9 November 2025

Jeremiah: On Call

Jeremiah 1:4-10, 14-19

About six and a half centuries before Christ, things began to look up for the Israelite nation of Judah. It was about time, too. They had had a terrible century. Eighty years earlier the empire of Assyria had conquered all of Palestine, utterly destroying northern Israelite kingdom, Israel. The southern kingdom, Judah, had escaped that calamity, but they had still spent decades sucking up to the Assyrians and paying them tribute. But now, Assyria was in trouble. It was battling rebellions in the north and was far too busy to worry about little Judah. Even better, Judah had a new king, the young King Josiah, and he was the real deal. He stopped paying tribute to the Assyrians and began a restoration of the Jerusalem temple, throwing out all the Assyrian idols that his grandfather had installed there, and calling on Judah to worship only God. Josiah had even begun to cast his eyes north, to the ruins of Israel, and had annexed parts of it. At last Judah had a king from the line of David who was worthy of his great ancestor! The people rejoiced. And in the thirteenth year of Josiah’s reign, God spoke to a youth in a small town outside Jerusalem called Anathoth. The youth’s name was Jeremiah. We read Jeremiah 1:4-10 and 14-19.

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.’
6Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.’ 7But 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.’
9Then 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.’

* * *

14 Then the Lord said to me: Out of the north disaster shall break out on all the inhabitants of the land. 15For now I am calling all the tribes of the kingdoms of the north, says the Lord; and they shall come and all of them shall set their thrones at the entrance of the gates of Jerusalem, against all its surrounding walls and against all the cities of Judah. 16And I will utter my judgments against them, for all their wickedness in forsaking me; they have made offerings to other gods and worshiped the works of their own hands. 17But you, gird up your loins; stand up and tell them everything that I command you. Do not break down before them, or I will break you before them. 18And I for my part have made you today a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall, against the whole land—against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land. 19They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you.’

I guess we should start with the whole idea of someone being called by God like this. Jeremiah didn’t just feel a gentle prompting, an inner yearning. He heard a voice talking to him, and he talked back, and they had a conversation. That feels really weird to us. To be fair, it was really weird then, too. This was not something that 7th century Jews did often, and they were likely to be skeptical of people who claimed to have been chatting with God, too. But at least at that time such an experience was considered possible. Jewish traditions included rare but accepted stories of this happening: to Elijah, to Isaiah and other prophets and – most importantly – to Moses. So let me ask you to suspend your disbelief for now. 

Because when we look at the content of Jeremiah’s chat with God, it gets even weirder. First, God has a huge task for Jeremiah – to confront powerful men and nations in God’s name – and second, Jeremiah is a wholly unsuitable choice for the job. He says that he’s not eloquent, and he’s only a boy. Given that people were considered fully adult by, maybe, seventeen in those days, I’m guessing fourteen? Fifteen, tops? Furthermore, given what we know about the optimism of Josiah’s reign, this message that armies from the north are coming to destroy Jerusalem is not going to be well received. No one’s going to listen to that. Indeed, God admits that to Jeremiah from the start. Verse 8: “Don’t be afraid of them; I’ll be with you to rescue you.” (Wait, what? Rescue me? Do you want to elaborate on that?) Even if Jeremiah were a qualified adult, this would be a horrible assignment.

Which I think makes it more likely to be true. Think about it: if someone today were to announce to us that God had called him in an audible voice to be a prophet, we would probably assume the speaker was a con man, some kind of charlatan fortune-teller, probably about to ask for money. That would have been true in Jeremiah’s time as well, and as we work through this book, we’ll meet some of those characters. But if someone tells us that they’ve been called by God to do an impossible task and to bring an unpalatable message to an unreceptive and possibly violent audience, then we have to assume that he’s not on the make. He’s not a fraud. That leaves only two options: either he’s wildly delusional, guano crazy, or he’s telling the truth. 

