Rev. Kevin M. Pleas

Jeremiah 1:4-10 January 31, 2010

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! Truly 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 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, says the Lord." Then 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, to build and to plant."

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I've always had a fascination with words and expressions. I love the things that people do with language. Most of what we say, most of the time, is pretty pedestrian. We're just trying to get our thoughts across. But for those who want to, language provides us with all kinds of opportunities to be creative. People play with words all the time. Take the expression from this morning's passage. "I have put my words in your mouth." When I read that, I began mulling over all the expressions we have that use the word mouth in some way. Here's what I came up with.

We can bad mouth someone or put our foot in our mouth. We can be down in the mouth, have our heart in our mouth, or be left with a bad taste in our mouth. We can be mouthy, or mouth off, or run off at the mouth. We can live hand to mouth, or if we're more fortunate, we can be born with a silver spoon in our mouth. We can hear something by word of mouth. A person can take the words right out of our mouths, or put words in our mouths, which is what God did to Jeremiah. So, to recap, we can be critical, embarrassed, depressed, frightened, repulsed, obnoxious, defiant, boring, impoverished, wealthy, informed, in agreement, offended or a spokesperson simply by playing around with ideas and images using the word "mouth."

Is that fascinating? Or is it just weird? I'm told when I preach I often leave people wondering where I'm going. Today maybe more than usual, but I promise I do have a point if you'll bear with me. You see, lots of people think of Christianity as a religion. It is that, but it's not only that. If we dare to, if we don't get all bothered that we're somehow belittling our faith, we can play around with the meaning of Christianity in much the same way we can play around with the word mouth.

Christianity can be the faith, the community, the church, the body of Christ. It can be a calling, a theology, an institution, a vision of salvation, or Truth with a capital T. It can be an arrogant threat or a joyful invitation. It can be oppressive, ritualistic, dogmatic and overbearing, or it can be light, graceful and playful. It can be the one and only way to God (I don't personally like that one), or it can be one of the great world faiths. It can pierce our hearts with it's tragic beauty, or leave us stone cold. It can be any or all of these, or something else altogether. What exactly is Christianity?

Over the years I've used most of these images to highlight something or other about the faith we share. But there's one idea of what Christianity is that has always made particular sense to me and that I've found very helpful. Christianity is a language. It is the language spoken here. It is how we speak when we want to talk about the things that are most precious to us in life; love, grace, forgiveness. It is the stories we tell and the lessons we learn. It is the vision we try to hold, the way of life we try to follow. All these are key parts of our theology. If you find the word theology intimidating, as some do, try thinking of it as the grammar; the nouns and verbs, the ideas and images, the rules of syntax, if you will, that make the whole of our Christian language hang together.

Some of you know I was helping to lead the memorial service for a woman the other day. It was a heartrending service for a beautiful person who died far too soon. She and her family are, and will continue to be in my prayers. There was something about the service though that has really stuck in my mind. The altar - the stage that is. It was held at the Opera House - was decorated in a very interesting way. Along with a large picture of the woman and the urn containing her ashes, there was a Catholic rosary, a couple of statues of the Buddha and a picture of a goddess. The service itself included a beautiful Buddhist prayer, a reading of the Kaddish, which is a Jewish funeral prayer, and, of course, me, reading Christian scriptures, reciting the Lord's prayer and talking about heaven.

At the time, part of what I said was this: "there was a natural spirituality about her that blended into everything she did. She was open to the spiritual insights and wisdom of a wide variety of traditions." Though I never knew her myself, she clearly had an interest in spirituality that went well beyond the usual boundaries; someone after my own heart. But in keeping with this idea of spiritual languages, what I saw at that service is something that has become quite common these days. People are picking and choosing the bits and pieces of all the world's various faith traditions, with little regard or concern for whether or not these pieces actually fit together, and quite often, theologically speaking, they just don't.

