Epiphany 4
Last week’s Gospel brought us to Nazareth, the town in which Jesus grew up. He left and began His public ministry when He was baptized by John the Baptiser in the Jordan River. There we have that glorious Epiphany–God Himself tells us exactly who Jesus is: You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased; Jesus is the Son of God and our Savior from sin. Then right after that, Jesus goes out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil and to defeat the devil by resisting all his temptations then and also throughout His entire life, even while on the cross. We next have the first words of last week’s Gospel: Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of Him went throughout all the surrounding region. And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. Next we heard that Jesus went to Nazareth’s synagogue, stood up, and read a prophecy about the coming Messiah from the prophet St. Isaiah and said that He, Jesus, fulfilled that prophecy. And what happens to Jesus next–we find out in today’s Gospel. There were some who marveled at Him: They all spoke well of Him and were impressed by the words of grace that came from His mouth. And they kept saying, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” They couldn’t believe it! But marveling/ being amazed is not faith. And Jesus warns them of that: Certainly you will quote this proverb to Me, ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ Do here in Your hometown everything we heard You did in Capernaum.” And He said, “Amen I tell you: No prophet is accepted in His hometown.” And then, very interestingly, Jesus points to His own rejection–that the people of His own hometown reject Him is right in line with the peoples’ rejection of the OT prophets, like Elijah and Elisha. All those who were in the synagogue were filled with rage when they heard these things. They got up and drove Him out of town. They led Him to the brow of a hill on which their town was built, in order to throw Him off the cliff. And this rejection is a foreshadow of the entire nation rejecting Jesus, like we see on Good Friday [Jn 19.14-16]: Away with Him, away with Him! Crucify Him…We have no king but Caesar. And just as Jesus was rejected by His own people, so were the OT prophets Elijah and Elisha; and as they went to the Gentiles–the widow of Zarephath, from the pagan and Gentile area of Sidon; and Naaman the Syrian military leader–so, too, would Jesus’ word, the Gospel then go to the Gentiles. Being rejected by the people of His own hometown and finally the greater part of the nation/ the Jews, did not stop Jesus and His kingdom: But He passed through the middle of them and went on His way ultimately to the cross, the empty tomb and heaven, completing His saving work and now gathering all peoples into His kingdom, the Church.
Again, in Jesus, we see the same rejection that all of God’s faithful OT prophets endured during their ministries. Today’s OT reading is the call of the OT prophet St. Jeremiah. He was a prophet who was so richly blessed to be able to give beautiful prophecies of the coming Messiah. These prophecies comforted the OT faithful. He also called the Israelites to repent, preaching a message of stern law, that the Lord was sending in the Babylonians to destroy the nation and temple and to drive the Israelites from the land and bring them into exile. Jeremiah lived at the time of the decline and fall of the southern kingdom, Judah and its capital Jerusalem. It was St. Jeremiah who wrote the short OT book of Lamentations, which, as the name implies, is his weeping over the smoldering city and temple with its utter destruction and devastation. This complete destruction is exactly what St. Jeremiah was prophesying. So you can imagine how popular he was with the people hearing his preaching/ his call to repent. He was sent to a proud people who looked on the promises of God and the temple as a “good luck charm”--God would never let the place where His temple was to be destroyed. And for them that meant, then, they could continue on in sin; they were complacent in their faith; it no longer meant much to them. “Yeah, I’m a believer,” they would say but their lives of continued unrepented sin showed their lack of faith; showed this wasn’t true. So you can imagine how angry St. Jeremiah’s preaching made the people as he pricked their conscience. But it was precisely to that and for that that the Lord called him to be a prophet.
Our text is the Lord’s call of Jeremiah: The word of the LOrd came to me. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.” Here we come to a wonderful truth–God created each one of us personally/ individually. Yes, He used our parents but it was He who created us. What does the Lord say in our text? I formed you in the womb. And what does David say in the psalm [Ps 139.13]? –For You [O Lord] have formed my inward parts; You have covered me in my mother’s womb. This is why Christians are pro-life: we recognize that God creates each one of us; each one of us is His special creation. He alone is the one who gives life and only He has the right to take it. This is why the taking of human life be it by abortion, murder, or euthanasia is clearly from the devil because the devil always seeks to destroy the good that God creates and intends.
This now leads us into the other thought–the sanctity of the human body. I formed you in the womb. Our bodies are good; they are a gift of God to us. Yes, that’s why as best we can, using the knowledge God has given us, we strive to take care of our bodies and treat them as the glorious gift of God to us that they are. In fact, remember, our bodies, created by God already in our mothers’ wombs is the very thing that Jesus will raise on the Last Day, glorified and freed from the corruption and defects of sin so that we will be soul and body eternally in heaven.