We’ll get to know Jeremiah and his message better next week, but for the rest of our time this morning I want to think about the idea of calling today. Does God still do that? Now those of you who have been in church your whole lives will instinctively respond, “Of course! Every minister is called by God!” So, let’s start there. It’s true that every Christian minister is able to tell you his or her “call story.” It’s obligatory. We all have one, and if we don’t, then we’re required to turn out and find one, or make one up. I served eight years on the Board of Ordained Ministry, which decides whom to ordain, and if you can’t tell a convincing call story, you ain’t getting anywhere. Here’s mine - briefly. I wanted to be a writer or a teacher when I was a child, but at age 16, at a conference devoted to international missions, I had a deeply emotional experience and went forward at the altar call to respond to God’s call to be a Southern Baptist missionary overseas. That never worked out, but when I was in seminary I discovered I was good at biblical scholarship, so I stayed for another degree and began planning to be a religion professor. I actually did that for a couple of years, but my short-term contract ended. So I did odd jobs for a while to pay bills, applying for anything I could think of, until I got a phone call from a Baptist church in Wisconsin looking for a pastor. I had never really wanted to be a pastor, but it did sound better than landscaping, and I’ve been serving as a pastor for the past 27 years. As call stories go, it’s not all that spiritual. Probably wouldn’t pass muster with the Board of Ordained Ministry told that way, so I’d have to dress it up a little. Maybe instead of saying “and then we grasped at the first straw that was offered us and we moved to Wisconsin” I could say, “then God opened the door for us to move to Wisconsin.” See how that sounds better? But here’s the thing: I’m fine seeing God in it either way. I do feel that with God’s help I have come to a place where I am able to do the work that God has called me to do. So, yes, I think God’s calling is real.

But even if I air brush my call story with God-talk, it would still bear very little resemblance to Jeremiah’s calling. And I don’t just mean the audible voice and conversation bit. It’s different in every way. Jeremiah was called to an all-but-impossible task with no physical rewards; mine has led me to a comfortable position with a salary and health insurance. Jeremiah was manifestly unsuited to his task. As we’ll learn later on, he wasn’t just an inarticulate boy, he also hated confrontation. It tied him up in knots. But his ministry was basically one confrontation after another. Me? My calling works pretty well with the gifts and education I have. Unlike Jeremiah, I’m a good fit. Jeremiah was called to a task that would make him hated by nearly everyone; I wasn’t. I’m generally well accepted by my peers and the congregations I serve. Nobody’s tried to stone me yet, anyway. If Jeremiah and I both have calls from God, then we have different varieties. 

So here’s how I put this all together, using the biblical record, reason, and my own experience. There are at least three different varieties of call. First, there is the “prophetic call,” such as came to Jeremiah: a monumental task given to an improbable person but accomplished through God. This call is rare. Even in scripture there are only a few examples: Jeremiah, Moses, the Apostle Paul, and maybe as many as a half dozen or so more. That’s not many for two thousand years of biblical history. and there are equally few examples in the next two thousand years: St. Francis, for sure, and maybe Luther, Wesley, and Mother Theresa. Again, really rare. These people are called to change the world. Their lives are miracles, and I’m profoundly grateful not to have received such a call. 

The second variety I might call the “shepherding call.” This call is less dramatic – it may not require a burning bush or an audible voice or a blinding light on the road to Tarsus – and its goals are less sweeping. This is a call to guide the followers of God to greater faithfulness and service, through teaching, encouragement, and example. Not everyone who has this call is ordained clergy; these are just people who know they are supposed to show others the way on the faith journey. That’s my calling. I’m really fortunate to live in a time and place where it is possible for me to actually be paid for doing the thing I’m called to do (I mean, how cool is that?), but that hasn’t always been the case, nor will it always be the case. The point is that this calling is not the same thing as a job. When I retire from the pastorate, my calling won’t go away. I’ll just find a new venue. 

And then there’s a third kind of call: Jeremiah might call it the “covenant call.” Every follower of God has this one. This is the call for each of us to continue to grow in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and humanity, as Luke puts it. This is the call for all believers to keep ourselves unstained by the world and to care for widows and orphans, as James puts it. This is the call to love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves, as Jesus puts it. This call, which we all share, is the foundation of every other call. Prophets are called to turn people back to their covenant with God when they’ve gone astray, and shepherds are called to encourage people in the covenant when they grow weary. So, back to our question: Does God still call people? Yes, he does. Yes, he has. Us. Now, how will we respond?