Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30

“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.’”

Being a prophet of the living God is no easy vocation.

Don’t get me wrong—the part about being chosen is pretty nice. It’s the reaction of others that tends to be less pleasant.

Our bishop Greg described the vocation of the prophet pretty well when he was here at St. Paul’s last month. He came after a Sunday evening service to lead a discussion on how Christians can stand up against a consumeristic culture of Christmas by living more deeply into the practices of Advent—a prophetic practice in itself. As he was talking about the social awkwardness of turning down invitations to Christmas parties and limiting the number of presents he gives, he shared with us a favorite quote from the author Flannery O’Connor: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.”

We mostly hear the nice part of the story of Jeremiah this morning. A young man who doesn’t feel ready has a profound experience of God, learns that he’s been consecrated as a prophet, and has God’s words placed in his mouth. Unfortunately for Jeremiah, this ends up making him profoundly odd in the sight of the people around him. Living in the years just before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian empire, Jeremiah proclaims a dark message of coming disaster. His truth-telling goes unappreciated by the members of the political elite at Jerusalem, who prefer the optimistic, patriotic advice of their own handpicked prophetic squad. Before the end of his book, Jeremiah ends up attacked by his own brothers, beaten and put into stocks, imprisoned, tossed into a cistern to die, hauled back up, and eventually dragged off to Egypt as an unwilling refugee when Jerusalem is finally sacked, just as he predicted. Like an ancient Martin Luther King placed under FBI surveillance, or Aung San Suu Kyi thrown into house arrest by the Burmese military government, Jeremiah becomes a living demonstration that those who speak truth to power tend not to live easy lives.

Being a prophet of the living God is no easy vocation.

The section of Luke’s gospel we heard today is the second half of a two–part story. We would have heard the first half last week except that it was preempted by our parish’s celebration of our patronal feast day, the Conversion of St. Paul. Jesus has just been baptized, then spent forty days being tempted in the wilderness. He returns to his home area of Galilee and begins preaching in the synagogues. Arriving in his hometown of Nazareth, he gives the day’s reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah—a text of liberation, proclaiming good news to the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed. And as he begins his sermon, he makes the audacious statement that the day of the Lord’s favor described by Isaiah has come true in front of them, in the person and proclamation of Jesus himself.

And far from being offended, the hometown crowd is thrilled at his charisma and his message. It’s not until Jesus starts to spell out the implications of his claim to be the Messiah that things go south. He refers to himself as a prophet—and then points out the downside of the prophetic vocation, noting that prophets don’t tend to be popular among their own people. Then he goes on to note that God hasn’t historically singled out locals and insiders for blessings. Instead, he mentions two other historic prophets, Elijah and Elisha, who were sent to perform miraculous healings—not for the people of Israel, but for unclean Gentiles. It’s this that seems to send his loving, proud, boyhood friends and relatives over the edge. They accept his messianic claims with joy. It’s when they learn what those claims involve—the extension of God’s blessings to those they can’t imagine being blessed—that the adoring congregation becomes a mob of violence.

Today we meet Jesus as the successor to not one, not two, not three, but four prophets of the Old Testament. First, like a new Isaiah, Jesus proclaims a message of liberation for the oppressed. Then, like Elijah and Elisha, he proclaims God’s blessing not only to those on the inside, but to those on the outside. And finally, like Jeremiah, he is rejected for his challenging message. Today we encounter Jesus as God’s definitive prophet, a true successor to all four of these prophetic figures, and every other prophet past and future. And the reception he receives is a preview of the time of Palm Sunday and Holy Week, when another adoring crowd will hail Jesus as prophet and king, then make him the scapegoat of their rage when it becomes clear that Jesus is hardly the kind of Messiah they have been hoping for.

Being a prophet of the living God is no easy vocation.

And lucky us: it is a vocation that you and I share.

In our own baptism we become not only disciples of Jesus but living members of his body—and so we take on his own calling to speak the challenging and thrilling words of God to the world around us. Three weeks ago we pulled three young children dripping from the waters of baptism, clothed them with the garments of a priestly people, and commissioned them to proclaim with us the gospel of Christ crucified and risen. When we baptize infants we make them equal partners in our own prophetic calling. The same God who won’t let the young Jeremiah write himself off by saying “I am only a boy,” already calls Dakota, Marley, and Jubilee to prophesy to us. Even as infants, the children of God can prophesy—because God’s voice is always speaking through the unlikely, the unqualified, the voiceless, and the powerless.

How do we as a community pay attention to their voices now, and also be a place that helps them grow into their ongoing call to speak God’s unpopular word of liberation for the poor and the outsider?

We can only do it by responding to that same call ourselves.

As members of the body of Jesus Christ, we are called to speak God’s prophetic word both inside and outside our own circles … circles of family, of workplace, of society, and of the church itself. We at St. Paul’s are gifted with an incredible treasure: a community of word and sacrament where ancient tradition becomes new. We have a way of being Christian that honors the body and the senses, the splash of color and the glory of music. We love the scriptures, not as a dead rulebook but as a living treasury of God’s story that shapes our life each day and each week. We joyfully embrace the ministries of those single and partnered, gay and straight, old and young. This community is a remarkable blessing. And paradoxically, as a community, our call is to transcend our own boundaries. We can do it in many ways. We do it as members of our community begin to reflect on our relationships with the homeless in our neighborhood—to risk sharing with, and being changed by, the unlikely prophets who live among us unnoticed. We do it by exploring new ideas for evangelism, that word full of baggage that just means letting those who may not know this kind of way of being Christian exists know that they too are invited to take their place as God’s prophets.

We do it, always, in our individual lives, as we discover new ways to be odd in what we do with our money; what we stand up for in our work lives; how we use our time; and how we care for those we love.

Being a prophet of the living God is no easy vocation. But it is a joyful one.

And it is ours.

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