The theology of Christianity, our basic understanding of God, is very different than the theology of Buddhism. That does not mean one is necessarily better than the other, or that only one of them can be right. What it means is, they are not simply interchangeable. The essential logic of Christianity and the essential logic of Buddhism rise from some fundamentally different assumptions about the nature of reality, who we are, and what it is we're supposed to be doing here. Yes, they both preach love and compassion, but they have very different ideas about what it means to be loving and compassionate. Pam pointed out to me that I have often used Buddhist stories in my preaching, but, whether or not you've always been aware of it, I have always set those stories in a Christian context. I greatly appreciate and respect Buddhism, but I am not a Buddhist, and Buddhism is not what I preach.

This business of randomly blending together the teachings of different traditions can actually cause some real confusion for people. Think of it this way. If you blend English, French, German and Russian all together in a single paragraph, most people will lose the sense of what you're talking about. Unless you are well versed in all four languages, it won't make any sense to you. There is a internal coherence about each of these languages that we can't simply transfer back and forth at will.

I remember an interesting experience I had in college when I was trying to learn German. Pam was just back from two years in Germany and spoke the language fluently, so when it came to fulfilling my language requirement, German seemed an obvious choice. But I found it awfully frustrating. I don't know how many times I asked Pam how to translate some saying or other from English to German. Over and over she would think about it for a minute, and then say to me, "You know, there really isn't a good translation. They just wouldn't say that."

Translation is a hard skill. You can't simply substitute one word for another. It doesn't work that way. Translation requires knowing more than just words. That's why computer translation programs make so many mistakes. In going from one language to another, we aren't just translating words, we're translating ideas, culture, tradition, history … a whole collection of things. How long do you think it would take you to render into Russian all those "mouth" expressions I opened with? Well, personally, I'd have to learn Russian first.

The point is, if we're going to be clear about who we are and what we have to offer, we have to speak a language that we know and understand ant that is internally consistent for the community we are trying to talk to. We can't simply pick and choose from various spiritual traditions. And whether or not you are aware of it, the logic of the language of our faith comes from Christ, which means that Christ must be at the center of all we do. Christianity is the language God has put in our mouths.

"I have put my words in your mouth." That's kind of a funny image, isn't it? God actually reaching down and touching the boy Jeremiah on the lips, physically placing His words into the physical mouth of the future prophet. I would say Jeremiah was being poetic here rather than literal, but either way the message is clear. God is saying, "I want you to be my mouthpiece. I have a few things I want you to tell those stubborn Israelites and the fact that you are still a child is entirely beside the point. You will speak with the power of my authority. That's all you need to know." The fundamental business of our church is to continue in this tradition; to be a mouthpiece of God, to speak the message God would have us speak.

Of course, even within Christianity, there's more than one language. We're not awfully traditional in the ways we express our faith. You might say what we speak here is a certain progressive dialect of the faith. We don't proselytize. We are open and tolerant and respectful. But we do need to remember that we're not just talking to ourselves. What we have to say, both by our words and our actions, is for our whole community. We have a message that has been entrusted to us by God. Like Jeremiah, we have God's words in our mouths. We have things to say that speak to the needs of the people. Not just haphazard bits and pieces from the smorgasbord of human spiritualities. We have words that speak to all situations and conditions of our human lives. We have words that comfort and heal. We have words that help make sense out of the craziness of life. We have words that help us deal with the darkness and anxiety that so deeply penetrates our culture. And our words are not empty. Words have power. When we are speaking out of the faith tradition we've been given, the authority of God stands behind what we say. When we are being faithful to our faith, we proclaim a message that God has given us to speak.

In writing about this passage, James Davis said that it invites us to think about some key questions. "What does it mean to be called by God? What does God generally call people to do? To whom does God issue this call? Do only ministers and priests experience vocation, or is it an essential part of every Christian's religious life?" (Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 1, page 290) These are some very good questions. They are excellent things for us to be thinking about, especially as we are entering a new church year and pondering the shape of our future. Who are we? Why are we here? What is the message God has for us to share? And how do we share that message in ways that are faithful to Christ? It's not enough, not anymore, to say we're here because we've always been here. If our ministry is to continue beyond the immediate future, we need to remember how to speak powerfully and faithfully to all who will listen, using the Christian dialect that God has put in our mouths, and our hearts.

Amen.