January 14, 2019
I want to talk about the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah today. I don't always spend a lot of time on the prophets, and that is because our focus is, as it should be, on the life and teachings of Jesus. But the prophetic books are included in our canon and in our lectionary for a reason. The whole of scripture points to Jesus and when we read the Old Testament, we always read it with an eye toward Jesus.
Jeremiah was a PK. Everybody know what that means? A preacher's kid. His father was Hilkiah, a priest from the tribe of Benjamin. Preachers kids have a bad rap. They are expected to be perfect and often are anything but. They get asked a lot if they will grow up to be a preacher like their Dad, or Mom. It seems from our reading today, Jeremiah was not planning to follow in his dad's footsteps. God came to Jeremiah and announced to him that he was to be God's prophet. Jeremiah's response: “Truly I do not know how to speak.”