The Age Tax
Jeremiah 1:4-10 - 8/15/2004
Mae Koscheski reads her medical bills closely, even those pesky surcharges that are tucked into the invoice and easily overlooked. It’s a good thing she does, because one of her bills recently included a surcharge of $70 for — “extreme age.”
Getting old is bad enough. Hospital bills. Prescription drug charges. The cost of assisted living, nursing home and home health care nurses. But paying an “extreme age” tax on your hospital bill! That’s salt in the wound. Mae is 73. That’s old, but not “extremely old.” Granted, there are days when taking the extreme age exemption might be worth it. We’d like to pull the covers over our heads, stay in bed, and skip the round of chores and problems for that day.
It reminds me of a joke I heard recently: An elderly couple is lying in bed one morning having just awakened from a good night’s sleep. He takes her hand and she responds, “Don’t touch me!”
“Why not?” he asks. She answers back, “Because I’m dead.” The husband says to her, “What on earth are you talking about? We’re both lying here in bed together and talking to one another.”
The wife says, “Not so, I’m definitely dead.” Her husband insists, “You’re not dead. What in the world makes you think you’re dead?”
His wife answers, “I know I’m dead, because I woke up this morning and nothing hurts.”
In any case, extreme age is not what is bothering the young Jeremiah in today’s text. Rather than claiming an extreme age exemption, he falls back on the youth exemption. “I am only a boy,” he says to God in verse 6 of the first chapter of Jeremiah. Here is the rest of today’s scripture:
“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;“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…” (Jer 1:4-10a).”
I am only a boy. I am only an old woman. I am only one man. God doesn’t buy it. In fact, questions of service, mission and discipleship have no relation to age issues, or gender issues. God doesn’t seem to be limited at all by the categories that we think are important: Age. Race. Gender. Education. Disability. Economic status.
As for retirement, it’s hard to find the notion of retirement in the Bible, and Tony Campolo says somewhere in one of his books (I can’t remember which one), that retirement is unbiblical.
But Jeremiah wants to retire before he’s hired or tired. Wants to stop before he goes; to quit before he starts; to sit down before he stands up.
Not Dorothy Day. When Day was only 8 years old, something happened that would shape the rest of her life. She didn’t know it then (she was only a child), that she was experiencing an earthquake. Her brass bed was rolling across the floor and the earth was shaking. It was April 18, 1906, and the great earthquake of the century had hit San Francisco. It was many years later when she described her experience in her autobiography. By then, she was known by many as a living saint, “the prioress of the Bowery” and the founder of Hospitality Houses all over the country where she, and her movement of Catholic workers, cared for the poorest of the poor. They still care for them.
It all began when this girl was very young. She could have said to God, as the prophet Jeremiah did, “Not me, I am just a child.” But she didn’t.
According to her biographer, Paul Elie, she had frequent nightmares of God as a young child. And that night of the earthquake was no exception. Either a nightmare or dream, “a great noise became louder and louder and approached nearer and nearer to me, until I woke up sweating, screaming for my mother.”
In her mind, it was all linked up with God’s call upon her and the call was fierce, haunting and not at all friendly. The earthquake only lasted 140 seconds. But the city was devastated, in smoky ruins, rubble everywhere. Day, haunted by God’s presence in nightly visits, went out to see the wreckage on the streets. She saw people from all walks of life helping others, women cooking, men offering spare clothes, tents being raised in the rubble. What she felt as she watched became a vision of the calling that would last the rest of her life.
“While the crisis lasted, people loved each other,” she wrote. “It was as though they were united in Christian solidarity. It makes one think of how people could, if they would, care for each other in times of stress, unjudgingly in pity and love.” In just one moment of history, Dorothy Day felt the fear of God and witnessed elemental, biblical charity, the remedy for human loneliness.
The rest of her life, 88 years, she would work out that calling that occurred when she was just a young child. At 8 years old, the pattern of her life began to unfold ever so slowly.
There was no earthquake for Jeremiah when God spoke to him. But the young man clearly did not feel ready for the task. “Ah, Lord GOD! I don’t know how to talk to grown-ups; I’m only a kid.” Jeremiah’s fear is understandable; after all, he is being called to speak God’s word to countries that are in rebellion. And God tells him that the Word spoken from Jeremiah’s mouth will have the power to “pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (v. 10).
For all who keenly feel the movement of the earth under them, Jeremiah is a greatly comforting and companionable prophet. Jeremiah has always held a special appeal. He is a vision of strength and commitment yet is a somewhat sorrowful character with whom it is easy to sympathize. Perhaps the reason Jeremiah has always found favor is that two basic factors have always defined life--things always change and people don't like change. Nearly all people can look at their own age, their own times, and deplore the fact that they have been born into a period of tremendous upheaval and change. It always appears that past generations enjoyed a stability and continuity unknown in our own day.
Jeremiah even recognizes that God has a call on his young life. But he makes it clear that he didn’t ask for it and he really doesn’t know what to do about it. So, human as he is, he makes an excuse. “But I am only a boy.”
