Not Me!

I'm sure you've tried it once at least (probably many times) -- and if you have children, they have undoubtedly tried it too -- invoking that timeless extra member of the family, "Not me." Who spilled the milk? Not me. Who tracked in the mud? Not ME.... Who let the dog up on the living room couch? Not meeee....

I tried it a few times -- but it's a little harder when you're an only child....

Not me. That's what Jeremiah said in today's reading. Not me. The way he said it was, Ah! Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy. Not me. Try somebody else...

That was what most of the prophets said -- not me. In fact, that was one way to tell who was a true prophet -- not one who was just rushing to be at the center of the action. Real prophets had some understanding of what might be expected of them -- in Jeremiah's case, God was asking Jeremiah to pluck up and pull down, to destroy and to overthrow and only later to build and to plant -- not that comfortable a situation for a prophet amongst his own people. Our Gospel today tells the story of how easily a crowd's enthusiasm can turn to an urge to kill one who brings unwelcome words.

Jeremiah is not the only one who ever said Not me in response to God's call. Some of us have been studying the life of Moses. He was a past master at the art of thinking up variations on Not Me. He had a variety of delaying tactics: Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt? And If I come to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" and "But suppose they do not believe me or listen to me, but say, 'The Lord did not appear to you." And O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant , but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. And when God had answered that one, still Moses said Not me: O my Lord, please send someone else. It was at about that point that even God's patience began to be tried... But still he called upon Moses to be the carrier of his word, and Moses, however reluctantly at times, and with the help of his brother, did go on to lead his people as the Lord had called him to do.

Does any of this sound familiar? How many times have we all said Not me when God calls us to speak or act on God's behalf?

And then what happens? First, in the case of Moses and the case of Jeremiah, and later in our own case if we will but listen, God sings a lovesong to us. Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you... I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.

God gives the words and the strength -- the common form for the calling of a prophet begins and the word of the Lord came to...; God tells the prophet where the words are to be spoken and when; and God guides and sustains the prophet, even in adversity. God says to Jeremiah, 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... Now I have put my words in your mouth.

Is that only for prophets, only for ages long ago? No. God forms us, loves us, chooses us, gives all of us the gift of the Spirit in our baptism -- sends us the gift of his own Word, Jesus, and asks us to be bearers of that Word in the world. The Word of the Lord comes to us... To each of us...

Are we all meant to be prophets in the usual sense? No. As Paul tells us, there are varieties of gifts. But God gives us opportunities to "speak the Word" with our lives, and walks with us. Not all of us are called to be prophets in the narrow sense -- but we are ALL called to be attentive to and messengers of God's ultimate Word.

Sometimes a "word" is spoken without any words as we think of them. Perhaps outside our awareness of "speaking" at all. There is a quote, attributed to Goethe, that a teacher affects eternity; he never knows where his influence stops. One of the awesome responsibilities that we carry as Christians is the fact that our being as well as our doing influences how others understand the Word of God and the community of God's people, and teaches them, for better or worse, about the God we worship.

Before I went to seminary, I worked with a woman who had been a friend for a number of years. Over the years, I had heard her tell about growing up in church and wandering away, and I had seen her experiment with a number of ways to attempt to fill the "God-shaped hole" in her life. She had tried astrology, New Age seminars, personal growth movements, and other ways of attempting to find meaning in her life. About a year before I left for seminary, she told me one day that she was planning to start going to church again.

I asked her how she had come to that decision. She said, "I thought about it and I realized that all the people that I trust most are Christians."

No one had been a prophet to her in the formal sense; no one had preached to her in the formal sense, but in the lives of people who touched her life she had sensed that there was something different, something good, something that she wanted to be part of and close to. She saw that there was something worth knowing in the lives of the people around her who were carriers of the Word of God.

I have talked to others whose experience, like hers and like mine, has been very much the same. Who have been brought nearer to God by the Word as it was lived out in the lives of others -- perhaps even, perhaps even often, those who were not consciously aware that they were speaking that Word. And yet that "word" of example may be the truest word ever spoken in our lives -- and it may have a huge impact on the path we follow from that day forward.

Perhaps there is someone who has been God's Word to you in your life. If you recognize that, and the person is available to thank, why not do that this week? Perhaps your thanksgiving will be a Word in return...

And if your "speaker of the Word" is not available for you to thank directly, you can always offer a prayer of thanksgiving -- and perhaps an imitation...

And what if -- what if --- we were to greet each other as if each was the Word -- whose Spirit has been given to each of us in our baptism? What then? What Word would that speak to the world around us?

For prophecy -- even in the case of Jeremiah, whose name gets attached to lamentation and despair in popular use -- can in fact also be a Word of God's love, God's yearning to give freely of all that is good, of all of God's own creation, to God's people...

Even Jeremiah, who had so many hard words to deliver to his people, and who suffered in the doing of it, would eventually bring his people a message of hope, would eventually tell them God's lovesong: You shall be my people, and I will be your God... I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. Again I will build you, and you shall be built... For thus says the Lord: Sing aloud with gladness....Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, and declare it in the coastlands far away... this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people... They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

When we hear and know the love and the Word of God, and when we are asked to carry it to our neighbors, how can we say Not me? We are human, and so sometimes we try to bargain, or avoid, or say Send someone else. But may God give us the will and the strength for our answering love to say instead, Here I am; send me.

Perhaps there is someone in your life for whom you are called to be God's Word this week. Will you go and speak that Word with your life?

The Rev. Lois Hart
01 February 98