Jeremiah 1:4-10 “The Call and the 2016 Election”

Jeremiah 1:4-10 “The Call and the 2016 Election” July 27, 2016

 ( Lectionary for August 21, 2106)

Jethremiah was born and raised in a retired preacher’s home at “Anathoth in the land of Benjamin” (Jer 1:1). His father was the priest, Hilkiah, of whom we know very little. If this Hilkiah is the same one whom we are told discovered the Book of the Law in the rebuilding temple, and brought the book to Josiah the king for authentication, then we know a good deal more (2 Kings 22:8). The approximate date of that discovery is 622BCE, and that would comport well with the long ministry of Jeremiah, said to have begun during the reign of Josiah, more exactly in the “thirteenth year of that reign,” (ca. 629BCE, Jer 1:2), ending in the eleventh and very last year of the disastrous reign of Zedekiah in 587BCE, the year of the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian troops. It is thus possible that Jeremiah’s father was one of the principal actors in the religious reformation begun by Josiah that led to the consolidation of all religious power in the Jerusalem temple as well as an apparent attempt to return to a more traditional morality as enshrined in the book of Deuteronomy, a part of which Hilkiah is said to have found in the temple.

That is the hi476px-123.The_Prophet_Jeremiahstory as far as we can know it. And now for a bit of speculation. I began by saying that Jeremiah was born and lived in a retired preacher’s home. I base that claim on the story about King David’s high priest, Abiathar, who made the unfortunate choice to back one of David’s other sons, Adonijah, in his bid for the throne of Israel against David and Bathsheba’s son, Solomon, who through various shady dealings, was made king just before David’s death. As a result of that choice, all those who followed Adonijah ended up dead or banished by the new monarch. Joab, faithful general of David’s army and Shemei, old Saulide retainer who cursed David one day, were both murdered, while the priest, Abiathar, was banished to Anathoth. He was not killed “at this time,” says Solomon, because he “carried the ark of YHWH God before my father David, and because (he) shared in all the hardships my father endured” (1 Kings 2:26). Solomon had earlier promised Adonijah that he would not kill him unless he transgressed the demand of internal exile; he did, and Benaiah, Solomon’s henchman, murdered him. Thus, Solomon was hardly averse to waiting to commit murder, and Abiathar surely knew that fact. Hence, he wisely left for Anathoth, a tiny village just a few miles north of Jerusalem. Perhaps Solomon could keep a close eye on the priest there who had earned the new king’s mistrust.

If Anathoth then became a home for priests, even for the next three hundred years, both Hilkiah and his more famous son, Jeremiah, lived there, surrounded by priests and their continuous talk of things religious. I think of my own home with my wife and our children. After I was ordained a minister in 1970, and then after my wife was ordained some twenty years later, after she had worked in various churches in the interim, our house was filled with things religious, often to the consternation and pain of our two growing children. What must it have been like for Jeremiah to have his ears filled with YHWH talk from his earliest days? Would not discussions of right action and right belief been his bread and honey from the first? Would it not have been most likely that the city of priests would be filled with men watching the growth and education of their sons, anxious for the day when their students would hear the call of YHWH to service?

And at last that day came for Jeremiah, apparently rather earlier than they, and even he, had imagined. Jeremiah recalled the day much later as one of both acceptance and fear. The certainty of the call was hardly in doubt:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

Jeremiah remembered his call as thunderous and crystal clear; YHWH had decided on Jeremiah’s work of prophecy before his birth, and that work would be not the localized work of a priest but the very public, hence dangerous, ministry of prophecy to the nations, the work of preaching that demanded change.

And Jeremiah recalled his reluctance, remembering the old story of the great Moses’s initial reaction to YHWH’s ancient call at the fiery bush. “Ah, YHWH God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy,” using the word that often implies a youth younger than ten years (Jer 1:6). Moses had also claimed not to be speaker, though he could hardly use the excuse of extreme youth (Ex 4:10). But in both cases YHWH would have no excuses! “Do not say ‘I am only a boy!’ For you shall go to all whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you” (Jer 1:7)! No ifs, ands, or buts, shouts YHWH. I have chosen you, and you will go. YHWH is kind enough to urge Jeremiah not to be afraid, “for I am with you to deliver you” (Jer 1:8). In a similar vein YHWH had assured Moses, “I will be with you” (Ex 3:12). However, in neither case was that assurance altogether comforting or altogether convincing. Moses faced death at the hands of pharaoh and rejection at the hands of his own people, while Jeremiah lived forty years of failed prophecy, essentially alone, unmarried, childless, friendless. The call to the task of prophetic preaching is a daunting one. Little wonder that Moses ended his failed attempt to avoid YHWH’s summons with a pathetic “choose somebody else” (Ex 4:13)!

The call of Jeremiah ends with the general content of what he is to say:

“Look! Today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jer 1:10).

There is a hidden warning here; much of what Jeremiah is to preach will be very negative. His hearers will surely interpret his words as “plucking up, pulling down, destroying and overthrowing.” After all that, there may be some “building and planting.” Little wonder that in Jeremiah 20 the prophet utters words that are both horrifying and unforgettable at the same time, as he accuses YHWH of abusing him, luring him into a life of shame and rejection. In fact, he claims he wishes never to have been born!

In the presidential election of 2016 two candidates claim to have been called to serve their nation. I doubt that either of them would claim a direct call from God, at least in so many words, but each imagines him or herself to have some sort of mandate to become the commander-in-chief and to sit in the Oval Office of the White House. As I watched the Democratic Convention last night, I heard Hillary Clinton’s spouse of forty years, former President Bill Clinton, extoll the extraordinary virtues of his wife over all the years he has known her. I doubt few who heard that amazing speech could forget the terrible acts committed by that same Bill Clinton as he broke his covenant vows with his wife in a most public and humiliating way. Still, there he stood at the podium, and for forty minutes or so, described for his hearers the amazing life of service his wife had lived. To me, it was incredibly inspiring.

I was especially struck when he said that Hillary had been led by her Methodist youth minister to hear a speech by Martin Luther King, and how her time as a Methodist youth had caused her to change from Republican to Democrat and to become a change agent for the betterment of society in small and large ways ever since. The litany of her actions was little short of astounding! “Put Hillary just about anywhere,” he said, “give her a month and you can be sure that things in that place will be better!” “She is the greatest change agent I have ever known,” he cried, and given his history of her actions, one would be hard-pressed to disagree.

This speech in no way lifted her to sainthood; she has her shortcomings which I am sure he knows all too well. But I came away from the speech convinced that this is the person we need to sit in the White House as leader of the free world. While Hillary was giving her time to make positive changes in the world, Donald Trump was intent on making money, too often on the backs of persons whom he employed but rarely paid in full. Like Jeremiah, Hillary Clinton is prepared by her early life in the church and by her living out the call of the church, to be president of the United States. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is prepared to wheedle his way to more money and fame. Perhaps he should be elected to serve as president of a local investor’s club, offering his advice on ways, slick and clever, to rake in a haul of cash.

Bill Clinton’s speech made it abundantly clear who should be our next president. I want that compassionate, committed, hard-working woman who gets the right things done as my leader. Like Jeremiah, she is ready, and also like him, her road has not and will not be easy. But her road in life, thoroughly unlike Trump’s road, is the right road for ours and for any time, a road Jeremiah would recognize, a road of justice and service.


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