The calling of God is serious and important, but if we are going to offer an excuse to avoid service, it can’t be linked to age.
Of this, Paul reminds Timothy: “Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example ...” That was the advice he gave Timothy, his young friend and coworker in the ministry (1 Timothy 4:12).
But when young Jeremiah cries out, “I am only a boy,” we understand and might even agree. But God will have nothing to do with our age excuses. In a rather firm, clear voice the Lord responded to Jeremiah, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’ ... for I am with you to deliver you” (v. 7).
What’s the take-home message here? God will guide, support and deliver those whom God calls and God calls anyone whom he chooses, regardless of age, status or other perceived limitations.
And we all are ready with a list of excuses why we can’t follow God’s calling on our lives, don’t we. Excuses, Excuses! Richard Lederer, in his book, Anguished English (Charleston: Wyrick & Company, 1987), has a chapter (pp. 16-18) listing excuses parents have written to schools explaining their children's absence.
- Teacher, please excuse Mary for being absent. She was sick and I had her shot. Mary's Mom.
- My son is under doctor's care and should not take P.E. today. Please execute him.
- Please excuse my son's tardiness. I forgot to wake him up and did not find him until I started making the beds.
- Please excuse Jimmy for being. It was his father's fault.
- Please excuse Fred for being absent. He had a cold and could not breed well.
We’re not alone when it comes to making excuses to God for His calling on our lives.
1. Moses: I'm not smart enough and I stutter. (Exodus 3:11-4:17). Cf. 1 Corinthians 1:25.
2. Jonah: God's not smart enough (God will forgive Nineveh; they'll turn from God and be the instrument of Judah's destruction. God doesn't know what he's doing.).
4. Isaiah: I'm not holy enough (Isaiah 6:5).
5. Jeremiah: I'm not old enough.
6. YOU! What's your excuse?
None of us can say that we aren’t smart enough to serve God because the Bible says, “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards .... But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” (1 Corinthians 1:26-27).
We can’t say that we’re not powerful and connected, because God says “not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth ... but God chose what is foolish ...” We can’t say that we’re not strong enough, because God choose “what is weak in the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27).
We can’t say that we’re not respectable enough because “God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:28).
We can’t say that we’re lousy public speakers because the apostle Paul himself admits: “And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:3-5).
So why does a Jeremiah, or a Moses, or a Samuel, or a David, or a Dorothy Day, or any of the rest of us accept God’s call to service?
So that God Gets the Glory! Three G’s.
Paul writes: “God chose what is low and despised in the world ... so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’” (1 Corinthians 1:28-31).
It’s all about GOD. Living in the new millennium, we’re used to a human-centric world where everyone who’s selling anything assures us that it is all about me, or you. It’s not.
It’s all about what God GETS. We’re the ones who spend, who acquire, who waste, who gather, who accumulate, who build, who take in — and while we understand the notion of giving back, or charity, of putting some cash in the collection plate — God doesn’t want a part of us; God wants it all! It’s all about God getting the GLORY! Praise and worship of God fills all of Scripture. When history is concluded, the faithful from every time and era will gather to give praise to God.
This is what the call of God is about: living and serving in a way that directs the glory and the praise to God.
The good news is found in Jeremiah 1:8. We give our lives to God’s service — whatever that may be — and God says: “I am with you to deliver you.”
We get God’s Presence and Protection. What more do we need? We certainly don’t need to claim our youth or extreme age as excuses. Retirement is a false myth in the economy of God’s call. God calls anyone, without regard to human limitations.
Extreme age — or youth — never creates extra charges, according to God. Only extra opportunities.
PLEASE PRAY WITH ME: As you did with the prophet long ago, reach out your hand and touch our mouths. Make your words our words so that all we speak might be to your glory. This we pray in the name of the Word made flesh. Amen.
BENEDICTION: Go now to pursue your calling. Silence any noise that threatens to drown out God’s words of love and wisdom to you. Listen for Christ’s teaching in the places and people around you. Be prepared for the powerful movement of the Spirit, for it will sustain you, especially when God’s voice seems hard to hear.
And may God’s voice echo all around you, sharing words of challenge, bringing songs of peace. Alleluia! Amen.
Children's Sermon
(Beforehand: Read Jeremiah 1:4-10.) Tell the children the story about Jeremiah, that God had a job for Jeremiah to do when he was a little boy. God wanted Jeremiah to tell the people (grown-ups and everyone!) about things that would happen next year. If God asked you to do a big job for him, I bet you would say the same thing Jeremiah did: “But I’m just a kid!” But God told Jeremiah he would help him with the job, that God would put His words in Jeremiah’s mouth. God touched Jeremiah’s lips and said, “There! I’ve put the words you need to say right in your mouth.” Ask, wouldn’t that make it easier—if God were helping you like that?
Using Alphabits cereal, help the children form words like God, Jesus, love, help, serve, Bible. (You could have these words already worked out and just bring those letters of the cereal in a baggie, which would make the process a little easier! You’ll need as many words as you have children. You could then sort and show the words in your hand.) Then literally put these words in their mouths and they can “chew” on God’s Word for them!
