GeeDubya's Sermon Site: Jeremiah 1: 4-10

Before us are two images: a devotional painting of a bright-eyed young Jeremiah, receiving his call to ministry; and an image from the Sistine Chapel, of a much older Jeremiah.

Jeremiah was perhaps 17 or 18 years old when God called him to a life of service. For him, as for many when called to a life of service, the first response was to feel unworthy, unprepared, and ill-suited… especially at such a young age. But God made it clear that this call was not mistaken or misplaced. Jeremiah would be given both the words and the authority to bring God’s message in turbulent times.

Imagine being 17 or 18, maybe even younger, and having something so big thrust upon you. On the one hand, there would be a strong sense of purpose and divine partnership, propelled forward by the energy of youth. One the other hand, Jeremiah expresses his humility and his unpreparedness at such a young age to be chosen for this calling. While he could not possibly have known everything that God had in mind for him, he would have known that it was A LOT.

Fast forward, perhaps fifty years, to Michelangelo’s image of Jeremiah from the Sistine Chapel, not as a teenager receiving his call, but as an old fella: world-weary, pensive, even remorseful. Art critics over the ages have noted that Michelangelo’s Jeremiah seems to be deep in thought about the meaning of it all, and is not looking back on his career with nostalgia; the taste on his lips is not sweet or even bittersweet. This Jeremiah looks back on his calling as a young man, not with a sense of joy at what a great ride it’s been, but with regret or even resentment.

Michelangelo wasn’t just imagining things when he portrayed Jeremiah in this way. Jeremiah is widely known as “the weeping prophet” and for good reason. Professor Gary Yates speaks of how deeply Jeremiah, throughout his career, felt the pain of his surroundings: he embodies the tears of a God who is just heartbroken over the people’s faithlessness, he cries the tears of his people as they suffer humiliating defeats at the hands of other nations, and he cries his own tears of anguish and anger - at how ill-treated he is by his own people, and how abandoned he feels by God. Even at the moment he is called to be a prophet we get a sense that this is not going to be an easy road for Jeremiah, for after God says to him, “Now I have put my words in your mouth” God gives him the details: “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.” (Jeremiah 1: 9-10). That was a lot to put in front of such a young person, and as a wise elder, Jeremiah must have wondered about the fairness of such a heavy calling on such a young person. God promised Jeremiah that it’s not going to be easy, and God wasn’t kidding.

By the time he was in his senior years, Jeremiah had seen so much, personally and politically and spiritually. He had seen faithfulness amongst his people, and a lack of faithfulness. He had seen what it was like to be overrun by another nation, and how one holds on to faith in the hard times. And he had been specifically chosen by God, to name to the people where the light of God was to be found amid the shadows. As we imagine Jeremiah, old and young, where might we see points of connection of that life journey with our life’s journey?

One personal connection for me, as someone who is about the same age as old Jeremiah, is the fatigue of living in a time when things just aren’t unfolding in the way I’d imagined when I was a young pup. In our year 2025, I hear a common lament, that the world is getting more mean-spirited, and things we used to count on, like civility, empathy, inclusivity and human kindness are put down as if they are bad and, according to some political regimes, should be outlawed. I’ve even encountered theological treatises describing empathy itself as sinful, an argument that could not be more wrong. Amidst all that nonsense, seeds of malevolence being intentionally sown by the world’s most powerful regimes, the difficult call that God placed on Jeremiah does not feel very far away. Living in a time of advancing totalitarianism, the calling of Jeremiah, thousands of years before us, hundreds of years before Jesus, sounds newly contemporary and relevant.

And so we are called, as local congregations discerning what it means to follow the call of Christ to love our neighbours, and as a national Church of Deep Spirituality, Bold Discipleship, and Daring Justice, to keep on keeping on. I admit that there are days that I look in the mirror and see downcast, old Jeremiah looking back at me. There are times when my candle flickers, as the day’s headlines assault me and I compare Church life when I was just starting in ministry and Church life now. But when I get too caught up in that, I need to remember that there are still youthful Jeremiahs, youth and young adults of all genders being called to service even now in this United Church of ours, and some of the heaviness dissipates.

