Jeremiah 1:4-10
Luke 4:21-32
“She just used to be so normal”. One of my parishioners wept as she sat in my office and told me about her daughter’s recent change of character. “We did the best we could to raise her right, we took her to church, she did well in school, she was well liked by all of her friends…you know, she was just a normal girl.” I sat there, passing this sobbing mother Kleenex and bracing myself for the worst. “We paid for her to go to college, and then law school, she was doing so well. And then, in law school she got involved with the immigration issue. We thought, this is great! She is going to put her degree to good use and help keep our country safe. But she didn’t. She started helping these illegal immigrants get healthcare and find ways to get jobs and greencards. Now we just don’t know what to do with her. Instead of having a respectable law practice, she is spending all of her time running around speaking on behalf of these people she doesn’t know and advocating for these people who will never be able to pay her for her work. I mean, I could understand if a foreigner wanted to do that kind of work, you know, for their own people, but not our daughter. She’s never been a radical. She’s unassuming and quiet and usually just blends in. She’s just so normal!”
I sat there thinking, "well, what did you expect?! You took her church." You take a normal kid to church, and somebody along the way is going to read them the story of Jeremiah. If Jeremiah’s story has anything to teach us it is that God has this knack of making prophets out of seemingly normal people. God seems to delight in catching everyone offguard by taking mainstream people who would otherwise blend in, not rock the boat, and making prophets out of them, people who by their very presence re-shape the world around them. People who look for all the world like they should just help perpetuate the culture, who’s normalcy is almost staggering, God takes them and makes world changers out of them.
Like Jeremiah. He was from a normal family of good heritage. His parents had raised him well in the traditions of their faith. He had priestly lineage, priestly training and was well equipped to fit right into the culture. You know, he was just normal. And then, out of nowhere, the word of the Lord comes to him. “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.” Jeremiah tries to reject it, say that he’s too normal to do such work. “But I’m just a boy. I’m a dime a dozen. No one is going to listen to me, I’m too normal.” “Exactly,” says God. “You are going to sneak into the world and no one will even notice you are there at first because you look so normal. But I will be with you. And you and I are going to turn the world upside down. See today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build up and to plant.”
The rest of Jeremiah’s life is anything but normal. He goes around telling kings and rulers that God is against them and that they are about to be overthrown because they have made for themselves kingdoms of wealth at the expense of others. He tells priests and religious leaders that their ceremonies and prayers are useless in the sight of God and that as long as the oppressed are ignored and the outsider is rejected. Jeremiah, this used-to-be normal kid, looks the community of faith in the eye and says that as long as they remain inwardly focused, as long as they are more concerned with themselves than they are their neighbor, the widow, the hungry, their religiosity is of no account and God is not with them. With his words, he was tearing down the world in which they lived and building a new reality. This boy was destroying oppression and rebuilding peace. Can you believe Jeremiah?! He used to be so normal!
Jesus’ normality threw the people in our Gospel reading today off, too. Luke tells us as much. It was just another normal Sabbath. The community was gathered together like they always were. Jesus was standing in the synagogue, and reading from the prophet Isaiah, nothing abnormal so far. And then, all of a sudden, Jesus starts talking about the prophet’s words coming to fruition in him. Everyone looks around at each other and are amazed. After all, this is just Mary and Joseph’s boy, they say. We know him, he’s one of us. As they sit there, trying to figure out what Jesus was talking about, God begins to re-shape their world. God had invaded their normality in the seemingly normal looking person of Jesus and now was seeking to tear down their comfortable normality and build up a new reality in their midst. Jesus begins lambasting that group of people for their lack of faith. He calls them to account for mis-reading scripture, for making God their servant instead of the other way around. I’m sure that they would have happily kept Jesus out of the synagogue if they had known what he was about to do in their midst. But how could you tell? He seemed so normal! So harmless. So innocuous. So mainstream.
He seemed almost Methodist! There is no more normal, harmless group of people than us Methodists. If you don’t believe me, go to Annual Conference one year. You enter that room and look around and say, “these people wouldn’t hurt a fly and couldn’t turn a piece of paper upside down.” We Methodists are perhaps the most innocuous group of people ever compiled. We look like the normal population. We think like most people. We live in normal neighborhoods, drive normal cars. We work in normal jobs and live normal lives. We Methodists personify the word “mainstream.”
Which makes us just the sort of people that God delights in using to turn the world upside down. Think about it. Nobody expects the Methodists! We are the last group of people to rock the boat, to challenge the norm, to go against the stream. So, in God’s divine irony, we are in the perfect position to be mainstream prophets. And you know, it happens all the time. If you stay at Annual Conference long enough, you hear the most amazing stories of the world being turned upside down by a bunch of normal Methodists. Stories of thousands of orphans being fed in Zimbawe, while the rest of the world just watches, as though abject poverty is just normal. Stories of racial reconciliation happening in downtown Durham, while the rest of the community is calling for more division, because that, after all, is the norm. Stories of people working for peace and justice, and refusing to accept the war and oppression that we are surrounded by. God taking us normal Methodists and injecting us into the world to change what the world thinks is normal. Mainstream prophets.
I understand that you here at St. Mark’s are discerning where God would have you go and who God would have you be as a church. In other words, you are listening for a word from the Lord. Just, as you go through that process, be warned. You are joining the ranks of some people who had their normality turned on its ear when God’s word came to them. People like Jeremiah, St. Luke, Mother Teresa, that poor lawyer who’s practice was turned upside down. As you wait for a word from the Lord, know that God delights in taking normal, ordinary people just like you and using you to “overturn nations and kingdoms, to destroy normality and build up the Kindom of God.” God just loves reshaping the world with normal folks like you.
Here you are, perched in just a normal church building along Six Forks Road. Singing your normal hymns, going about your normal lives. Watch out. God is sending his word into this place and is determined to make prophets, world changers, out of you. I can almost hear people talking now…”What happened to St. Mark’s? They used to be so normal!”
