If there’s one thing I want you to do especially for me // Then it’s something that everybody needs…// Each night before you go to bed, my baby, // Whisper a little prayer for me, my baby, And tell all the stars above – This is dedicated to the one I love.

Dedicated to the One I Love, written by Lowman Pauling and Ralp Bass, 1957

I haven’t posted in what seems like forever – I think September of 2021 was the last time. Taking a stab at self-defense, the fall of 2021 into the spring of 2022 was a whirlwind of busyness and distraction as I was juggling three jobs – property manager for my home church, managing our food panty and serving, albeit part time, the good people of a local church as their interim minister. It was crazy, exhausting, and at times, maddeningly frustrating, as I struggled to write a sermon on Saturday, lead worship on Sunday, spend that afternoon writing next Sunday’s service – it was due Monday to meet bulletin production deadlines imposed by the administrative requirements dictated by a limited budget. Then Monday morning rolled around and…well, I hope you get the picture. It was a blessed time. No, really….it truly was.

But that is all changing. I have resigned from my role as a sexton and food pantry director to accept a full time position as the interim minister of a church around the corner from my home. God has asked me to help a congregation whose long time pastor recently departed. It is a congregation in mourning and one that is very anxious as it navigates the uncertainties that comes from transition. I am excited to embrace the tasks that  await and I am under no illusion that the challenges are very real and very difficult. But since it is God that has asked, then I know that God is in this and that’s the only comfort I need.

I suspect that too many of us often lose sight of God’s presence as we struggle with the uncertainties and pain that is part of our daily lives. The pandemic has been a very difficult period for all of us and the clergy have not gone unscathed: the pastorate is hurting as well. It was in that context that I delivered the homily that follows to a gathering of the ministers and elders from a group of churches in my neck of the woods. And while my audience may have been the ordained, in a manner of speaking, all disciples of Christ are “ordained,” so I thought I’d share with all of you what I had to offer to them…

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At a recent ordination service, while we were waiting for things to get underway, one of our pastors shared a story with a few of us from his ordination. As hands were laid on him, the minister at the time kept pressing down on his shoulders to impress upon him the weight of what being ordained felt like – the understanding that we are being, like the sailors of old, tied to the mast, so as not to be washed overboard by the raging seas of life in which we pastors embark daily.

And those seas are raging. Eugene Peterson, in Working the Angles, describes this in terms of wreckage – wrecked bodies, wrecked families, wrecked marriages, wrecked friendships and so on. It is into and through that wreckage that our ordination calls us to step – to walk into the ruins and witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I might be the newbie on the block, but I have lived in the back stair cases of the house long enough to appreciate how difficult and exhausting this work can be. Pastoral burnout is at record levels. If I remember correctly, it was in acknowledgement of this, that the Lilly folks created grants that underwrote sabbaticals this past year.

Jeremiah knew fatigue. Jeremiah knew burnout. Early in his career, he wants to throw in the towel and walk away from the wreckage that surrounded him and the persecutions that challenged him: Lord, he prays- “So drag them away, and butcher them like sheep. Prepare them for the slaughterhouse” (12:3, CEB). That is one tired, angry and burned out dude!

Hey Jeremiah, I ordained you, the Lord tells him. Before I created you in the womb, I picked you out, set you apart as a prophet to the nations. I anointed you to run with horses, and you are tired out by the foot runners? Are you going to quit when you discover that there is more to this work than a 9-5, dinner and television life style? It’s tough stuff that I ordained you to do, but do not forget you are an iron pillar and bronze wall because I am with you. You can do it with me at your side.

I have no idea how long it took Jeremiah to respond, but we know he did – “From the thirteenth year of Judah’s King Josiah, Amon’s son, to this very day—twenty-three years—the Lord’s word has come to me. I have delivered it to you repeatedly, although you wouldn’t listen” (25:3, CEB). He sticks to it – he is still at it for 23 years, in spite of death threats, moments of despair and discouragement, being whipped in a stockade, thrown into a well, and daily ridiculed, his message ignored because he doesn’t buy into the lifestyle, the fads and whims of the secular life that was rotting away around him.

How did he find the courage? How did he find the deep abiding faith to live fully into what God was calling him to do? How did he meet the challenge to run with horses? Persistence. Every morning, every afternoon, every evening he awaited to hear the word of the Lord. He prayed.

Prayer was the action that Jeremiah rooted his entire day with. For 23 years he prayed to hear the word of the Lord and for 23 years, he heard it. He heard it because for Jeremiah, it wasn’t faith in prayer – it was faith in God. It wasn’t a technique that he used as a way to get things done: his were not prayers of oops, wow, gimme and thanks. Prayer for Jeremiah was a way of coming to God in faith and trust. Scared, worn out, lonely, hurt angry, discouraged, Jeremiah came to prayer with the desire to listen to God firsthand, to speak to God first hand because God had primacy in and over his life.

But what did Jeremiah’s prayer look like? How did he pray? I am indebted to a section from Peterson’s work, Run with the Horses, for his terrific exposition of chapter 15 of Jeremiah for the following.

Jeremiah prays his fear – You understand, Lord!  Remember me and act on my behalf…(15:15, CEB) You got me into this stuff and I’m counting on you to see me through it.

He prays his loneliness – When your words turned up, I feasted on them; and they became my joy, the delight of my heart, because I belong to you,  Lord God of heavenly forces. I didn’t join the festive occasions; I took no delight in them. I sat alone because your hand was upon me (15:16-17, CEB). Jeremiah lived the truth – he delighted in receiving God’s word but when he turned around, no one else was there – they were on the golf course, at the shopping mall, watching television.

He prays his hurt – Why am I always in pain? Why is my wound incurable, so far beyond healing? (15:18a, CEB) He hurts because he cares – he cares about the flock that God has charged him with and their refusal to listen to the love of God that he preaches every Sunday, hurts.

He prays his anger – You have become for me as unreliable as a spring gone dry! (15:18b, CEB) The man who once preached that God was “the spring of living water” (2.13, CEB), now accuses him of deceit. You didn’t walk the talk, God.

We all have our moments of doubt, when the pits of despair seem insurmountable, when the dark nights of the soul is so black we can’t see our own fingers in front of us. Dealing with Peterson’s wreckage day after day is not an easy thing – we are only human. Pray your anger, pray your fear, pray your hurt, pray your loneliness. Pray your love. We need to hear and rehear God’s promises, made to us in our ordinations, over and over again. Simply carrying around some memory verses in our pockets isn’t enough. We need that daily encounter that comes in prayer. The world is changing all around us – changing faster and faster it seems – but God’s word never changes. In prayer, we encounter the word that renews and reaffirms and my prayer tonight is that Jeremiah’s example may be one that guides all of us as we try to run with the horses. Pray.

Artwork: “Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem,” Rembrandt, 1603, Public Domain