Epiphany 4

Preparation

    Please begin by reading Jeremiah 1:4-10 in your Bible. If you do not have one at hand, we have provided that text for you at the end of this reflection.

Reflection--Just as You Are!
   
   A few years ago I saw a movie, called “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” that left me feeling uneasy.  It’s a disturbing film because it involves violence, but what was even more chilling to me than the violence was the human tragedy that motivated it.  That tragedy was revealed by a  key piece of dialogue spoken by the main character, Tom Ripley.  “I’m lost. … I always thought it would be better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.” Tom’s extreme lack of self worth leads to an attempt to assume someone else’s identity and to live their life. That in turn leads to complications that lead to murder. 

    Fortunately, most of us don’t work our way out of problems with murder, but far too many of us harbor that shadow somewhere in our souls that says we are nobody. It is critical that we understand that is not God’s point of view.

    Jeremiah was in that “I’m nobody” boat. God had an important job for him, but he felt inadequate to the task. As is the case with almost every story of God calling someone to service recounted in the Bible, Jeremiah tried to tell God why he was not worthy. “Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”

    God, as always, was having none of it. When God called them, God knew perfectly well of Jeremiah’s youth, of Moses’ shyness and poor speaking ability (Exodus 4:10), of Gideon’s poor social and military standing (Judges 6:15), of Paul’s abysmal record of persecuting God’s people (Acts 8 and 9) and of the disability Paul called “a thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:5-10). God saw past all those things to untapped abilities God could use.

    God knows about your strengths and weaknesses too, whatever they may be; about your past successes and failures, about what you are proud of and what you are ashamed of, about your fears, about your youth or about your advancing age, about your physical strengths and your disabilities, about your social position or lack of it, about your busy or empty schedule, about your education or lack of it, about your appearance, about your eloquence or your lack of it, about the hurtful things someone may have said about you that you believed and carry around deep inside like raw wounds.

    Of course God knows! God says to you too “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.”  You need not try, like Tom Ripley, to be somebody else to have value. God values YOU! Yes, you just as you are! God stands ready to forgive your failures and start you out again with a clean slate. After all, God loved you so much that God gave God’s own son for you. Read John 3:16-18 as though Jesus wrote it to you personally. That’s the way it was intended.

    And when you have accepted God’s forgiveness you need not worry that you are not worthy to be at work in the world for God. God knows all about you. God knows your weaknesses, but God also knows your strengths; often strengths that you have not even recognized in yourself yet.

    Like Jeremiah and Moses and countless men and women throughout history, God has a call for you; just for you, just as you are and where you are. The job may be big and public, like Jeremiah’s. It may be something small to do quietly. But it is a call just for you; something that God knows you can do better at this moment and place in time than anyone else God created. Keep listening to what God is saying to you. 

revclay

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Jeremiah 1:4-10  (NRSV)
   
    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. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant."