What’s a preacher to do when the scripture for the day – several weeks in a row - cuts a little too close to what’s going on in the world?  The same thing one does any other Sunday:  preach the text.  Preach the Gospel. We are people of faith.  And if we shy away from our sacred stories because they bear an uncomfortable word, then we are no better than the king who fed a scroll bearing forty years’ worth of prophetic words into the flames.
 
This is the Word the Spirit has brought to the church this day:  a perilous time, when the nation is under threat.  The Prophet Jeremiah under house arrest, confined, prevented from gathering with God’s people. God’s word snatched from Baruch’s hand - and in a section we skipped over for length today - God’s prophets had to go into hiding.  The scroll with these holy, subversive words taken to the palace and read in private quarters amid the king’s closest advisers, and then deliberately, section by section, consigned to the fire.  Burned because the king did not like what he was hearing.  Because he wanted to suppress the message being spread by the prophet.
 
What we have in today’s scripture is tantamount to a book burning.  We’re not talking about a single speech here. We are talking about a scroll containing forty years of Jeremiah’s life’s work - his heart and soul, everything God had given him for the good of the nation of Israel, the shining days and the terrible days and everything in between.  A masterwork, destroyed.
 
It would be easy, after such a disaster, to give up. It would be natural — particularly for Jeremiah, who was already prone to depression, and lived in difficult times — to give in to the inner voice of doom.  To stand there in judgment, shaking one’s head, saying, “I told you so.”  Worse: to entertain fantasies of revenge, as if salvation is to be found there. 
 
But the prophet doesn’t give up, although it would have been so easy to do so.   Instead, he stayed rooted in his call, offering us a model of faithful resistance to a world that just wants to get back to normal when it’s everything but business as usual:  
 
First, the prophet speaks the word given by God.  Over and over again, the prophet spoke the words.  Sometimes it offended people.  But he kept going.   Then, the prophet passes the word on to others, so they are equipped to share it.  When Jeremiah couldn’t go himself, Jeremiah taught Baruch.  Baruch wrote it down so it could be shared.  And Baruch spoke it in the temple. 
 
And then - I love this part - when the powers of this world try to shut down the transmission of God’s word (because when does that ever work, people?) - the prophet steps up again.  This is when God germinates the seeds of the Word that are planted in the weary heart of the prophet, and it cracks wide open again.  You may think you have seen it all and done it all and by all that is holy you are tired, but the word of the Lord comes to you and here it comes again:
 
“Write down all the words that were in the first scroll that was burned.”

Write down all of the words...and more.   The scroll was burned.  The powerful ones shut it down.  Has the message been lost? No. Just delayed. Write the revised and expanded edition, God says.[1] They're not going to like hearing this one any better, but it’s still worth saying.  Justice is justice. Write it. Speak it.  Send My Word forth, instructs God — so the prophet continues to raise the uncomfortable questions before the nation as a whole, not neglecting to confront the powerful, not neglecting to speak in the public square:
 
Do you treat each other justly? Do you follow the Lord’s ways?
Stop taking advantage of the immigrant, orphan, or widow.
Stop shedding the blood of the innocent,…
going after other gods to your own ruin…[2]
 
And are you caring for God’s creation?
 
“I will weep and wail for the mountains,
and lament for the grazing lands in the wilderness.
They are dried up and deserted;
no sound of the flocks is heard;
no sign of birds or animals is seen;
all have vanished.”[3]
 
Are the rich and powerful growing fat and sleek,
prospering, indifferent to the plight of the orphan, the rights of the poor?[4]
 
From the least to the greatest, all are eager to profit.
From prophet to priest, all trade in falsehood.
they treat the wound of my people as if were nothing:
“All is well, all is well,” they insist, when in fact nothing is well.”[5]
 
Do you treat the worker with justice?
And do you allow room, in your economic life
for rest, as God commanded?[6]
 
And to whom do you give supremacy?
 
“The Lord is the true God!
He’s the living God and the everlasting King!”[7]
 
“God made the earth by his might;
he shaped the world by his wisdom,
crafted the skies by his knowledge.”[8]
 
“Stop at the crossroads and look around; ask for the ancient paths. 
Where is the good way? Then walk in it.”[9]
 
It is words such as these the prophet carried to the nation, which had him banned from the temple, confined, his words burned, and eventually killed in exile.  It is words such as these which Jesus used to confront the powers of his time, words that got him killed.
 
Today is Reign of Christ Sunday, when we remember who rules supreme.  When we remember the kingdom - or kindom - to which we belong.   
 
We are in the middle of a challenging time in the life of our nation, and a challenging run of texts from the Hebrew Prophets, to be followed by a challenging run of texts about the imminent arrival of Jesus, Emmanuel, God-With-Us.  We may come to church looking for comfort.  But the comfort in the Gospel is inseparable from its challenge, inseparable from Christ’s claim upon our lives. 
 
