Jeremiah 20:7-13
O LORD, you deceived me, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed.
I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me.
Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction.
So the word of the LORD has brought me insult and reproach all day long.
But if I say, “I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.
I hear many whispering, “Terror on every side!
Report him! Let’s report him!”
All my friends are waiting for me to slip, saying, “Perhaps he will be deceived; then we will prevail over him and take our revenge on him.”
But the LORD is with me like a mighty warrior; so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced; their dishonour will never be forgotten.
O LORD Almighty, you who examine the righteous and probe the heart and mind,
let me see your vengeance upon them, for to you I have committed my cause.
Sing to the LORD! Give praise to the LORD!
He rescues the life of the needy from the hands of the wicked.
Romans 6:1b-11
Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus
Matthew 10:24-39
A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household!
So do not be afraid of them. There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn
“a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law-- a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”
Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Jeremiah’s Lament.
A strange thing happened to me recently. I got an e-mail at work. Now that in itself is not unusual. I get hundreds of e-mails. Most are work related, some are newsletters I have asked for, but much of it is junk mail or spam as it is often called. This email was different. It was from an internet horoscope and it said this, “Your sermons are good but they may be becoming boring. Perhaps it is time to pick a new subject and perhaps people will listen to you.”
As this horoscope came from America I don’t think the writer has ever heard me preach but it did make me look at my preaching again. It worried me that I might just have been saying the same thing over and over again. I looked at the last few sermons to see if I had just been repeating myself. What I found surprised me a bit because, although I don’t think I had repeated sermons, there had been a common theme. One, I hoped, I had been developing.
But this idea of a new theme bugged me and so I decided that on my next preaching appointment I would use whatever the set reading was. I would try to use the skills I learnt while taking my preacher’s training. I would try to hear what God is saying to me and that would be what I based my sermon on.
Then I saw that it was this reading from Jeremiah and I thought, “No, I am not going to use this.” But it wasn’t that easy. Having decided to find something else, I went onto my computer. For a change I visited a website I hadn’t been to for a while. There it was, quoting Jeremiah to me. The next morning, I received my latest copy of Worship and Preaching and with it was a new magazine and in the introduction, it was quoting Jeremiah. And then, a couple of Sundays ago I went to another church to worship with some friends and there was the preacher. Quoting Jeremiah.
So I gave up and went back to Jeremiah and the rest of today’s readings where we will see that Jeremiah couldn’t get away from what God wanted him to say either.
The reading from Jeremiah is sometimes called Jeremiah’s Lament and he certainly seems to be bewailing his fate. He starts out by saying that he has been conned, well and truly conned and by no less a person than God himself. God had called him to be a preacher and when he preached what God inspired him to say, all he got was abuse. And that was just not fair. Jeremiah believed fervently in what he was preaching and that made him a somewhat lively preacher. He was passionate and involved. He spoke loudly and people couldn’t help but hear him.
But some of the things he was preaching upset the authorities. He was telling the government of the day that the way they were behaving was wrong. That what they were doing would lead to the downfall of the country. Jeremiah was speaking out on the way people were treating the land. The way that the social structure was being destroyed. The way that people were being encouraged to find spiritual answers in non spiritual ways. He was also outspoken in the way he opposed the church for seeking human ideas rather than seeking out God’s answers. So Jeremiah needed silencing. But they couldn’t argue with him or debate with him because they knew that they would lose. So they decided to ridicule him. Use insults and pour scorn upon him. Today we might call it smearing.
Jeremiah might have expected the Jewish church leaders to have been on his side, but even they tried to put him down. One of the priests, Pashur, went as far as having Jeremiah beaten, although this was not for the first time in Jeremiah’s preaching career.
Yet when it got too much to take and Jeremiah decided to give up, he found that he couldn’t. That the call to preach becomes, as he describes it, like fire. Jeremiah says, “But if I say, “I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,” his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.”
Jeremiah carries on with his preaching and finds that the strength and the love of God that is in the fire, strengthens and supports him until the ridicule and abuse falls away and people start to listen to what he has to say.
