Fourth
Sunday after Epiphany
Jeremiah
1:4-10, Psalm 71:1-6, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, `Luke
Pastor
Gayle M. Pope
On Beyond Excuses
Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do
not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”
That was Jeremiah’s excuse when God
called him to be a prophet to the nations.
Where is God calling you to speak
and to serve on God’s behalf? Where is
God calling us? And what are our
excuses?
Here are some examples of excuses I
have heard or have given myself.
Ah, Lord God … I am not experienced enough. I don’t know how to
do that. I don’t think anyone will follow. I’m too tired. I’m afraid I will
fail. I’m afraid I might offend someone.
Ah, Lord God … we are too small. We don’t have enough people.
Everyone is too busy. We don’t have enough money. We don’t have enough time.
All the young people are leaving the town, so eventually we will have no choice
but to close.
Lots of excuses … lots of reasons
why we can’t do the things God calls us to do … assuming we HEAR God’s
call.
And you know what? Excuses are not bad. Excuses are real. And they might even be true! Some of the best people in the Bible gave
excuses! Not just Jeremiah:
When the Lord called Moses to go talk to Pharaoh in Exodus 4, Moses
said, "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."
When the Lord appeared to Isaiah to commission him, that prophet’s reaction,
recorded in Isaiah 6:5 was: "Woe is
me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of
unclean lips.”
When Samuel heard from the Lord in the night, we read in I Samuel
3:15, “He lay there until morning…Samuel
was afraid to tell the vision to Eli.”
In Judges 6, the Lord told Gideon, "Go in this might of yours and deliver
In Luke 5, Jesus told Simon Peter, "Put out into the deep water and let
down your nets for a catch." And Simon answered, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.”
In Matthew 14, Jesus told the
disciples the people didn’t have to be sent away to eat, “You give them something to eat." They replied, "We have nothing here but five loaves
and two fish."
In Acts 9, the Lord told Ananias to go lay his hands
on Paul so that he might regain his sight. Ananias answered, "Lord,
I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints
in
I could go on, but you get the idea.
If the Bible is our example, then we should go ahead and give our excuses. Lay them all out.
Because you know what excuses lead
to? They lead to opportunities for us to trust the Lord, to acknowledge our own limitations, and for God to
demonstrate God’s power and faithfulness and love for us.
Let’s go back to Jeremiah. How did the Lord
answer 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.”
The Lord gave Jeremiah a promise, and then the Lord gave Jeremiah a provision. The Lord
put out his hand and touched Jeremiah’s mouth and said, “Now I have put my words in your mouth.”
In every one
of those Biblical situations I mentioned, it was the same: The Lord
gave promises and the Lord gave
provisions. But that’s not all.
The Lord also gave commands and, in each case, the one who
initially gave the excuse trusted and obeyed the command, and the Lord was able to accomplish His
purposes through them.
In
spite of their fears and reservations, which were based on earthly realities,
the ones with the excuses – Jeremiah, Moses, Isaiah, Samuel, Gideon, Peter, the
disciples and Ananias – all of them were able to stand on their faith in God –
the same faith expressed by the psalmist:
“For you are my hope,
O Lord God,
my confidence since I was young.
I have been sustained by you ever since I was born;
from my mother’s womb you have been my strength:
my praise shall be always of you.”
Now, I did come across an example of
an excuse where the ones making the excuse did NOT rely on their faith to
overcome their fears: In Numbers 13, spies were sent into the Promised Land to
report back to the Israelites on the prospects for entering and possessing the
land.
They reported that the land was rich
and fruitful, just as promised, “Yet the
people who live in the land are strong, and the towns are fortified and very
large. We are not able to go up against
this people, for they are stronger than we.”
Those spies and the Israelites whom
God had brought out of
We are God’s children. In Baptism,
God has forgiven our sins and made us His own.
God touched Jeremiah’s mouth and put his Word into it. And God has also
given US his Word – not only in the spoken and printed form, to which we have
free and abundant access.
But God has ALSO given us His Word
made flesh – Jesus. And God puts that Word in our mouths here at the
Table. God promises us eternal, abundant
life where nothing can separate us from his love – beginning here and extending
forever. We are blessed beyond our capacity to comprehend all the things God
has done for us.
But God’s blessings are NEVER meant
to stay put and stagnate. Always, we are blessed to BE a blessing. God has called each of us as individuals and
God has called all of us, together, as a congregation, to be channels of God’s
grace and goodness and forgiveness and, especially, of God’s LOVE as we heard
in 1 Cor. 13 this morning,.
God has work to be done in this world
and He calls us to do that work. It’s
fine to make excuses – to name the reasons why we can’t possibly do what God
calls us to do.
But let’s not stop there. Let us
acknowledge that, even though WE can’t, God CAN. Let us seek God’s will
revealed in God’s Word, and then let us TRUST and OBEY, and marvel at how God
works through his faithful servants.
Amen.