Sunday Reflection - Called to be Prophets - 4th Sunday OT

Called to be Prophets

Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19;  Psalm 71:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 15-17;  1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13 or 13:4-13; Luke 4:21-30

I love the words of Jeremiah “… gird your loins; stand up and tell them all that I command you.”

A prophet is an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God. Jesus and Jeremiah were both prophets.

God called Jeremiah to be a prophet. He shook the people up. Jeremiah took his role as a prophet to the extreme.

God sent Jesus to be a prophet. First they praise him then they mocked him. The crowd wanted to throw him off a cliff and kill him because they did not understand. Jesus’ role as a prophet was the extreme.

We are all called to be prophets. The words of the psalmist tell us that we are called to “sing of your salvation.”

We are called to be the inspired teachers and proclaimers of the will of God. His will is that we know salvation.

Are we his prophets? Yes, I am going to modernize that phrase from Jeremiah. Pull up your pants and heed the Lord’s call.

And we protest. God is asking me to do the extreme and I can’t. No one will take me serious; No one will listen or believe what I say. Even Jesus said no prophet is accepted in his own native place.

Nobody is going to think I have the gift to proclaim God’s word.

Paul writes, “…I shall show you a more excellent way.” That excellent way is Love. Prophesies, tongues, knowledge, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit can come to an end. They are imperfect without love.  If they exist without love, they are nothing. Love is real and tangible. Love is active. Love is extreme.

Hitch up your jeans and preach the Gospel. Preach it by your words and your actions; preach it by your love. Preach in your real life; preach so people can feel it; preach it in your actions.

A friend of mine married young. His new wife had been a single mother with a severely disabled child. I apologize that I do not remember the condition the little girl had; but, she was never more than an infant. She lived her entire life blind, mute, and dependent until the Lord called her home.

At seventeen years old, this young man came home from work to a disabled child who was not his. And, he would hold her. He would carry her. He would feed her and bath her. He would love her. He loved her with all the dignity and love you would give your own child. Because even though she was not his natural child, his love was real, tangible, and active. She was his child.

Twenty years later I still remember the sermon he preached through his love.

Love is real, tangible and active. Did his daughter know him, as a father who loved her much?

This is our relationship with God. God comes to us and holds us, takes care of us, and loves us. God’s love is real, tangible, active. It is given to us freely. We are children that don’t always recognize the absolute real love of the one who loves us so much, our Heavenly Father.

So they take God’s love and mock it, criticize it, and even kill it. God still loves us.

In the middle of this, we are called to be prophets. We are called to be teacher and proclaimer of God’s love and grace. We are to preach love by all that we do and all that we say. Love never stops caring. Love does not come to an end.

Love is extreme. Love is real, tangible, and active.

In a passage from the children’s book by Margery Williams, ”The Velveteen Rabbit.” The stuffed toy Velveteen Rabbit asks the stuffed toy Skin Horse what it means to become Real. The Skin Horse’s answer is love makes you real.

“When a child loves you for a long, long time … really loves you… you become Real… by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter… you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

People who have not experienced the real and extreme of God’s love are those who just don’t understand the call to be a prophet, teacher, and proclaimer of the will of God. Prophets like Jeremiah who took his role as a prophet to the extreme because of his love for God; or, Jesus’s role as a prophet taken to the extreme because of God’s love for us.  

Gird your loins, pull up pants, or hitch up your jeans; and heed the Lord’s call. God’s love is extreme and we are called to be prophets. Proclaim what is Real, the love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!

“Y’all be good, y’all be Holy, and always preach the Gospel by the way you live and love.” Amen.