Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30

Last month I issued a bit of a challenge to you and to the congregation at Pomonal, around getting some more of God in the form of Holy Spirit. Some of the feedback I have had has used that word “challenge”, including the several-times repeated phrase “you always teach us something Damien, but today you challenged me”. If you’re the one who said that to me, well you’re not the only one. Today I want to look at what it means to be called: after all what is the point of being filled with fire and spirit if God does nothing to use that power within you and the anointing around you.

We’ll begin in the Hebrew Tradition and Psalm 71:1 where we read in you oh LORD I take refuge, let me never be put to shame. I think that is a great prayer, and it’s one I can imagine myself using. It could be a breath prayer; those of you who studied prayer with me last year might remember what a breath prayer is. Breathe in with one phrase, breathe out with the second phrase, repeat. It’s your own Responsive Psalm as you inhale: In you oh LORD I take refuge; and exhale: Let me never be put to shame; and inhale: In you oh LORD I take refuge, and exhale: Let me never be put to shame. It could also be a mental health strategy, couldn’t it: like a moment of centring and calming when stressed or predicting stress. Imagine yourself sitting outside an office waiting for an oral exam, an interview, or an important meeting; and you inhale: In you oh LORD I take refuge; and exhale: Let me never be put to shame. “I might not get this job LORD, but please don’t let me embarrass myself in there.” One of my commentaries this week suggested that what this Psalm is about, and possibly it connects with Psalm 70, is that after a life of service and worship an old person asks God for safekeeping until the end of his life. If we connect with Psalm 70 then maybe it’s David himself the muso-poet rather than the king in prayer here; David is using this part of his skill and personality to pray. He is old, and watching his kingship and his family crumble around him as we heard about last year when we read 2 Samuel, David doesn’t believe himself up to the job anymore. As a king and a father he wants to finish well, or at least finish loved, and to be granted the opportunity to lay down his crown and his Dad-mug with a shred of dignity left, and rescue…from the grasp of the unjust and cruel (Psalm 71:4). “I used to sleep in the open and lead mighty men into battle”, David thinks, “now I need a girl to sleep with me to heat up my bed or I’ll be too cold at night: aren’t those palace whispers loud even in my deaf ears.” Hold that thought.

Staying with the Hebrew Traditions and Jeremiah 1, we read at the beginning of his story how a man of faith heard his specific call to serve The LORD as a prophet. I am hopeful of hearing more of these kinds of stories from you, and I am grateful for Meredith who shared some of her story from the lectern last month, and Irene who wrote for us in Golden Link. In Jeremiah’s story we read in Jeremiah 1:6 that he considers himself a child, and as such he doesn’t believe himself up to the job yet. The first few verse of the book tell us that Jeremiah was the son of a priest, so we know his father would have worked at the temple in Jerusalem, but Jeremiah grew up away from the city. Jeremiah enters the story young, and he’s rural, and with his dad working in the religion industry Jeremiah knows the job, and he tells God why he can’t be called. God isn’t having a bar of it, saying that God has called Jeremiah knowing who he is (the one God called in utero) and promises to go with Jeremiah and be his guide, his guard, and his deliverance (Jeremiah 1:5). Something that cannot be said of Jeremiah is that he is self-appointed: if God called him in the womb then Jeremiah was born to do this and there’s nothing he or anyone else can say in contradiction. Hold that thought too.

From the Jesus Traditions today we read about Jesus visiting Nazareth, which Luke 4:16 clearly describes to Luke’s readers as Jesus’ hometown, where he had been brought up. Very likely, this is Jesus’ first visit home as an itinerant prophet; earlier in Luke Jesus has been baptised by John and then spent time in the desert undergoing the temptations, whereafter filled with the power of The Spirit [he] returned to Galilee (Luke 4:14). He goes home, and as is the family’s habit of a Sabbath he goes to synagogue. Maybe as a returned local he’s given the opportunity to read the scroll, and that’s when he says what he says. Returning to those two thoughts you have been holding, unlike Jeremiah Jesus is old enough to respond to God’s call (he’s not a boy), and unlike David he is young enough (he’s not a geriatric). Even so, the congregation at Nazareth doesn’t want to know, because he’s a local man, and the local brickie and chippie at that. Clearly to us Jesus is clear about his calling, not just that he is the Messiah but that his work looks like liberty and proclamation; and for the rest of the gospel he preaches and does miracles. What Jesus says in Luke 4:21 about today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing is evident in what comes next; the only authoritative sign that a prophet really is a prophet is that his prophecies eventuate: Jesus’ prophecies did.

So, what about us. Three stories which the Lectionary put together for today indicate that God can and doers call whomever God wishes, and you can’t be too old, too young, or too local for God to use you. It doesn’t matter to God how long you have been in Stawell (or not), and how long ago your birth was (or not). God can call old people, (Moses was eighty when he spoke to Pharaoh, Abraham was one hundred when Sarah gave birth to Isaac); God can call young people (Samuel was three when he heard the voice in the tabernacle, John the Baptist was a second-trimester foetus when he leapt prophetically in the presence of Mary’s zygote, Mary herself may have been thirteen when Gabriel spoke to her and in her late forties at the foot of the cross); and God can call country folk. So God can call anyone, but how do we know whom God has called, and to what?