Paul, on the other hand, sometimes seemed to have problems getting his word understood so let’s leave Jeremiah and look at our second reading. It seems that the Roman church heard Paul OK and they listened but it seems they didn’t quite get the message. In the chapters before this reading Paul had got a bit excited and it might have been possible to think he said something that he didn’t. The Roman church interpreted his words as saying that the more sin there is in the world, the more grace there will be in forgiving these sins and the more the love of God can be seen. So it might make sense, on this basis, to go out and sin as much as you can and the love of God will get bigger.
Paul is very quick to explain that this is not the way at all. He tells his audience that this cannot work because they are no longer living in sin but are dead to sin. This seems quite hard to understand. After all, they are still alive. They still have their human nature and are prone to it weaknesses and failures, and to carry on sinning. So how can they be dead to sin?
Paul explains that, before Christ had died for them, their sins had not been forgiven. Death therefore could have been a final and complete death. However when Christ took on the burden of mankind’s sin and died on the cross, their sins were forgiven, past present and future. Completely and forever, and this meant that death no longer had power over them. That by accepting Jesus into their lives, they were living within the love of Jesus. The old people they had been had died with Jesus and the new people they now were had been, and would be, resurrected with him.
The old sins were gone and for each person a new life has begun. Everything they had done before had gone and death no longer had power over them as long as they lived in Christ. This was the most marvellous, wonderful gift that Jesus had bought for mankind by his death. Of course, as Paul pointed out, it was still possible to give up all faith in Christ and go back to the people or person they once were.
Lets move onto our third reading because both these themes come back to us in the reading from Matthew. Most of the reading is directed at the people who are just about to go out into the world to spread the Gospel of Jesus. The first thing Jesus tells them is not to worry that they might not be great preachers. They must have been very aware that they could not match the way Jesus preached. It must have been very frightening to have to stand in front of a group of people, alone, and preach the Gospel. (I, for one, can easily understand that!) But Jesus reassures them. They don’t have to be as good or better, but just try to be like him, to pass on his message.
Jesus knows that the message he brings will upset both church and government. He says that he has brought a sword and while some people accept him and others deny him, there will be a conflict or what we might call today, a division. But this is the task he faces, and his disciples, his preachers will face as they try to live their lives as Christians while they spread the Gospel throughout the world.
He implies that they may well be treated just as badly as we heard that Jeremiah was. But once again this doesn’t matter. It is not the people they have to be frightened of. After all what is the worst they can do? The very worst is that they might be killed. That’s bad enough, you might think. But wouldn’t it be worse to die and when we face God, Jesus says, “Sorry, I don’t know you.”?
Jesus points out the thought that will later appear in Romans. That once you have given yourself to Christ, the past no longer matters. The future does. Jesus said, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Paul said it slightly differently. He said, “Dead to sin, but alive in Christ.” It is one thing to lose your life in this world, but to lose it in the next as well.
It seems like the preacher’s lot has never changed. And remember that, although we use the word “preacher” to mean people like me, who stand in a pulpit during services, preachers are really anyone who is talking to another about the love of Christ, showing the love of God in the way they live. People just like you and me.
The problems that were present in Jeremiah’s time seem very much like today’s. There are still concerns about the way we treat our environment, with pollution, waste and GM crops. That the way traditional family life is being destroyed and our social structure now looks like it is coming apart at the seams. People being encouraged to find fulfilment in earthly things or within themselves rather than through religion. And as for the downfall of the country, well, In Jeremiah’s time that led to his people being ruled and governed by another country. One in which they had no say. I think that sounds familiar.
We see today’s church behaving in similar ways. More concerned about rules and regulations while some of the leaders seek advancement by seeking to act like those in power rather than by objecting to abuses of power.
We can also see the way those who would question, object or oppose those in power are treated much the same way as Jeremiah was.
The news has been full lately of people who have tried to make their voices heard and been put down for doing so. The scientists who have raised questions about the safety of GM food. Ridiculed, smeared and forbidden from presenting their case. The lady, badly burned in a train crash, who had her life investigated when she dared to contradict a government minister. The teachers who faced calls for dismissal when they were open about their Christian faith. You may remember the public preacher who was attacked by a mob for his preaching and then prosecuted for inciting the attack. He never recovered from his ordeal and died at the beginning of August. And then there are all the others we hear about day after day.
