Oh what the Hell

Sermons from Episcopal pulpits usually focus on the gospel reading, so folks may not notice the summer Lectionary taking us through Jeremiah! 

After Isaiah, Hosea, Amos and Micah, the “eighth century prophets of doom,” comes Jeremiah of Jerusalem toward the end of the 7th century BC and into the 6th century when he is taken to Egypt by Judeans escaping Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem. 

A fugitive in Egypt then, Jeremiah survives the murderous destruction of Jerusalem and is not in the Babylonian Exile on the banks of the River Chebar with Ezekiel. 

My favorite part of Jeremiah is the oracle of his Call Story right up front in chapter one:

Now the word of the Lord came to me saying, “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.” Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’, for to all to whom I send you you shall go, and whatever I command you you shall speak … says the Lord.” (1:4f)

Like many who surrender to the priestly vocation, on a very modest and minor scale I identify with Jeremiah’s sense of the inevitable. My experience was also of God meddling in my life early on. Today, Holy Cross Day, September 14th, is my birthday, and because it’s on my mind, I thought to share again the first part of my own call story.

I was born ninety years ago today at Adams’ Panama City Hospital, which was a block east of Harrison Avenue on 5th Street between Luverne and Magnolia. In my memory our only hospital until Dr Lisenby came along, it was run by Dr D M Adams and sons, Dr D M Adams, Jr - - and Dr Powell Adams, who was my father's friend and classmate at Bay High School in the 1920s. I grew up at home in Panama City until I graduated college, when Linda and I married here at Holy Nativity and went away for twenty years in the U S Navy. 

With seven or eight Episcopal priests before me in my family, as a child I was made constantly aware of that heritage, and I knew from age ten that theological seminary and ordination would be in my life. Before I headed off to college at age 18, Father Tom Byrne, our rector at St Andrew’s Episcopal Church, presented me to the vestry for endorsement into what’s called “the process.” He then got the bishop’s consent and I was on my way into a pre-theology education. 

But “sophomore” is Greek for “wise fool,” no one knows more than a college sophomore, and the end of my sophomore year, appalled at the thought of getting into a pulpit every week, and doing well in my German course but not in my psychology and sociology courses, I rebelled and changed my major to business administration. I will say “HOORAY!” for anyone who studied business admin and loved it; for me, business courses were deadly boring, but I graduated and was commissioned an officer in a business-related corps of the Navy, ending up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where we retired when I was 42.

After Navy retirement I started a business of my own, consulting in the defense industry field that had been my Navy specialty. I also was part-time adjunct professor of political science teaching two graduate courses in "major weapons systems acquisition management" at the Univ of West Florida. For the next six years, the university flew me down from Pennsylvania three times a semester to teach my classes.

I did not do all that because I loved it, or to pay the mortgage; I did it so I could buy the cars I’d always wanted. At one point, we had two brand new Cadillacs, a red one for Linda, a black one for me. In my business I was away from home three-quarters of the Time - - driving some 35,000 miles a year, and when not driving, I was on a plane flying to defense industry plants in the US and Australia.

And I was part of a team from the Pentagon and the Australian Embassy in Washington and their Department of Defence in Canberra, conducting Australian Industry Seminars in cities across the United States. 

Linda and I were active in our Episcopal parish our eight years in Pennsylvania, Linda helping in the parish office and managing the parish thrift shop. I was a Chalice Minister, and also a Lector. Being a Lector is actually what reignited it, because in that parish the rector required Lectors to prepare and read to the congregation a one-or-two-minute "talk" introducing each Bible lesson, to “warm the scripture” as he said. The parish joke got to be that people were coming to church to hear my introductions instead of the rector's sermons, and parishioners started asking me, “When will you be going to seminary?” I said, “Never. I’m not, I put that out of my mind when I was 19, a sophomore in college.” 

But there was constant asking and pressing by parishioners. From Florida, my mother even got involved, telling me, “We always thought when you retired from the Navy you’d go to seminary,” and I said, “No, Mama, I’m not doing that.” But the pressure inside me became obnoxious. 

Then one morning - - this is part of my Call Story that I’ve told many Times - - one morning the rector asked me to come see him in his office. The instant I sat down he lit into me with the challenge, “How many Cadillacs are enough? How much longer are you going to ignore God’s call on your life?” 

I threw up my hands and said, “Oh, what the hell. I give up.” 

He turned to his desk, picked up the phone, called the bishop, and I was back in the ordination process that I had said “NO” to 25 years earlier. Some months later, I started seminary - - on the Sunday afternoon of my 45th birthday, September 14, 1980, exactly half my lifeTime ago today.

God meddles in our lives. Sometimes directly, sometimes through other people or events. Maybe you've sensed that in your own life, if not, maybe you need to pay closer attention! For me, it was bothersome, but the day I started theological seminary I was overwhelmed with a sense of peace, "home at last, home at last, thank God Almighty, I’m home at last."

My seminary years were Full Up To Busting: I studied three years at seminary full Time while also working my defense consulting business full time, travel around the country and to Australia and back; speaking in defense industry seminars around the US with colleagues from the Pentagon and the Australian government; flying or driving down to teach my two graduate courses at the Univ. of West Florida, and being home too little of the Time when our two older children were growing up and leaving home. It was exhausting, challenging, and memorable. 

I was ordained deacon and priest while still in seminary, and soon after graduation my mother told me the pulpit was vacant at Trinity, Apalachicola. We were in the process of accepting a call to a parish in our Pennsylvania diocese, but it was Time for me to come down to Florida to teach my class, so I arranged to see Bishop Duvall while I was here. He scheduled me to visit Trinity, Apalachicola the coming Sunday morning, to meet folks. I had known and loved Apalachicola and Trinity Church since I was a boy, and the meeting went well.

Returning to Pennsylvania the next week, I met with my bishop, Charlie McNutt. Charlie was from West Virginia, but before becoming our Pennsylvania bishop he had been Canon to the Bishop in Jacksonville when this was still part of the Diocese of Florida. I told him I was accepting a call to Trinity, Apalachicola instead of to his Pennsylvania parish. He was stunned! He said, “Apalachicola? I know it well: it’s the end of the earth. Whatever will you do there?” Lightly, half-joking, I said, “I’ll eat oysters and mullet.” He said, “And when you get tired of oysters and mullet what will you do?”

Tired of oysters and mullet! I’m a Florida Gulf Coast native; my very kind and gentle bishop was a West Virginia mountain man: it was clear there would be no meeting of the minds, so we left it at that, and Linda, our daughter Tass and I arrived in Apalachicola a few weeks later.

I’m no Jeremiah the Prophet, but I’ve known all my life what it’s like for my Creator to mess with me. I know what it’s like to say "NO!" and rebel. But I never knew what satisfaction and joy life could bring until I said, “Oh, what the Hell. I give up."

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homiletic endeavor preached by the Rev Tom Weller, 14 Sep 2025, Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida. text: Jeremiah's call story (Jeremiah 1:4f); remembering my own call story, on my 90th birthday. T90