Meditation on Jeremiah 1:4–10 and First Corinthians 13:1-13
Pastor Karen Crawford
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY
Feb. 2, 2025
I wrote a long letter and emailed it to my friend, Britt, this week. She lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where the weather forecast for today is -11 degrees F, with a wind chill making it feel like -33F. Whenever I want to complain about how cold it is in winter, I remember Britt, and I stop complaining.
We met in the first class of my doctoral program three years ago. We entered the program at the same time, and we have been in every class together, twice a year, since then. We have often been study partners and have worked together on group presentations. She taught me how to communicate on WhatsApp, instead of texting or calling her. But I hadn’t talked to her since last July, maybe, when the seminary approved my research proposal.
She has an ecumenical spirit. She is a pastor of more than 25 years in the United Church of Canada, which came about on June 10, 1925, in Toronto, Ontario, when the Methodist Church, Canada, the Congregational Union of Canada, and 70 percent of The Presbyterian Church in Canada entered into a union.
She is a strong preacher on peace and justice issues. She is compassionate and empathetic. She gave me a pin of a red beaded dress last summer so that I would remember the missing indigenous women who receive unequal treatment by law enforcement in Canada, who make excuses for their disappearances and don’t spend much time or effort searching for them.
Two years ago, when we went to Ghost Ranch, NM, for our summer seminar, she gave me a pin of an orange shirt and told me the story, how we wear orange in September to remember the indigenous children forcibly taken from their families and sent to cruel government boarding schools at an early age to be indoctrinated and americanized. Everything they loved and that made them who they were was taken from them—families, clothing, hair styles, language, foods they were accustomed to eating, all aspects of their culture and personal identities. These government schools operated in the US and Canada until the 1960s—and, as you can guess, living in such harsh conditions, many children died of malnutrition or other preventable illnesses and those who survived, were traumatized.
Britt is the only Canadian in our class. She was teased because of it. Even one of our professors made a joke about how nice Canadians are when he was flying on a Canadian airline. It’s kind of a stereotype—the nice Canadian. She didn’t mind being teased. She always had a great comeback, such as, “You’re just jealous of our free healthcare.” I don’t want to say she has an accent, because we New Yorkers have accents, too. Right? But when she says “a-b-o-u-t” (how do you say it?) “about,” it comes out sounding like she’s speaking of footwear—“a BOOT.” I think I have heard, “You betcha” a few times. She says, “Aye” instead of yes sometimes. And she extends the “o” vowel sometimes, and gives it a musical tone, going from high to low, such as at the end of the word “so.” It comes out like “sooooooooooo…..”
She responded almost immediately to my long email with an equally long email, beginning, “Karen, I am soooo glad to hear from you.” And there were 4 o’s in her so.
But even though she is teased a little because of her Canadian citizenship and accent, everyone listens when she speaks. Not just because of the way she talks, but because of what she says and how she carefully chooses her words so as not to hurt others and really engages with the people around her because of her knowledge and passion for the subject. She isn’t shy, but she doesn’t dominate the conversation. Britt speaks when she has something important to say, and she says it with sensitivity, good humor, and love, the greatest of all spiritual gifts.
We can tell that Britt, like Jeremiah, was called to be a prophetic preacher since she was young. She has learned to hear God’s voice and respond. Ministry was and has always been God’s purpose for her, the God who has known her since the Lord formed her in the womb, as God tells the reluctant prophet Jeremiah at the beginning of his book, which is by the way, the LONGEST book of the entire Bible. 52 chapters. More than 1,300 verses! The book contains many different genres of writing: poetic oracles, sermons, prayers, and prose narratives, sometimes all woven together. A notable image of Jeremiah is as the “weeping prophet,” (Westminster Study Bible, 1031) which has influenced art of Jeremiah over the ages.
Jeremiah contains one of my favorite passages, chapter 29, beginning with the 4th verse:
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
Britt writes in a follow up note to me of an earlier call to ministry in a rural, very conservative part of Alberta, “After 9-11, I remember talking very briefly about how anger could not lead us to hate Muslims. Not a popular topic but thankfully nobody ran me out of town. In that place I was the person the nurses came to quietly to ask if I would visit a gay couple where one of them had cancer. So that was my place – to be the quiet corner of love in a community that got to know me as that kind of minister. I was admittedly pretty young then and not so certain about myself. I think as the years have gone by, I have obtained a more steady assurance of faith.”
Jeremiah grew in confidence as the years went by, as well. He served the Lord in a prophetic career that spanned 40 years—627 to 587 BCE, during the historic reigns of Kings Josiah, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah, son of Josiah of Judah. “This was a chaotic and tumultuous time of war in the ancient Near East” (Westminster Study Bible, 1031). “Judah…was geographically caught between the superpowers (Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and Egyptian leaders). Judeans contended with political, social, ecological, economic, and theological instability, and these realities are reflected” (Westminster Study Bible, 1031) in Jeremiah’s book.
Before he served the Lord for 40 years, he had that moment of reluctance, hesitation, the first time he heard the Lord commissioning him a prophet to the nations (plural). He thought maybe the Lord got it wrong, saying, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I don’t know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” The Lord quickly answers, “Don’t say, ‘I am only a boy.’ For you shall go to all 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.”
You heard me tell the children today that it doesn’t matter how old we are, or what gender we are; the Lord calls to all who listens and wants to serve God and neighbor. The Lord knew Jeremiah since before he was born. The Lord knew my friend, Britt, since before she was born. And the Lord knew that we would meet and become friends and encourage one another in our ministries. At times, I have really needed her encouragement. At times, she has really needed mine. We can be the loving voice of God at times for one another.
The Lord knew you and me before we were born, too. God promises to lead us to the places the Lord wants us to go. For Britt, that was Alberta. For me, it was Long Island. It doesn’t matter if we have a funny accent. God promises to give us the words to say and lead us to say them when the Lord wants us to speak. Don’t be afraid.
I leave you now with the encouraging words of Jeremiah to God’s people, to all of us who are serious about hearing God’s voice and desire to be faithful. This is Jeremiah 29:11:
“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”
Let us pray.
Lord God, thank you for knowing us before we were born, and having a plan for our lives, a plan for our welfare and not for harm, a future with hope. Forgive us when we, like Jeremiah, might be reluctant to be your prophet to the nations. Thank you for allowing us to hear your still, small voice, for leading us to the places you want us to go, strengthening us when we get there, and for giving us the words to say, when you want us to say them. Grant us the greatest spiritual gift of all so that whenever we speak, we will speak from a place of love. In Christ we pray. Amen.
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