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“Calling all Prophets”
Jeremiah 1:4-10
A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley
Martin Luther King Day
It came to pass seventy-five years ago, that God breathed life into a man who would become a prophet to this nation and an inspiration to prophets around the world. Martin Luther King’s life shared the characteristics of the lives of many prophets.
It was chaotic.
It was exciting.
It was full of analysis of the ways of the world.
It was a faith-filled life.
His prophetic movement was fraught with dissent from inside and out.
His life was cut short, thinking that a bullet or a sword or a cross could silence a prophet.
And like many prophets he lived beyond his earthly years. He still inspires us all. He still inspires us to look at our lives and examine whether we are prophets, too. That’s what I call a resurrection.
The life and mission of Martin Luther King, like that of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos and even Jesus remind us of the work God instills in us to make things right for all people. Today, as we remember Martin, Jeremiah, Jesus and so many other, we might be bold enough to hear the trumpet call that is calling all prophets to understand the truth of our lives, and work to make a difference in this world of ours. That’s what we all ought to be looking at as we remember Martin Luther King today. We might all consider what prophetic word we might speak, what prophetic action we might take. A prophet is simply someone who knows the truth, is willing to tell the truth and is willing to have their lives shaped by the truth.
Unsure you know how to be a prophet? Don’t worry. You’re in good company. Take Jeremiah’s case as an example. Jeremiah, a priest’s son all of a sudden hears God speaking to him. This is dangerous enough in and of itself. I wonder if it sounded something like this: “Come on, Jerry, have I got some work for you. I’m making you a prophet to the nations.”
Keep in mind that
One of Jeremiah’s problems was that even though they were God’s words, it was still little Jerry saying them. I don’t think Jeremiah was too thrilled when he found out that the words upon his mouth were words like pluck up, break down, overthrow, destroy, build and plant.
I share Jeremiah’s frustration with having the need to say something that maybe he doesn’t want to say. For me, I would much rather build and plant than destroy, overthrow, break down and pluck up.
We can think of a whole lot of things to be thrown down and broken down and overthrown. Things like racism, homophobia, sexism, me firstism, terrorism, third-world debt, dependence upon oil, the fact that we have abandoned the earth’s ecosystem, the fallacy that we can save ourselves by bombing the hell out of someone else, the fallacy that violence saves, the faithless arrogance of materialism and all that it brings with it.
Martin Luther King railed against
the use of weapons of war in
I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a revolution. President Kennedy said on one occasion, “mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.” The world must hear this. I pray to God that American will hear this before it is too late because today we’re fighting a war.
I am convinced
that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever
been fought in the history of the world.
Our involvement in the war in
It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier—every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars every year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program; which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.
Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home they can’t hardly live on the same block together.
The judgment of
God is upon us today, and we could go right down the line and see that something
must be done…and something must be done quickly. We have alienated ourselves from other
nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world. There is not a single major ally of the
This is where we
are. Mankind must put an end to war or
war will put an end to mankind, and the best way to start is to put an end to
war in
It is no longer a
choice, my friends between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. (The sermon was entitled “Remaining Awake Through the Revolution and was preached at the National
Cathedral in
Jeremiah was set as a prophet to
the nations. Not only
to the nation of
Jeremiah was in a difficult position because he was called to preach God’s word to a people who had convinced themselves that they were beyond blame for the state of the world. It seemed as though all Jeremiah could do was prophesy gloom and doom. What he was really saying was that people were going to have to be held accountable for their abandonment of God’s influence on their lives. The people had ignored their responsibility to their sisters and brothers. They stopped ministering to each other. They stopped caring.
Today, it feels like we need some more Jeremiah’s out there. We have seen some of them over the years: Mahatma Gandhi, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Zora Neale Hurston, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Cornel West, Mary Daly, Mel White, Gustavo Parajon, Bishop Eugene Robinson, those who dare to come out of the closet, those who dare to look an abuser in the face and tell them and the world the truth, no longer letting them have silent control.
Phyllis Trible challenged us dumbstruck seminary students in a lecture sixteen years ago, “Jeremiah has no children, unless you choose to be his children.”
I don’t want to be one of Jeremiah’s children, necessarily. He had no friends. He had a miserable life. The words he spoke make him an outcast. I don’t crave controversy. I want community and peace. And yet I remember Jeremiah’s stern warning, “beware of those who preach “Peace, Peace when there is no peace.”
Jeremiah clung to the only promise he ever received in his life: “Don’t be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.” Says YHWH. (1:8)
This scripture was the one used at my own ordination. Someone thought it reminded folk of me. I had a powerful trip down memory lane as I looked at all of my files trying to find the sermon that George Williamson preached at my Ordination fourteen and a half years ago. I never did find it, but I did find letters, notes and write-ups of the service.
I was reminded that the call of
Jeremiah was one of the key scriptures that encouraged me to speak the truth
even when it was not prudent to do so.
After being denied ordination twice for not being willing to say
homosexuality is a sin, my
When I was approaching my eventual
ordination that October, I got a letter from the Chair of the department of
religion at
Late this week, I will shepherd Lynn Welton through her own ordination process. I hope that it is an uneventful process and that you will be embraced by the truth of God which is in your very bones. When you do that, when you are true to the truth, when you are true to God’s call for you, you cannot really go wrong. All you have to do is listen and respond to God, “here I am”. God is the only one that matters and the ultimate one to whom allegiance is required.
Sisters and brothers, let us reclaim our prophetic call, all of us, to speak the truth with love. Let us always work for the kind of word where we can all live in harmony and peace, where we can remember that God has a higher calling for us, remembering that we are called mystically and physically and spiritually to be one family. We can only work toward that as we embrace the truth of our lives. May God’s prophetic spirit which flows in the veins of all of you speak to that truth. In the end, may we build and plant a world that we can be proud of. Amen.