Formed Before We Were Born - Jeremiah 1:4-10, Psalm 71:1-6
This year, our national conversation about childbirth has been heated and political. And I know that family planning and fertility are sensitive subjects for many people. But this morning, I’m hoping that we can set aside some of the public rhetoric and dream together about the beauty of new life, and explore what it taught Jeremiah, and what can teach us, about our relationship with God.
There are many call stories in scripture that teach us about the different ways God initiates our individual vocations. Sometimes folks receive a vision, like the prophet Isaiah. Others are visited by a holy messenger, like Mary, the mother of Christ. Still others seem to have experiences that defy the senses altogether, like Abraham, who came to understand what God was asking of him within the confines of his own mind. And sometimes, God’s call is auditory. We hear it with our ears. Think of Moses, who heard his name cried out from the burning bush; or Samuel, who at first mistook God’s audible call for the voice of his mentor, Eli.
This morning, in the opening verses of the book, Jeremiah hears the voice of God for the first time, and responds with words of his own. I imagine the voice of God was unlike anything Jeremiah had ever heard before. Perhaps it was loud. Perhaps it was gentle. Perhaps he felt a desire to draw close to it.
I’m reminded of the way we talk to unborn children. We cannot yet see them or hold them, but we can talk to them. We can sing to them. We can call to them. As their time in the womb approaches its end, we call to them more fervently. Come out, come to me, come to us. Come into the world and be who you are going to be. When God calls us into the ministry intended for us, God coaxes us just as firmly yet lovingly as we coax a child we have not yet met but already love unconditionally.
God’s first words to Jeremiah are, “before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Many scholars read these words poetically and metaphorically, hearing that God’s call to Jeremiah and to us is both early and irresistible. It is like a mark on our lives that we have from the time we come out of the womb and into the world.
We use phrases like this often today. I remember not long after I’d started work at Christ Church, I spoke to Kate about Anna, her youngest child. “That girl’s got grit,” I said. Kate replied, “she came into the world that way.” We understand deeply that some part of ourselves is determined before we are born. Our babies come into the world with quirks and traits and truths that we didn’t plan or curate, and they sometimes catch us off guard.
Both Jeremiah and the Psalmist of Psalm 71 this morning can attest to the fact that God is already at work in our lives long before we hear the call, long before we are even born. Jeremiah, the Psalmist, Anna Alexander, and each of us, have always been exactly who we are and could never have been anyone else.
After the call to prophecy has been established, Jeremiah tells us that, “the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, the build and to plant.’” These words are not a soothing vision of a peaceful and rewarding career. If anything, they are violent.
Even that phrase, “the Lord touched my mouth,” is violent. The word for touch is used other times in Hebrew scripture, and is often translated as strike. It is used when God touches the life of Job at the very beginning of that story, and we all know what happened because of that touch. The call is not comfortable. It rattles and shakes and strikes.
Birth, too, is uncomfortable. It is a rough and messy beginning. It can be painful, both for the newborn and for the person giving birth. And yet, childbirth continues. We have not outsourced this particular aspect of procreation to technology. Many people give birth multiple times. New life is worth the mess and the discomfort. So it is when God calls us to our vocation. It may be unpleasant in the moment, but the new life God offers us is worth it.
Of course, even though Jeremiah hears God’s voice clearly and knows that he has been called since before he was born, he resists, as do we all from time to time. "Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” I’m not mature enough, he says. I’m not up to the task. I’m not ready. Within the animal kingdom, human babies are some of the least developed at the time of birth. This is one of the reasons that our children grow and change so dramatically in their first year of life. I imagine that newborn cries are an insufficient attempt at telling their parents, I’m not ready!
But not only does God refute Jeremiah’s claim, God tells him never to say that again. Jeremiah is not simply wrong about his inadequacy, he has crossed a line. He has, unknowingly, defied God. Like the physical womb that prepares a baby to be thrust into the world, however fragile and unprepared they are, there is a sense that God has also been forming and preparing us spiritually, since before we were born.
Just as newborn children are loved immediately and do not have to earn or grow into their place in a family, we come into the world already whom God intends and needs us to be. We need no other preparation to begin our work as Christ’s hands and feet because, as God tells Jeremiah, “you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.”
Being called by God to embark on our truest purpose, to become who we were always meant to be, may be a loud experience, or a gentle one. It may be present early, whether we take notice or not, and when we do, we will not be able to deny it. It may be messy, uncomfortable, or even painful at first. But resistance is futile. We were formed for this work before we were born, and we are as ready as we will ever be to begin. Amen.