Before I formed you in the womb… Goes even further–not only physically do we see the sanctity of our bodies, but also spiritually. God gave us our bodies so that through them/ using them/ using our arms, legs, fingers, minds etc we can serve Him in a life of holiness. God gave us our bodies so that we might use them and follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit to live a life full of good works. Before I formed you in the womb is also, then, why we fight against sin. What are the sins that we commit in thought, word and deed? –Our sinful nature using the very body God has created for us and intends for us to use in service to Him and others, using it for things that are contrary to His will; using it to serve sin and Satan. What a powerful word of our Lord to St. Jeremiah and to us today! Also of us the Lord says: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.
What a glorious and comforting word! I knew you. This is not just mere knowledge –God knows all things. This is God knowing us in love; delighting in us. And here in our text, it means that in that love and pleasure God has in St. Jeremiah, He chose him to be a prophet. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. And so God created Jeremiah for His loving purpose for him. God created Him with his character, temperament, gifts and talents so that he would be equipped to be His prophet.
Of course, the same is true with each of us. The Lord looks on us in love and pleasure and He chose us to be His dear Christian. He created us with a certain temperament, gifts and talents to carry out His will for us, to do the work He calls us to do. Think of it this way–our Creator calls us into His service, just as He called Jeremiah into that special office of prophet. The word of the LOrd came to me. “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.”
St. Jeremiah had that special call into that unique, one of a kind office–OT prophet. But we, too, dear Christian have been called by the Lord, our Creator. That happened at our Baptism. We have been called into service to Him. At our baptism He said to us: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you to be… He set us apart/ sanctified us for service to Him. Dear Christian, here’s our purpose; here’s the driving force in our lives–God created us to be His dear Christians to love and serve Him, the very One who loves and created us. Now, all that we do in our lives done in faith is a loving service to God. As we love and serve one another, especially the weak and lowly, we are loving and serving God. As we live our lives a Christian spouse, parent, worker, student, etc, let us remember that God has called us to that, that He has set us apart for that. God has created us, called us and placed us where He wants us to be, to serve Him, to serve others as we serve Him. The Lord created, called and sent Jeremiah at a certain place and time; He created, called and sends us to a certain place and time. Things are not just random or dumb luck. The Lord has us at such a time as this.
Will it be easy? Hardly! Look at what poor St. Jeremiah had: Now you, get ready. Rise up and tell them everything I am commanding you. Do not be frightened by them, or I will frighten you in their presence…. Stand against the kings of Judagh, its officials, its priests, and the people of the land. They will fight against you, but they will not overcome you, because I am with you to rescue you, declares the Lord. St. Jeremiah had a very specific calling as prophet: to be God’s representative and messenger and to get before the whole nation, including the powerful and to preach repentance. He was to carry out his office unmoved by flattery or opposition and with confidence and unshaken trust.
We, too, as Christians, by virtue of our baptism, also have the commission from the Lord: Now you, get ready. Rise up and tell them everything I am commanding you; we have the commission to proclaim Jesus in our world, in the places where the Lord has placed us. Our calling is much different than that of Jeremiah in his day, but in one sense it is similar–it is countercultural. God sent St. Jeremiah and the other OT prophets when the OT people needed them the most: when the faithful needed to be encouraged with the promise of the coming Savior and when the people who were rationalizing away, justifying, and glorifying their sins needed that sharp preaching of Law that their sins are leading them to destruction and damnation; when people were full of pride and self-righteousness not humility and true righteousness. The message of the prophets was countercultural; it didn’t fit with what was the popular way of thinking. And so Jeremiah and the rest faced a nation that was united in opposition to them, with a violent opposition.
We, dear Christian, when we simply strive to be a Christian, when we simply set out to live our lives in the fear and love of God, we are countercultural! We are going against what is popular and considered acceptable to the world around us. We should expect that we will face opposition as we hold fast to our Lord and His word: They will fight against you. But we mustn't despair–as the Lord told Jeremiah: they will not overcome you, because I am with you to rescue you. That was his strength and that is our strength today. Look, today I have made you like a fortified city, like an iron pillar, and like bronze walls, to take a stand against the whole land. The Lord gave Him strength that no enemy could overcome. He gives us that same strength to live in our world countercultural. The secret to St. Jeremiah’s strength and how we can be strong to live a Christian life in our world today is the same: the Lord strengthens us with His promises. Notice He makes us strong like a fortified city, like an iron pillar, and like bronze walls, to take a stand against the whole land. With His word and sacrament, He sends His Holy Spirit to strengthen and renew us inwardly. Let us hold fast to that word and sacrament that we may live faithfully and as Christians in our world today, for such a time as this. INJ Amen.