitment from us. But let us be grateful for what has been given to us and respond with all the gratitude of our hearts.

LUKE 13:10-17: On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus stopped to teach in one of the synagogues along the way. In this synagogue there was a woman who had an infirmity that had already lasted for eighteen years. I take it from this story that the members of the synagogue were used to seeing her there. Every sabbath she came to the synagogue in her usual way: bent over, unable to straighten herself. Maybe she was even an object of derision for them. Jesus, seeing her for the first time, was moved to action. "Woman," he said to her, "you are freed from your infirmity." "Freed" is a good word for what is about to happen to her. Not only will she be able to straighten up and walk properly, she will also be freed to take her place among the men and women of the community. She can now walk about freely, she can look people squarely in the eye, she is free to do the things that women do in a Jewish community. Jesus laid his hands on her. Immediately she straightened up. And she praised God.