Dispatch 3 from the Seminary

Courses in the first half of the second -- or Middler -- year become more practical. For instance, in the first year we studied the books of the Bible as historic and literary documents. Now, with that essential background in place, we have begun learning the additional tools we need to analyze and interpret texts from either Testament for the purpose of preaching.

It is amazing to realize how much I have learned and changed in this brief time, and daunting to think about how much I still need to learn before being ordained (God willing) and assigned in summer 2001. In three semesters I have taken sixteen different courses, plus a summer of intensive New Testament Greek. Coming up are field education assignments for this January term (in a multicultural parish in the Los Angeles area), next summer (as a hospital chaplain), and all next year (in a parish in Austin), plus a full load of courses for the remaining three semesters.

With all of this intellectual and practical stimulation, it might be easy to overlook the most important area of life -- the spiritual. It is there, however, that the most radical and vital work of transformation is taking place, nurtured by the daily chapel services here as well as my own routine of meditation, prayer, and reading of Scripture. In a sermon I prepared for my classmates just before Christmas, I had the chance to articulate the change that has taken place in my worldview. That sermon seems to fit in this dispatch.

Entitled "God's Purpose, God's Promise," it is based on Jeremiah 1:4-9:

Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, "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." Then I said, "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy." But 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. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord." Then 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."

Most people probably respond like Jeremiah to God's call -- I certainly did. We feel inadequate, unprepared. We blurt out excuses, point out our weaknesses (as if God didn't know them!). Jeremiah accepted God's call fairly quickly, maybe because he was young and didn't know better. But some of us bargain and wrangle with God for a long time, as Moses did. And we are right to be wary. This is not a small commitment.

But neither is God's commitment to us. That is what Jeremiah 1:4-9 is about. The voice and the vision are God's. So, too, are the means for bringing the vision to reality. This is the call to God's purpose, fulfilled with God's promise. I would like to look briefly at three facets of God's promise as seen in the text: God's prescience, God's provision, and God's abiding presence.

First, prescience. God says to Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you." From time immemorial, God knew each of us in our particularity. God endowed us with individual gifts and saw how they might serve God's grand scheme, God's kingdom on earth, if we would consent when the time came. If we do not consent, it is our loss. And if we do, when we fall short -- as we inevitably will -- God is ready to forgive us and help us go forward. That's prescience, too.

It's much easier now than in the lonely days of Moses and the prophets, when the whole responsibility for delivering God's message or leading God's people fell on the shoulders of one or two at a time. With the coming of Christ, revelation was opened to all peoples and a new vision given to the faithful. Now we share in the joy and responsibility of doing God's will and bringing it to others. God gave this vision to us through Paul, preserved in his letters. In I Corinthians, Paul explained that the Spirit has endowed us with a variety of gifts; that God in Christ has brought us together as members of one body, to operate as a whole for God's purpose.

This brings us to God's provision. God said to Jeremiah: "Now I have put my words in your mouth." God gives each of us the means to fulfill God's purpose for us. Some of us will be strongest in ministry to the young, some to the elderly, some to prisoners, to the hospitalized, to outsiders. Some will be strongest in preaching, others in teaching, others in comforting, still others in building. God not only provides each of us with our own gifts, God provides us with each other! None of us can do God's work alone. Being a member of the body of Christ means accepting and embracing the collaboration with other members whose gifts complement ours. When we discern the roles we have in God's scenario, and accept them, God has promised to provide the words, the thoughts, the means, the company that we need to accomplish God's purpose.

Finally, there is God's presence. This is the ultimate promise, the incomparable gift. God said to Jeremiah: "You shall go to all to whom I send you and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you." Similarly, in commanding Moses to lead the Israelites out of the desert, God said, "I will be with you." What more can we ask?

God will send us out -- but not on a picnic. The examples are clear and sobering: Jeremiah gave his whole life to Yahweh. Forbidden the comforts of marriage and family, he spent his time delivering woeful predictions to hostile audiences. Moses led a grumbling, rebellious, bull-headed bunch through the desert for forty years. Even then, they only reached the edge of the promised land. That tells us what we need to know about the scope of our tasks and the limitations of our earthly rewards. Let's face it: neither will we see the kingdom come. The promised land, in its fullest sense, will remain beyond our reach here below. God is God, and God disposes.

We will be sent places we think we do not want to go. We will speak truths that others do not want to hear. We will defend and raise up those whom society -- including some of our own friends and family -- would rather see disappear. We will find the comfort of life-long understandings broken in conflict because of our beliefs and actions. Are we crazy? Perhaps. Karl Barth candidly dubbed this "the strange new world of God." It is the world we enter when we accept God's call, where the laws of reason, nature, and narrow self-interest are defied. Here God speaks aloud and dwells among us. Here some go willingly to their deaths, forgiving their assassins. Here some are healed in body -- and many more, in spirit. Here people try to live into a seemingly superhuman reality of mutual love. Here people strive to learn God's purpose and submit to God's will. Here people struggle against the values of the world.

Why do we do it? Because with the call, we felt the blessing of God's presence -- a presence that completes us, that ends the life-long search for meaning, a presence boundless in its comfort, irresistible in its assurance -- absolute and eternal. A presence for which we surrender our will and our life.

God delivered the message to Jeremiah and to Moses and to each of us in turn. In giving ourselves to God's purpose, we receive God's promise: "I will be with you." And God is.