The Call of Jeremiah (The Reverend Deacon Jackie Cherry)

"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.”
These are the words God speaks to the young Jeremiah. This passage, known as “The Call of Jeremiah,” is often read at ordinations and confirmations. I’ve always been skeptical when I hear someone talk about their calling; “God is calling me to…” – fill in blank. Calling me to work with the homeless, calling me to take a new job, calling me to vegetarianism. It seems like a convenient way to do the very thing your heart desires while putting the blame on someone who isn’t around.
But, I have to wonder, what are the criteria of an authentic call? What gives me the right to think that God has called me by name to my ministry? An authentic call originates from the outside; not from within. As Jeremiah said, “The word of the Lord came to me.” That phrase as well as, “Thus says the Lord,” is repeated over and over again by the prophets in the Hebrew scriptures. Sometimes a call is auditory and visual. And sometimes, as Jeremiah describes, it’s physical, “Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth.” But always, it is definitive with the prophet repeating the precise words spoken by God, words that compel them to action.
An authentic call pushes us outside of our comfort zone, often to be the messenger of uninvited news. God said, “I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah resisted arguing that he is only a boy and therefore not equipped to be a prophet. God offers reassurance and promises to deliver him. Then God commissions Jeremiah to pluck up and to pull down, destroy and overthrow, and build and plant kingdoms and nations.
I was called by God…but my call was nothing like Jeremiah’s. It happened about ten years ago, I was asleep, alone, in my house. “Jackie,” I heard a voice say so clearly that it woke me up. Again, “Jackie,” and I sat straight up in bed and looked around to see who was calling my name. Nobody was there. Then I heard these words clearly and distinctly: “Don’t be ashamed of your Christianity.” This phrase, “Don’t be ashamed of your Christianity,” was repeated aloud three times with such clarity that even today it is like a recording embedded in my memory. That call was an awakening for me; I understood the words.
Our dear friend Liz Specht coined the term “Secret Deacon” to describe a person who is a deacon at heart, but not ordained by the church. Liz considers herself a Secret Deacon. I wholeheartedly agree that she is the quintessential deacon; Liz Specht is a holy woman, one of the holiest people I know. Well, I thought the Secret Deacon model was a great idea – I could be a deacon and not have to go to school for three years or deal with the grueling ordination process.
The truth is, and this is what God called me on, the Secret Deacon plan was a way for me to remain closeted about my faith. I was a Christian for sure, but I didn’t talk about it much, and I certainly didn’t want my religion to shape my identity. Understand – it’s much easier to come out as gay than it is to come out as a Christian.
Most of us will probably never have the supernatural experience of being woken up from a sound sleep by a voice issuing a command. That’s just as well, because while some might consider it a blessing, there are others who believe hearing voices in the night is a sign of mental illness. There are a thousand books out there with instructions on how to be receptive to God. How to pray, meditate, practice mindfulness, all with the end goal of hearing God when he calls.
But being still and listening for the voice of God doesn’t always work. Sometimes God is silent. In fact, God is silent almost all of the time.
I’d like to suggest that suspending your life waiting to hear God’s call contradicts our Christian responsibility. Today, burning bushes are few and far between. Today, the prophet is moved instead by a burning conviction, perhaps by outrage at the social injustices that burden the people. Look at the example set by the bent-over woman – crippled for 18 years and unable to stand up straight, the unnamed woman refused to sit around and wait for God to come to her. Instead, she hobbled her way to God and made herself known to Jesus. Jesus did not call the bent-over woman until she had placed herself squarely in his line of vision. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.
God the Creator is made known through Jesus, and sometimes, before we can hear a call, we have to stand up-on-our-own and make ourselves known to Jesus. Jesus doesn’t just set the bent-over woman free. By healing her on the Sabbath, he set the Sabbath day free too. He unbinds the spirits of the people in the synagogue to make room for the possibility of something new. The leaders of the synagogue were mad because Jesus had broken a long established, this-is-the-way-we’ve-always-done-it, rule that binds and burdens. And St. Luke said, The entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things he was doing. 
Today’s prophets are not passive receptacles who recite God’s word verbatim. Today’s prophets actively see and then reflect on the issues in the world around them. This week we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his indelible I Have a Dream speech; a speech inspired by the Holy Scriptures. This is how King prayed:
“Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself.”
And King’s dream for the world was no less than to create the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, the same vision Jesus has for us. Reverend Vincent Harding, a scholar and activist who worked with Dr. King, says the anniversary we celebrate is not the anniversary of a speech, but the anniversary of a very important point in history when black people were leading a movement to expand democracy, to deepen democracy, and to make democracy more faithful to its own sayings.
We must take note that after the speech, Dr. King continued his prophetic work in the world. He didn’t get down from podium, get down from the pulpit, in 1963 and say, "We’ve made the speech, we’ve made the march, we’ll see you in 50 years." King knew there was no time to wait around listening for a call. And he was right, this country continues to stagger under the weight of injustice; injustice that bends us over and prevents us from standing up straight: Voters’ rights, immigration, environmental, disparities between whites and blacks in education, employment and incarceration. Injustice so pervasive it could easily be crippling. Dr. King stood up to it all.
He had a vision, and as he proclaimed it his voice shook the earth: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Martin Luther King, Jr. never questioned whether or not his dream would come true. And when this happens, he said, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black and white, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old blessed spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! Amen.