And is the church very different today?
At the Jubilee lately, the leaders of the churches signed a contract to try to find a way to unity. I thought we had unity. After all don’t we say that we belong to one holy catholic church every time we say the creed? Catholic, here, by the way, doesn’t mean Roman Catholic, but all embracing, one church. No the unity they are looking for is an agreement over rules. An agreement over the proper way to worship. Look through any of the many church newspapers you will see as much argument about the rules of that particular church as about almost anything else.
I think Jeremiah would find today very familiar.
Today we seem to live in a world that has lost its way. Nothing seems to matter as long as you get your way. The history of the world shows that religion, belief, faith was an integral part of life. Yet if we only stay with the Bible, we find that, time after time, when the people and the rulers turned their backs on God, nothing but trouble came out of it. Is that why things seem to be going so wrong today?
So just what can we do about it?
First of all we can live our faith in everything we do, everywhere we go. We can show that being a Christian is something so wonderful that we want everyone to see and share in it. Sometimes it will be easy, other times it won’t. Sometimes we will surprise ourselves when some little thing we do inspires someone to listen. And sometimes we will back away and hide. But that too, is ok. Because we have the strength of God when we are weak and the forgiveness of Christ when we fail.
I think the second thing we can do is to teach. To teach our young people about Jesus. And that is not just the young in age but also the young in Christ.
As Psalm 78 says:
O my people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter hidden things, things from of old--
what we have heard and known, what our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD, his power, and the wonders he has done.
He decreed statutes for Jacob and established the law in Israel,
which he commanded our forefathers to teach their children, so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children.
Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds but would keep his commands.
We can follow those before us and teach those who will one day take our places. Not the rules and the regulations, but the real story of Jesus.
And teaching doesn’t just mean instructing those we know but also telling those we don’t. Sharing the message we have been given. That God has granted us the most wonderful, unsurpassable gift we could ever dream of obtaining. Life eternal, through Christ. The good news, the gospel, the message we are tasked to take wherever we go throughout the world.
Don’t you think it is marvellous? Doesn’t it make your heart swell, your body want to jump and shout. Don’t you just want to tell everyone you meet?
Of course you do. We all do. But….
There’s always a but, isn’t there? People want to but they say to themselves: “Yes I would, but it is a bit frightening. People will think I’m mad, a bit of a loony. I mean look at those born again Christians. Dancing in the aisles. Waving their hands in the air as they sing. Muttering while they pray. Falling over and fainting. It all a bit weird.
I can’t do that! I’ll look stupid and I just don’t want to. Even if I am quiet and just tell people I know that I am a Christian, they’ll think there is something wrong with me. They’ll stop talking with me. They’ll avoid me and I want my friends to like me.”
But we have such a wonderful message, how can we not tell everyone? How can we want to live forever in Christ and not want everyone else to do the same? How can we refuse God when he ask us to do something? Just what can we do when we find that we are just like Jeremiah? When we find we have been knocked down so often we just want to stay there?
We can trust. Trust that God will keep his promises. Trust that God will not ask any of us to do something we won’t be able to complete. That he will give us the skill and the strength to carry out the task. Trust that Jesus will forgive us when we fail. And trust that, if we serve Jesus as faithful disciples, then he will acknowledge us before the Father when finally we stand before him.
So, I did find that there was a common theme running through my sermons. It is that the love of God, the sacrifice of his son and the presence of the Holy Spirit is such a wonderful, beautiful thing that I have just got to tell people about it. To share it with you all. I wish everyone felt this way. And whenever I feel like Jeremiah and want to give up preaching, which happens from time to time, I find I just can’t.
This is what is often called the Calling to preach, but not everybody is called to preach in the way we think of preachers today. The man or woman in the pulpit. You may be asked to something completely different. Something that only you have the right skills, the right personality, the right call to do. Someone, I think it was St Augustine, said, “Wherever you go, preach the gospel. And if that doesn’t work, use words!” God will put you where you or your words will do the most good. Then it is your choice whether you use them. I hope you make the right choices because the price if you do not is too awful to contemplate. Not just for you, but for that person who may never ever get the chance to find out just what the love of God means.