Our Christian life leads from font, to table, to cross:  We baptized a baby last week, and set her on the road to discipleship.  Remember all the things we said about the water:  water is washing, and soothing, and slaking thirst, and drowning.  It is death and it is life.  Remember all the things we say at the communion table:  it is a meal, where we nourish our bodies, where we celebrate the great banquet where none are excluded, where there is always enough, and it is also a funeral meal, where we remember that it is a gift offered to those Christ already knows will abandon him before he dies.  Even the first resurrection story is filled with challenge, more than comfort.
 
King Jehoiakim wants to enjoy his comfortable winter chambers by the firepit.  The nation would like it very much if things could get back to normal.  It’s a lovely dream; but that’s all “normal” ever was, a dream.  Because “comfort” was only comfortable for some, and “peace” only “peace” for some.  To abandon them for our own comfort is to abandon the Gospel.
 
Prophets, attend!  We have been given a Word for our time.  Though there may be those in our nation who say, "Hush! Your Word disturbs our peace," and urge us to quiet ourselves, we are called to proclaim it again, more boldly.  
 
For here is the way our God works: never settling for a retread of the past, but going beyond, calling us to speak and work for the revised, expansive vision of human community, a community ruled according to kindness, justice, and righteousness.
 
“I am the Lord who acts with kindness,
justice, and righteousness 
in the world,
and I delight in these things,
declares the Lord.”[10]
 
God is writing the revised and expansive edition.

​It’s gonna take a while. There’s still time to get involved.  Prophets, are you in?
 
Amen.

Preached November 13, 2016, the Sunday after the US Presidential Election
Text:  Isaiah 6:1-8 (Isaiah's Call and Sending)

No pastor, no matter how gifted, no matter how called to this work, has ever exhibited the skill of being in multiple places at once.  No matter how many science fiction fandoms I claim, no one has yet presented me with a functional transporter technology, and the Doctor’s TARDIS has yet to show up at my door.  
Which is a real shame, because like many pastors, I am in the habit of leaving for any meeting pretty darn close to the time I should be arriving at the meeting.  Pro tip:  driving anywhere takes time, especially if you’re taking the Beltline. 

I suspect that I share this dilemma with more than a few of you.   Despite our attempts to fit an increased number of tasks into our week, the clock stubbornly remains limited to one hundred and sixty eight hours.  We have to pick and choose how to spend our time - and energy.  Like everyone else on this planet, we are finite human beings, with a finite ability to keep going.  When the unexpected happens, something always has to give.  Sometimes it’s our health.  Sometimes it’s our intended priorities.  When we juggle too many projects, we forget things, or experience frustrating delays in getting back to things we know are important.   

True confessions:  pastors are humans too.  Sometimes we never get to the personal visit we intend to make. Sometimes we compose a carefully worded email instead of making a phone call, or fire off a less-carefully worded email at odd hours.  

This being a long way of saying, although I have never been a passionate fan of the Apostle Paul, as a pastor, I find myself inclined to offer him more grace than I once was.  He was the Energizer Bunny of pastors, with thousands of miles traveled by foot and more by sea.  

Since he couldn’t be in all these places at once, he had to be creative about staying in touch.  Not having email or telephone available to him, he would have to rely on updates carried by travelers – sometimes personal conversations, and sometimes letters.  There would be a substantial delay in receiving the news.
In the way of grapevine conversations everywhere, what he learned may not have been good or accurate news.  Is it any wonder that Paul’s most common type of writing was the cranky pastor letter? ​

There were not many jobs to be had.  Not many regular jobs, at least.  It was a bit easier to find a limited gig that would pay you for three days, or two days, or one day at a time.  The economy was based on full availability.  If there was a chance to work, and you turned it down…well, you might not get called again. 
 
That’s what happened the time my grandfather took a day job shoveling out a railroad car during the Depression.   At that time, you didn’t know when the next job might present itself, so you took a job when offered, and you were grateful for the chance to earn something, when the next guy might get nothing.  So he took the job shoveling out the railroad car.  He spent a hard day shoveling salt.   And by the end of the day, when they dished out the day’s wage?  Well, instead of feeding the family, it had to go to buying him a new pair of boots to replace the ones the salt had ruined.

That sort of deal didn’t end with the New Deal.   It’s just as prevalent here at the beginning of the twenty-first century.  Some call it ‘Working in Retail’.  Some call it ‘The Sharing Economy.’ Others call it On-Demand Staffing or 'Flexible Staffing Practices'.  Full Availability is a system where it seems the employer has all the rights to organize the employee’s time.  It is not uncommon in retail – and increasingly, in other sectors – to receive your schedule shortly before the week begins, and to be notified that you are “on call” in case of an unexpected surge in customers, expected to report on as little as two hours’ notice.  All of this for the extravagant wage of $7.25 to $10 an hour.

Of course, with your employer’s needs as your central organizing principle, you have precious little energy to devote to organizing anything else: child care, or a search for a better job, or your fellow employees.  It goes beyond paycheck-to-paycheck and ends up being more like hand-to-mouth.  

What the appointed scripture for the day doesn't make clear is the context of the momentous events we just heard.  "Now when Jesus heard this..."   What was this?  What had he heard?  

The beginning of the chapter tells us:  Jesus had just received word of his cousin's death at the order of King Herod.  "Now when Jesus heard [of his cousin's death], he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself..."