In our Christian Tradition reading today we get an answer. I’m not certain enough to say it’s “The Answer”, with big-T and big-A and no further correspondence to be entered into, but it’s a good answer anyway. A sign, the sign of God’s call is love. It’s not age, (we’ve just said that) nor academic qualifications, nor years of service to the local church or the Synod, nor the ability to speak or interpret tongues. No, it’s love.

Before we dive deeper into 1 Corinthians 13 and what Paul has to say about loveless ministry, let’s go back to Jesus in Luke 4, and the passage he read which is from Isaiah 58 and Isaiah 61. What does Jesus believe his calling to be? Forgiveness of sins, release from debts and burdens, welcome for the marginalised, healing for the unwell, and exorcism of the oppressed. Not condemnation, not damnation, not prosecution or persecution; when God came upon women and men with power and the Spirit the message was restoration, even when the message came with consequences of failure to respond. Jesus’ message was no different; it’s not weak or watery, but it is love. Back to Paul and 1 Corinthians 13:1, if I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong, and then in 1 Corinthians 13:2-3 Paul says similar things about being able to perform miracles or act with extreme piety. Without love it’s useless, and God doesn’t call people to uselessness. You can believe that you were useless before God called you, Jeremiah and David did, so did Moses and Abraham, but even if you think you were not worthy or are not worthy of being called by God, once you are called by God you cannot be called to do a wasteful thing. What is a wasteful thing: anything you think you can do as a Christian but does not come from love.

Several years ago and in my previous church I met a man during some of my welfare work, a man who had been married to a very strong Christian woman. This man believed that Jesus existed and had been a nice person when he lived, and he would occasionally accompany his wife to church, back in the day. The wife was Fundamentalist and Pentecostal (her husband’s words) and eventually she left him because he wasn’t spiritual enough (again, the husband’s words). I asked the man how he felt about that, and he said, “my wife was a very holy woman and I couldn’t live up to her holiness, she even spoke in tongues and I couldn’t”. My response, one of the best lines I have ever come up with on the spot (so surely it was Holy Spirit saying this and not me) was to say, “it’s great that she could speak in tongues, but could she show kindness in English?” The man just smiled, he shed a tear, and he said “no”. I think that is what Paul is telling the Corinthians.

At this point, with only fifty-five minutes to go in this sermon, I hope I’ve made my points. Well, I have made one, and I’d like to add another one.

1. I hope you’ve heard that God will call whomever God wants to call, and even if you think you’re too old, or too young, or too locally known to be of use in Stawell, that God disagrees. There is no reason, and scripture supports this, why God cannot or would not call any one of you to a specific ministry for the Kingdom of God and/or the Glory of God’s Name. You can respond like Jeremiah and be used mightily by God; or you can respond like Jonah and run away and nearly drown and nearly die of sunstroke and be used mightily by God. We haven’t talked about Jonah today, but you know the story.
2. Maybe new for this moment and not clear from what I’ve already said, but it’s not for us to question the call of others. David was doubting himself and Jeremiah was doubting himself and that could have kept them both out of ministry. Jesus however knew his call, and it was his church friends that tried to shut him down, and that could have kept him out of ministry. If you are going to deny the call of God on your life please do not deny the call of God on the life of your friends here today: but if you do, use only the evidence of love. Is this person full of the Spirit, or full of herself? As mighty and thunderous as her prophecies might sound if there’s love in there then there’s God in there; but if there’s the tongues of mortals and of angels, but…not…love, then you need to know how to locate the nearest gong…in love.

The same final point goes if you hear words coming from the grasp of the unjust and cruel as we read in Psalm 71. The question in David’s ageing mind was not whether God had called him, but whether God was still calling him. No one in this church has outlived her or his usefulness to God; that does not happen with our God. Yes, Moses began his career as a prophet at eighty, some of you might have been useful to God since you were very young and are wondering how useful you can be now that you have reached eighty. Even I was teaching Sunday School as a thirteen-year-old, teaching it. I can’t do that anymore, because there isn’t a Sunday School and my skills are no longer required. But I can do something else, I can preach. Moreso, there are things that I can do that this church isn’t currently doing, but it might do if I offered those skills to God once more.

We can do nothing of use without the gift of God and the empowering of Holy Spirit: that doesn’t concern me so much as the pastor here because I think we know that. My concern is that God can do nothing with that same power until we choose to receive it, and respond to the call to act upon what we hear, and then to run with guarding and guidance along the roads God is pointing us to. So, church, do not mock those whom God has called and whom God has continued to call, especially if that person is you. And if that person is you, ask for power and wisdom to do the thing you are being summonsed to by your LORD.

Amen.