St, Mary the Virgin (The Rev. Dr. Richard Smith)

On this special feast, I want to say a few things about Mary herself and then about the song she sings in today’s gospel.

She was a teenage Jewish girl from a fourth world country, a country under occupation by a foreign power. From what we know, she had dark skin and dark brown eyes and dark hair.

Some English translations say she was a handmaiden, which sounds nice, but the Greek word is doulos, which means slave or servant. She was a servant girl from a fourth world occupied country.

And her name was Mary, a Hebrew name with two meanings. The first meaning is bitterness. Like many of her fellow Jewish women from Miriam on down, Mary knew the bitterness that her own people experienced under the slavery and oppression of foreign nations, from Egypt to Babylon to Rome. Like them she struggled to keep hope alive in her people.

The second meaning of the name Mary is rebellion. Not the Mary meek and mild of Christmas cards, she is the one who rebels against anything that crushes the human spirit.

The story tells us that she was both a virgin and a mother, and over the centuries there have been many misguided efforts to see this in biological terms, leaving theologians and scientists with the impossible task of explaining how the mother of Jesus could also be a virgin. But if it is possible to set aside the biological conundrum and to think of this in symbolic terms, then maybe the image of Mary as both virgin and mother can teach us something, something about ourselves, something about life.

On the one hand, symbolically speaking, as a virgin, she stands apart, detached from the world, her own person, with a clear sense of herself, her own likes and dislikes, her own preferences and dreams and goals. This is the symbol of the virgin.

On the other hand, as a mother Mary is deeply connected not only to her child but also to her family and people, to the world. This is the symbol of Mary as mother, one who is deeply connected to others.

And it is in this creative tension between being virgin and being mother, between being her own unique person even as she gives herself completely to others, that she lives her life, not leaning too far to one side or the other, holding both poles in a creative tension as all of us must do.

Because we too must be both virgins and mothers in the symbolic sense--honoring and maintaining our own individual uniqueness, at the same time as we give ourselves to others.

If you lean too far in simply preserving and enhancing your own self, you become isolated, never take the risk of loving others, becoming closed in on yourself.

On the other hand, if you give yourself for others without honoring who you are, the unique person God has made you with all your limitations and gifts, without the proper self-care, then you can burn out, lose your zest, lose your joy.

The art is in holding both poles in a creative tension, being symbolically both virgins and mothers.

And in today's gospel, this Jewish servant girl named Mary, a virgin who is about to become both virgin and mother, sings a song, which begins with the words “My soul makes the Lord mighty” We should take those words at face value: that God becomes bigger, magnified, by this woman's unique soul. The unique shape of her own life over time will make God more God than before.

And what is that shape of her life? The words of her song suggest that she is not like the one that was mistakenly portrayed centuries later as though she had a romantic connection with God, like that between lovers or spouses.

No, her personal communion with God connects with social change. Her longing for God points to social transformation, a revolutionary restructuring of society that turns the values of this world upside down.

He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

Her words anticipate the crazy upside down program that Jesus will later proclaim: That the first shall be last and the last first. If you want to be great, then you must become a servant. If you want to save your life, you must lay it down. Blessed are the poor, but woe to those who are rich.

A turning of the world as we know it upside down. A revolutionary message this song of Mary.

But notice that this great work of social transformation that she sings about is first and foremost God’s work. It is about God’s amazing work that Mary is singing.

God has shown strength with his arm;

God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

God has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

Having glimpsed what God has already been up to in the world, Mary aligns herself with that great work, working shoulder to shoulder with God to restore the dignity of those who have been crushed and broken.

It is what we try to do here at St. John’s. We try to look at the world around us with prayerful and discerning hearts, trying to catch a glimpse of what God is already doing. And then we go out to join God in that great work, whether it is bringing water to Nicaraguan villages, or working for immigration reform, or volunteering at the Julian Pantry, or doing all the various ministries we each do through the week.

By approaching our work this way, we don’t have to worry about cleaning up the world, imposing our will on recalcitrant situations. No need to fight for our way, our social and political agenda, and leaving havoc in our wake. We can chill, not take ourselves too seriously.

Because our own work is not about us. It begins with discernment, with prayerful attentiveness to the movement of God in the world around us, and we then humbly join God in that great effort, each of us in our own unique way.

A familiar prayer often attributed to Archbishop Oscar Romero shows this kind of discernment, the perspective of Mary’s song, so let me close with this.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church's mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.