Sunday Worship 24 August | Lectionary Proper 16: Uprooting and Planting

Jeremiah 1:4-10

The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.” But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord. Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”

It’s a shame that the lectionary doesn’t include the first three verses of Jeremiah 1, because they give us a detailed introduction to this reluctant prophet. We are told that what follows are “the words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. The word of the Lord came to him in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah, and through the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, down to the fifth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah son of Josiah king of Judah, when the people of Jerusalem went into exile.” 

Those details may not initially mean a great deal to us, but presumably they were meaningful for those who first recorded these words, or they wouldn’t have bothered with them, so they’re worth a closer look. My knowledge of Ancient Near Eastern history is about as good as my knowledge of British geography - that is it to say no good at all - but I understand that this introduction dates the beginning of Jeremiah’s prophecies to 627 BC and their conclusion to 597 BC, which was when the deportations from Jerusalem to Babylon began. That means that Jeremiah prophesied for thirty years, alongside his role as a priest, an early example of what would now be called bivocational ministry.

I say he prophesied alongside rather than as part of his role as a priest, because I think they were two distinct callings, which must have existed in tension with one another. As a priest, he was very much part of maintaining the system, but as a prophet, his role was to challenge the status quo. I imagine that was difficult to manage at times, but sometimes the voice of protest needs to come from the inside. I’m sure the church could do with more prophet-priests today, and I’m certain that governments are in desperate need of whatever the secular equivalent would be.

Back to Jeremiah, and I was interested that the opening verse named his father as Hilkiah. We can’t be certain that they are the same person, but this was the name of the high priest who discovered the Book of the Law in the reign of Josiah, as recorded in both 2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34. It is almost universally accepted that the book he found was the Book of Deuteronomy, which at some point had been lost or forgotten, so that its laws and festivals were no longer observed, and the people had instead turned to worship other gods. Its rediscovery led Josiah to renew the covenant between God and the people, but that didn’t happen until the eighteenth year of his reign, which was five years after Jeremiah started prophesying. That then helps us to understand something of the context that Jeremiah was speaking into.

With all of that in mind, let’s start to look at what he had to say. He begins by sharing the story of his call. God has told him: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations”. It is a beautiful piece of rhetoric, an assurance that God has known and gifted and called Jeremiah right from the very beginning, but I think we must take care not to read it any more literally than that. There are important discussions to be had about life in the womb, but that just isn’t the purpose of this passage, which is really more interested in life as a prophet, although not just any prophet.

Jeremiah is said to have been set apart or consecrated, a word which is used more often of priests, and is perhaps a nod to his double calling. He is also described as a prophet to the nations, which is unusual as prophets were usually commissioned to speak to Israel, and indeed his message does seem to be directed to his own nation, but this is perhaps an indication that his words were always meant to go further. That may be a sign to us that we should lean in and listen carefully.

Jeremiah’s instinct is to protest that he is too young. Some translations have him say “I am only a boy”, although if we assume he was a priest from the beginning of his prophetic ministry, then he must have been a young adult at least. Whatever his exact age, he clearly thought it would count against him. Perhaps he feared others would not take him seriously. Perhaps he didn’t yet take himself seriously. As someone who has reached their late thirties and still feels like they are playing at being a grown up, I can empathise greatly. God isn’t having any of it however, telling Jeremiah quite plainly that he is not to say he is too young, but to get on and do as he is told. God also tells him “do not to be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you”, which I have to say I wouldn’t find too reassuring. I think I’d be asking some questions about the ‘they’ I will need rescuing from.

But before Jeremiah can protest again, God reaches out and touches his mouth, saying “I have put my words in your mouth”. Jeremiah may not have faith in himself, but God is certain that he is the one to speak the words the people need to hear, and God is going to equip him to do the job. I’ve heard it said that God does not call the equipped, but rather God equips the called. In other words, we are chosen according to divine reason not human achievement, and so there’s no point arguing with it, we just need to accept what God is trying to give us and learn what God is trying to teach us.

Although having said that, I am generally of the opinion that arguing with God is a good thing, and not just because I’m naturally belligerent and it takes an argument for me to accept or learn anything. I spoke a few weeks ago about Jacob wrestling for a blessing, and the invitation in Isaiah to reason the matter with God, and Hebrews describing faith as a back and forth of question and answer. Scripture tells me that God doesn’t want the kind of submission which does not permit us to ask questions, but the kind of trust which allows us to engage fully.

I think one of the main things we can take from this passage is that God calls those who would not call themselves or be called by others. This has sometimes been interpreted as meaning that God calls ‘nobodies’, but the pastor and writer Rob Bell suggests that we should rather say that God calls ‘anybodies’, and we could go even further to say that God actually calls ‘everybodies’. We all have a unique call, a distinct word to bring to the world, but do we recognise that in ourselves and in others? Are we ready to speak the words that we have been given, to tell the truth as we have heard it? Are we willing to listen not just to the loud and the dominant and the influential, but also to the quiet and the overlooked and the outsider?

And what about the words themselves? God gives Jeremiah words “to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant”. These are not words that are going to be universally popular. These are words that are going to challenge and disrupt, words that many will want to dismiss or ignore. The world still needs words like that, but do we really want to give or receive them? Are we ready to risk rejection, to say things that others do not want to hear? Are we willing to not just hear those kinds of words, but to act on them? 

