From Our Archives

Debie Thomas, The Greatest of These (2022); Debie Thomas, Leaving Home (2019).

This Week's Essay

Jeremiah 1:5, "Before you were born I knew you."

The lectionary this week from Jeremiah hit me with a blast from the past. In my Bible next to Jeremiah 1:5, I noticed a faint marginalia that I had scribbled thirty-four years ago: "new baby #3, 11/90." In November of 1990, we had just learned that my wife was pregnant with our third child. The tiny scribble was my response to the word of God to Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart."

This is awfully powerful ancient poetry. It affirms the profound mystery that every human life originates in divine love. 2600 years after Jeremiah, we're invited to believe that God's original love creates and calls every human being. 

Jeremiah 1:4–10 echoes a sentiment that's repeated elsewhere in the Bible — that every life is a sacred gift from God. The psalmist for this week declares, "you brought me forth from my mother's womb." (71:6).

Or Isaiah 49:1: "Before I was born, the Lord called me; // from my birth he has made mention of my name."

And most memorably, Psalm 139:13–16:

"For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be."

Similarly, in two essays last month, I wrote about how You Belong to God, and how He Knows My Name, for in the waters of baptism we hear the promises of God from Isaiah 43: "You are my beloved. Do not fear. I have called you by name. You are mine. You are precious in my sight, and I love you. I am with you." 

Jeremiah, Woodcut by Jacob Steinhardt (1887–1968).

But is this poetry still believable when we see bodies wash ashore on the islands of Lesbos and Lampedusa? When children starve to death in Gaza and Sudan? When a random genetic defect causes spina bifida?

It's a fair question. An important question. And no one can speak for another person's experience. 

But it's also a question that reveals our modern conceit — as if we're the first enlightened ones to agonize over war and starvation. Besides, how does viewing life as a mere biological accident give us a better perspective on Syria or the Holocaust?

The pages of the Bible are soaked in blood, beginning with Cain's fratricide, and full of believers and unbelievers alike anguishing over the sacred gift of life, with its mysterious mixture of blessings and sorrows, beauty and terror.

The psalmist for this week worships God as his rock and fortress. He praises him for his mighty acts and marvelous deeds. But he also laments the frailty of old age. He fears being forsaken and forgotten by God. He's wary of the wickedness and cruelty of humanity. He describes himself as a "portent to many" — a grotesque spectacle, a sign of something ominous, or a symbol of calamity. "You have made me see troubles," he prays to God, "many and bitter."

Jeremiah fresco, Roman School, c 1120.

Jeremiah struggled for forty years with a sense of failure, with violent opposition from detractors, and with deep discouragement. He was beaten (20:2), received death threats (26:8), imprisoned (37:15), thrown down a well (38:6), and derided as an unpatriotic crank and traitor. The prophets, priests and kings dismissed him as seditious. God's call on his life made his heart break and his bones tremble (23:9).

Moses gave many excuses for why he couldn't be a prophet. In Isaiah's terrifying vision of the Holy God "high and lifted up," a burning coal purified his unclean lips. Jeremiah insisted that he was too young to become a prophet and that he "did not know how to speak."

Paul wondered "who is adequate for these things," given that the heavenly treasure is in earthen vessels. We don't know how to pray, said Paul, we see only darkly, and know only partially, we do not understand our unruly desires. 

God gave Jeremiah something more precious than an exhortation to stoic perseverance. He promised His divine presence. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you a prophet to the nations. So do not be afraid, for I am with you." (Jeremiah 1:4–10).

Yvette Cauquil-Prince tapestry of Chagall's.

This divine promise required the audacity to believe that the Sender knew just who he was sending, that His message lives independent of the messenger, and that His presence gave perspective to our many conflicts. Like Moses, Isaiah, and Paul, Jeremiah learned to resist the negative voices from within and the bitter conflicts from without.

When my father died in 1998, the last few days of his life he worked hard to make amends with each member of my family. Most touching of all was a phone call he made to my mother, to whom he was married for 33 years, but then divorced from for 25 years. Most painful of all was my sister who wouldn't return his calls.

After he died, my father donated his body to science for medical research. Eighteen months later, FedEx delivered his "cremains" to our house. I remember thinking that there had to be a better way to return such a sacred gift.

Jeremiah by Andrew Mabanji, Zimbabwe, stone sculpture.

I opened the box, untied the twisty that secured the plastic liner, and experienced what others had described to me. These were not nice fluffy ashes, but gritty shards of bone. I took a pinch of the coarse remnants of my father and rubbed them between my thumb and fingers.

I took comfort from a plaque that I saw every day when I entered St. Joseph's Hospital in Tucson. Next to the main entrance of the hospital was a quote by Pope John Paul II: "Every human life comes from God. It is his gift, his image and imprint, a sharing in his breath of life. God, therefore, is the sole Lord of this life. Man cannot do with it as he wills."

Before you were born, throughout all your days, and when you are gone — the love of God calls every one of us to himself.

Weekly Prayer

Edwina Gateley

Let Your God Love You

Be silent.
Be still.
Alone.
Empty
Before your God.
Say nothing.
Ask nothing.
Be silent.
Be still.
Let your God look upon you.
That is all.
God knows.
God understands.
God loves you
With an enormous love,
And only wants
To look upon you
With that love.
Quiet.
Still.
Be.

Let your God—
Love you.

Dan Clendenin: dan@journeywithjesus.net

Image credits: (1) Safrai Fine Art; (2) Christusrex.org; (3) Haggerty Museum of Art; and (4) Saint Johns Abbey.