Episodes
Monday Feb 04, 2019
Monday Feb 04, 2019
Always More
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC February 3, 2019, the fourth Sunday after Epiphany. “This Is Us” series.
Text: Jeremiah 1:4-10
Keeping a healthy perspective in life is difficult. In fact, it’s very easy to function with a skewed, radically limited perspective. For example, I often perceive there is only one option before me in any given moment when, in fact, there are many. Only one option leaves me feeling stuck or trapped—not a good feeling. Some of us may function with a very limited vision of our identity or capacity, based on perception of experiences or messages received from others in the past. These old mental “tapes” can hold us captive within perceived limitations. We may forget that our feelings are not the sum total of who we are. Once, at a spirituality training event, a participant shared a personal struggle that focused on being overwhelmed with a strong, negative emotion. The teacher, a woman who oozed wisdom and spiritual depth, said in a simple but very passionate way: “But you are so much MORE.” We may have moments when our feelings are so strong that it seems that’s all there is; but we are more than our feelings. Finally, we all know (I imagine) the snap judgments we can make of a person or a situation based on preconceived notions or limited data. Our perception of others through the lens of our prejudices and preferences can lead us to miss out on so many gifts in experience and relationship.
These kinds of limited perception are—in theory—within our control. But as finite, human creatures, we do have limits to what we can readily or easily perceive. One writer learns this lesson from the natural world. She writes, “The physicist I’ve been talking to all winter says if I look more widely, deeply, and microscopically all at once, I might see how springlike the whole cosmos is. What I see as order and stillness, the robust, time-bound determinacy of my life, is really a mirage suspended above chaos. [My physicist friend tells me], ‘There’s a lot of random jiggling going on everywhere’...”[i]
We don’t see the movement, the power, the life that is always there, but it is always there. In everything we perceive—in people, in communities, in nature—there is always more.
As people of faith, we believe that the source and sustainer of this more is God. God’s voice, God’s Word, God’s love, God’s breath, these are the gifts that create energy, power, life. God is the one who calls creation into being. God is the one who calls humankind into communities of love, mercy, and justice. And when human love becomes limited and misdirected, when justice morphs into vengeance, when community is perverted into tribalism or nationalism, God is the one who lifts up prophets “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” (Jeremiah 1:10)
This is the heart of the call upon the prophet Jeremiah, who evidently received a divine call while still a youth and who served in an extraordinary period in the history of Judah from around 627 to 580 BCE. Empires were falling and rising all around them and Judah’s kings during this period—Josiah, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah—tried, and mostly failed, to lead revolutions both cultural and political.
Into this swarming upheaval, God brought Jeremiah into the world for the purpose of being a prophet to the nations. And, as it always goes, the call to be a prophet is not a moment of “happy happy, joy joy.” Most of those called, try their best to get out of it. And who can blame them?
Prophets are asked to do hard things, to put themselves in risky situations, to stand up to the powers of hatred and violence and greed and apathy—to speak words that no one wants to hear. Prophets are given the capacity to perceive what is broken, places of pain, the injustices in society, and lack of love for God and others. Prophets are given the capacity to stand up and put these things front and center—they force the issue! Prophets are given the capacity to see the proverbial—and depressing!—writing on the wall if things don’t change. Prophets pull idols down and pluck up invasive roots. Prophets call for destruction of systems and practices that do harm and for an overthrow of those who abuse their power. Prophets also perceive God’s hope and vision for the world and call for new creation, for activities of building up and planting what will nourish and sustain.
Jeremiah gets this call and doesn’t want it. Scholars tell us that the phrase translated “Ah, Lord God!” introduces a complaint against God. Jeremiah’s complaint is this: “I don’t know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” And God replies, “Do not say ‘I am only…”
It’s not that Jeremiah’s wrong. Jeremiah is young, likely lacking experience, confidence, and perhaps even skill. But like Moses before him—who also used his imperfect speech as an excuse—Jeremiah receives an assurance that God will be with him and will give him the words and all he needs. It’s not that Jeremiah isn’t a boy, it’s that Jeremiah is more than only a boy. Jeremiah is a prophet, too—and that isn’t something he has to become through his own striving; that part of who Jeremiah is is activated and supported and fueled by God’s presence and voice. God is clear: “I have put my words in your mouth…” All Jeremiah has to do is say “yes,” offer the gifts he has, limited as they are, be available, be willing to do the hard thing.
I can’t help but think of young people who have been called to prophetic work in our own time. On February 1st, 1960, four black college students—who came to be known as “the Greensboro Four”—“sat down at a whites-only lunch counter at an F.W. Woolworth’s in Greensboro, N.C., and ordered coffee. They weren’t served. They nevertheless stayed there until the store closed that evening. Earlier, the four freshmen, who were enrolled at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, had purchased toothpaste and various school supplies. One of them [said]: “We believe, since we buy books and papers in the other part of the store, we should get served in this part.”[ii] The Greensboro Sit-In continued in increasing numbers over weeks and was the beginning of a movement that swept across southern college towns, fueling engagement with the Civil Rights movement and creating change in segregationist policies.
In Ferguson, Missouri following the murder of Michael Brown in August of 2014, those at the center of leadership for the resistance were young, queer people. The “March For Our Lives” movement against gun violence is being led by children and teens who are saying “enough!” Young people here at Foundry are writing and organizing and providing leadership for justice in the places they live and study. These young leaders said and are saying, “yes.” They are willing and available to pull down and pluck up, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant. Thank God they haven’t said, “I am only a child…”
In moments of grief, violence, injustice, and struggle of all kinds, it is very easy for each of us to settle back into the old refrain, “I am only…” Only my feelings, only my assigned role in the family system, only a kid, only whatever. It is tempting to feel that we are “stuck” with few options before us. And, while it may be unlikely that you will be called to the kind of prophetic work as Jeremiah or the Greensboro Four, there is always more that God perceives in you, always more that God wants to do in and through you, always more that God knows about you—things you don’t know about yourself and your capacities and your call. “I am only” is an excuse. Because if God is calling you, God will give you whatever “more” you need.
[Jeremiah is an example that in ourselves, in every person, in every situation, in every relationship, there is always more than we readily perceive. There is always a lot of random jiggling going on! Spirit moves, activating new energy in some, pricking the conscience of others, giving visions to some, providing courage to others, forming strategies of resistance in the minds of some, enlivening the prayers for peace of others, placing words in the mouths of some, drawing others to finally just be quiet. God is always at work for good in the world.]
You may or may not have a sense of the ways God is at work through you, or of the “more” that God wants to give you or the hard thing to which you are called. You may have great clarity about that, but feel afraid or ill-equipped. But whether you perceive it or not, if you open your mind and heart to God, you will be given all you need. God’s love and mercy for you—for us!—never runs out…There is always more. Thanks be to God.
[i] Gretel Ehrlich, Islands, The Universe, Home, Viking Press, 1991, p. 13.
[ii] Andrew Glass, “Black students mount lunch counter sit-in, Feb. 1, 1960,” https://www.politico.com/story/2019/02/01/greensboro-sit-in-1960-1135789
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