There are some big questions there, and I encourage you to take some time to reflect on them this week, perhaps even to unpack them in conversation with someone else. But there is another set of big questions this passage leaves us with, which I want to leave a little space for this morning. Jeremiah was speaking into his own time and place, and he goes on to name some of the things that needed to be uprooted and overthrown and planted, but we live in a different time and place, and there will be different things that need to be uprooted and overthrown and planted. So what are they? What today needs to be torn down and destroyed so that something new can be built in its place? I invite you to sit with those questions for a moment and to offer your thoughts in prayer, asking that God will give the right words to the right people, loosening our tongues and opening our ears.

Luke 13:10-17

On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God. Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.” The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.

On the surface, there's not a great deal that connects these two passages, although I might suggest that in the gospel reading we see Jesus doing the sort of uprooting and planting that Jeremiah was appointed for, challenging the way people understood the Sabbath by weeding out some unhelpful ideas and sowing some new ones. Perhaps that doesn't sound quite as dramatic as we might have imagined from all that talk of overthrowing and destroying, but most prophecies are really intended to bring about these more subtle changes in attitudes, so that the big scary stuff doesn't happen. Prophets are chosen to call out ways in which society is headed for disaster, so that crisis can be averted.

The disaster Jesus is warning of here is concerned with attitudes towards the Sabbath, which could have cost this woman her healing, and it seems significant that this encounter takes place in a synagogue. At this time, the synagogue was not just the local place of worship, but also the local administrative centre, where interpretations of the law were debated, and the people collectively decided how that law was to be lived out in practice. In healing this woman in the synagogue on the Sabbath, challenging what had become the accepted view of what was appropriate, Jesus seems to have been trying to convince the community to adopt a different way of living and being.

So what was the problem with their attitudes towards the Sabbath? The leader of the synagogue was so strict in denying any form of work, and so strict in what they defined as work, that they were outraged by this woman's healing. They thought the Sabbath was more important than her wellbeing. We might assume this was an issue with the Sabbath law itself, but the Talmud, the central text of rabbinical Judaism, says that “you shall live by the law not die by the law”, and therefore that one should do whatever it takes to save a life, even on the Sabbath. Upholding life was the main purpose of the law, and so individual laws could be set aside in order to fulfil it, and healing this woman who had experienced such great suffering for eighteen years was surely a matter of upholding life. Perhaps she could have come back the next day, but perhaps Jesus would have moved to another town by then, and why should life have to wait anyway?

It would have been entirely within the spirit of the Talmud to have not just accepted this woman's healing, but to have celebrated it as an outworking of the most fundamental principle of the law, and so the fault was not the law itself but the synagogue leader's understanding of it, and it was perfectly  legitimate for Jesus to challenge his interpretation. We sometimes draw too harsh a line between the Old and New Testaments, but often what Jesus was criticising was not the law itself but a failure to truly understand it. Again and again we see him leading the people not to something new, but back to what God had been saying all along.

I wonder in what ways we need to be led back to what God has been saying all along? “Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.” “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.” “Love your neighbour as you love yourself.” “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed.” We all need to be reminded of the basics. And I think we also need to be reminded of the reasons for the Sabbath law, although perhaps for different reasons to the synagogue leader. I don’t know your individual Sabbath practices, so I am not speaking personally here, but I do think that as a society we have forgotten the value of rest and rhythm. I went out for chocolate coins last Christmas Eve and found chocolate eggs, and that felt representative of the way we always seem to be in such a rush to get into the next thing. We need the Sabbath to slow us down, to give us time to reset and restore and reflect, to remind us that there is supposed to be an ebb and flow to life, not a constant tsunami of activity and expectation.

As you may already know, I'll be taking a sabbatical next year, three months away from ministry to reset and restore and reflect. The word sabbatical comes from the word Sabbath, because it is a sort of large scale version of what is meant to happen every week, and so it has already been suggested that we might reflect together on what Sabbath means and might look like for us, in the lead up to my sabbatical. So we'll get deeper into this in the coming year, but if it is something you want to explore more in the meantime, there are a couple of books on Sabbath in the church bookcase which you are welcome to borrow.

For now I want to draw our attention to the woman at the centre of the story, unnamed as is so often the case, because I don't want her to be simply a prop or a teaching point, and I am certain that is not how Jesus would have seen her. Take a moment to put yourself in her place, to imagine who she was and the live she had lived. We are told that she had been bent by a spirit for eighteen years, and Jesus says Satan had kept her bound. My instinct is to think that this was simply the language of the time, the way illness and infirmity were spoken about before modern diagnostic medicine. I try not to dismiss the possibility of spiritual causes completely out of hand, but I am also wary of attributing things to demonic forces, because that can lead to a lot of shame and fear, and the rejection of what may be more appropriate explanations and remedies. 

Whatever was causing this woman's ailment, she had been suffering for a long time, and being healed would not only have revived her body, but would also have reconnected her to the community, which she would not have been able to partake in fully. This restoration of relationships was an important part of many of the miracles Jesus performed, and I think the more fully we understand that, the more we can work at that reconnection even where there is no physical healing. The passage ends by saying that “the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing”, and may people likewise be delighted with the wonderful things we are doing to open up community for those who have been excluded.

I want to end with a Sabbath blessing, written by Pete Grieg and part of the Sunday morning prayer from Lectio 365: May this day bring Sabbath rest to our hearts and our homes. May God’s image in us be restored, and our imagination in God be re-storied.  May the gravity of material things be lightened, and the relativity of time slow down.  May we know grace to embrace our own finite smallness in the arms of God’s infinite greatness.  May God’s Word feed us and His Spirit lead us into the week and into the life to come. Amen.