Epiphanic Meander


OK, here’s the first reading for next Sunday, February 3rd.      

Jeremiah 1:4-10 (KJV)

4 ... the word of the Lord הָיָה came unto me, saying, 5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.
6 Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.
7 But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. 8 Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord.
9 Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. 10 See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant.
The famous call of Jeremiah, it’s a great bit of Scripture that might make any of us ponder whether perhaps our own vocation was so early that we were born to a certain destiny. Speaking for myself, there was a sense of inexorableness to it from very early memory. And escaping my sophomore year at university turned out to have been like Jonah avoiding Nineveh: didn’t work. Finally beginning theological seminary on my forty-fifth birthday, I was the oldest member of the class and the only Episcopalian at the Lutheran seminary on the ridge of the Battle of Gettysburg looking down on the scene of Pickett's Charge.

Sometimes the psalm that the lectionary framers selected as our liturgical response to the Old Testament lesson works, sometimes it doesn’t. This one, introductory verses of Psalm 71, works beautifully. 
71  In te, Domine, speravi


1
In you, O LORD, have I taken refuge; *
    let me never be ashamed.


2
In your righteousness, deliver me and set me free; *
    incline your ear to me and save me.


3
Be my strong rock, a castle to keep me safe; *
    you are my crag and my stronghold.


4
Deliver me, my God, from the hand of the wicked, *
    from of the clutches of the evildoer and the oppressor.


5
For you are my hope, O LORD God, *
    my confidence since I was young.


6
I have been sustained by you ever since I was born;
from my mother's womb you have been my strength; *
    my praise shall be always of you.

At least they weren’t pointed, ugly and poignant about it. The appointed portion is only six verses of the psalm. They might well have gone on with it a few more verses, ground it in, and really have ticked me off. 

9
Do not cast me off in my old age; *
    forsake me not when my strength fails.

18
And now that I am old and gray-headed, O God, do not forsake me, *
    till I make known your strength to this generation
    and your power to all who are to come.

At verse 6 the Jeremiah reading has what to me seems like an odd lack of accuracy between the Hebrew and the English translation. But enough this morning; it's the season of epiphanies and I’m content to realize why I’m some goofy priest instead of an admiral, and to be as grouchy as Jonah was when God caused his shade plant to wilt.
TW+