For years, Churches have talked about children and youth being “the Church of tomorrow” and children and youth have pushed back, saying “no, we are not the Church of tomorrow, we are the church of today!” We witnessed that again at General Council, with a huge presence of youth forum delegates and youth commissioners. And time after time, young people, at the microphones on the floor of Council, and in a very pointed presentation up on the stage, spoke powerfully of what it felt like to be invited in to Church life, but only part-way in; invited to join in table discussions at Council, or local Church committees, but then patronized as “not knowing any better” because of their youth. I was proud of the way they spoke up and I got the sense that their words really were landing. I pray that their pleas were being taken to heart, that the well-seasoned adults of the Church will have heard these words as an opportunity to reset, and truly embrace the faith lives of our youngest members and youngest neighbours.

As I heard the plea of those youth and young adults in Calgary, things got even more up close and personal for me, as sixty-five-year-old me remembered what it was to be a sixteen year old walking into Westminster United Church in Regina. I had recently left my suburban congregation, sensing that there really wasn’t a place for me there, and was seeking a new place to call home. I can still recall what it felt like in my heart, to have a couple of 85 year olds spot me, wave me over, and pat the seat beside them with a very clear invitation to sit with them and feel at home. Within three years of every-Sunday attendance, I was invited to serve on their Church Session, to be an Elder in a congregation filled with experienced Christians four and five times my age. Through her experiences in Sunday School, Junior and Senior Choir, and service on her congregation’s Board of Stewards by the time she was fifteen years old, Shannon similarly had an experience of her growing faith and her contribution being welcomed and nurtured at First United Church in Melville, SK. We have seen similar types of welcome in congregations we have served, and, unfortunately, we have also seen the other kind of response: the quick, sharp, unintentional but immediate look of judgment when a child is being noisy in the sanctuary, or the smirks and chuckles when a teenager has spoken heartfelt but perhaps naive words of faith, a response that devalues and silences that budding faith. I’ve not experienced that here, thankfully, but it’s so easy to forget what it is like to be the new person – the new parent, trying to bring a child to Church, the teenager, hearing God in new ways and testing it out, or simply the new person in the pew, wondering if this is a place for them. To cast it in a positive light: never underestimate the power of intentional acts of welcome.

And the final point I wish to make this morning, is to remember what it is to be called by God, at any and every point of our life’s journey. Scripture gives us a good road map of this. Jeremiah is dumbfounded that God would call him at such a young age, young Samuel was confused when God called him by name, young David was shockingly chosen over his older brothers. But in our faith history we also see people like Abram and Sarai, called to leave home in their 90s to start a fresh venture with God. We recall a persecutor of the Church well into his adult years, transformed from Saul the persecutor of the Church to Paul, its great apostle. We think of Jesus and his disciples, women and men in their twenties and thirties called away from whatever it was that they had planned, into a new life that God had planned. At every stage of our journey as individuals and every stage in the lift cycle of these congregations, God perceives qualities in us, individually or together, that can be put to good use in addressing the needs around us. That might be a matter of doing the things we have always enjoyed doing, and do well, or God may well be challenging us to try out some new ways of being.

Young Jeremiah had a challenging calling, and old Jeremiah had seen some things. May these coming months together be a time when God’s calling to these communities of faith, and this pastoral charge, fills us with purpose as well. In Christ we pray, Amen.

For further reading and exploration:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jeremiah-Hebrew-prophet/Prophetic-vocation-and-message

Driver, Cory. https://enterthebible.org/courses/jeremiah/lessons/bible-in-the-world-jeremiah

Foster, Dan. https://medium.com/backyard-theology/why-the-sin-of-empathy-is-a-completely-toxic-christian-belief-fd2b9a30f155

Jenista, Meg. https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2025-08-18/jeremiah14-10-2025/

https://www.michelangelo.org/jeremiah.jsp

Yates, Gary http://www.biblestudytools.com/video/why-is-jeremiah-called-the-weeping-prophet.html