“High
Expectations”
Jeremiah 1:4-10
The word of the Lord came to
Jeremiah and said, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you
were born, I consecrated you and appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
Maybe it’s a human thing. Maybe it’s just an American thing - the
rugged individualistic craving for self-determination, a self-determination
that is grounded in the desire to be the master of our own destiny. Maybe it’s just a free-will thing, a freedom
of the will by which we believe we the right to set ourselves on a course of
our own choosing. We yearn for that
freedom, for that right to be whoever we want to be and to do whatever we want
to do.
Maybe that is
why any notion of pre-determination strikes so many people in the wrong way,
because it goes against everything we have come to believe about what it means
to be “me.” We have wholeheartedly
embraced Descartes’ definition of existence, “I think, therefore I am,” and
made it the mantra of our being, so much so that our whole life is predicated
on the belief that I, and I alone, am the one who will decide what I’m going to
do and who I’m going to be now and in the future. Maybe that is why we have such an adverse
reaction to any notion of someone else trying to choose our life for us, to
someone else who comes to say what it is that we are supposed to be and do, to
someone else who calls us to another purpose that is different from what we
think our purpose should be.
This is how
it was for me when I was called to the ministry. Any notion of someone else telling me that I
was going to go to seminary and be a pastor of a church was beyond the scope of
what I perceived to be my purpose in life.
It just wasn’t going to happen.
It was contrary to my plans, to the future that I had envisioned. I had already mapped out my own little niche
in the world, and I was content with it, comfortable with it. Who cares that I was in a rut, it was my
rut.
The reality
is that our desire and yearning for self-determination, for the freedom and
right to decide our own future and choose our own course, is really only an
idealism born out of a false sense of security, out of a longing to grasp that
which is beyond our control. We want to
be the masters of our own destiny because we want to believe we know what is
best for us, we want to believe we have control over what happens to us, we
want to believe that we have our own best interest at heart. But is this really the case? How many of us think we have a good handle on
things? How many of us truly believe our
future is set just the way we envisioned it?
Don’t we also know that life can
change for us in a blink of an eye?
Don’t we also know that any attempt to take hold of the future is like
trying to take hold of a greased pig - just when we think we have it securely
in our grasp, it squirts out of our hands?
Yet, people still go about life content and comfortable, unwillingly to
get out of the rut they are in, paralyzed to let go of their future and place
it in the hands of the one who comes to encounter us where we are, who comes to
call us to a new purpose, who comes with high expectations for us.
You want me
to go to seminary? Ah, God, but I don’t
want to go to seminary. I have other
plans. Besides, I’m not nearly as
compassionate as Mother Theresa. I can’t
evangelize like Billy Graham. I can’t
preach like John Calvin. I’m not as
smart as world-renown, Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann. I’m not always the disciple Jesus wants me to
be. I get nervous speaking in front of
people. I speak too fast. I mispronounce words and say things like
“weagles ings” instead of “eagle’s wings.”
Worst yet, I’m a sinner, a forgiven sinner, but a sinner nonetheless.
Like
Jeremiah, we come up with all the excuses we can think of not to go along with
the divinely, pre-determined calling for our lives. After all, the whole concept of God
pre-determining anything goes against everything we believe about the freedom of
the self. We want to be the ones to determine
our own future. We want to be the ones
to determine our own purpose in life. We
want to be the ones to determine our own terms of faithfulness and obedience
and service.
After all, the calling to which
Jeremiah was called placed a tremendous weight upon his shoulders before he was
even born, before he even had a chance to say yes or no. As great and as powerful as God’s words are,
God’s call is one of high expectations.
How can one measure up to such a “transcendent” job description as being
the mouthpiece of God? God seems to
expect so much from us. God seems to
expect us to rise to the occasion, to be the person we would have never chosen
to be on our own, to do the things that we would have never chosen to do on our
own.
No wonder we cringe at the thought
of having to give up control of our lives.
We would rather choose the path of contentment and comfort and stay
unmoved, unchanged, and uninspired, than to risk not meeting God’s high
expectations. But is this really the way
life with God is supposed to be lived, in the fear that we may not achieve the
full potential of our calling, in the fear that we may not fulfill our purpose,
in the fear that we may not reach the bar God has set for us?
Brothers and
sisters, the life we are to live with God is to be one of faithfulness and not
fear. Fear comes when we start to
believe that God’s pre-determining act is absent of God’s continual presence
and power in our lives. But faithfulness
comes when we start to believe and know that God’s pre-determining act is
grounded in the very fact that God is the one who continues to encounter us and
empower us to fulfill the purpose of our calling. Jeremiah was not called to go and preach the
word of God on his own terms, but on God’s terms. God will send him. God will command him what to say. God will deliver him. Because when God calls, God also equips.
So many Christians struggle with
the thought that they are not good enough or equipped enough to meet God’s high
expectations. Instead of listening to
the word of God, they listen to the voice of self-doubt that says they can’t,
they have too many faults, they can’t make a difference, they are too young, or
too old. But God says otherwise. God says you can and I will help. God says I love you for who you are, warts
and all, and you are mine. God says you
can make a difference and it doesn’t matter how young or old you are, because I
will give you what you need to be the person of purpose and destiny – my
purpose and destiny.
Listen to what
Paul writes, “For we are not peddlers of God’s word like so many; but in Christ
we speak as persons of sincerity, as persons sent from God and standing in
God’s presence.” Paul, himself, knew
that his competence and ability to be a minister of the new covenant was not
found in himself but in the God who had called him to speak the gospel. It was God’s presence in his life through the
power of the Spirit that gave him the confidence to trust that what God was
doing in him and through him would bring about God’s purpose.
This is what
I discovered the moment I decided to relinquish my desire to be the master of
my own destiny and give control to the one who had encountered me in such a
powerful way that night so long ago, and it is what I continue to discover even
now in all the ways God continues to encounter me today.
Yes, I will still get a little
anxious speaking in front of people.
Yes, I will still speak fast and stutter a few words; I may have already
done so with this sermon. Yes, I will
continue to be a forgiven sinner, who everyday works to be a better and more
faithful disciple of Jesus Christ. I may
not be the best preacher out there. I
may not be the smartest Biblical scholar or even the wisest theologian. But I will continue to give it my all, and
create and do and be and serve to the glory of God, because, in spite of my
warts, I have found the confidence and the joy and the hope and the peace that
comes only from the God who called me before I was born and has not only
pre-determined, but has also pre-destined my life from the beginning of
time. And that is the greatest freedom
one can ever know. Amen.