October 18 - Brave Spaces
Deborah Laforet Jeremiah 1:4-10
Brave Spaces
Have you ever walked into a room and just known you were out of your depth? Or at least believed you were? Maybe it was your first time with these people? Maybe you felt intimidated, different, or not smart enough? How many times have you felt inadequate or out of place, even when you know you are there because you are qualified to be there? Sometimes a space just feels unwelcoming, hostile, or unsafe. What do you do? Where do you turn?
Many of you have heard me talk about the Skylight Festival that happens in Paris, ON every summer. Last summer would have been our fifth year, if we hadn’t had to cancel it because of the pandemic. I’ve been working with the Skylight team since they started. I started as a volunteer and then joined the program team and then became their treasurer.
A couple of winters ago, a group met at Five Oaks, a United Church conference and retreat centre. It was a time of visioning and evaluating and determining how to move forward. We began to shift roles. The co-chairs of the committee decided to step down and a new chair was needed and I was invited to fill that role. I immediately began to have these feeling of inadequacy. I didn’t feel I could do it as well as the last chairs. I wasn’t sure I was up to chairing this group of very competent and different individuals. Was I the one to lead this group forward with a vision?
When I expressed some of these doubts, one person looked at me incredulously, and said, “You were President of Saskatchewan Conference and you’re chairing the Transition Commission for Horseshoe Falls. Really?” It sounded harsh, but it made me realize how ridiculous I was being to think that I couldn’t do the job. Wanting the job, feeling called to it is one thing; but why was I feeling such trepidation and fear?
Our reading today is from one of my favourite prophets. He’s one of my favourites because of his reluctance and the constant push against this call to prophesy. We read of so many prophets who seem to jump as soon as they’re called and who follow God’s instruction without being told twice, but Jeremiah is different. He protests right away as to why God would choose him. “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” It doesn’t specify how young Jeremiah was but maybe he was at that age where not everyone took him seriously. Jeremiah was feeling inadequate and probably scared of this responsibility.
Jeremiah shared God’s message with the people of Judah for forty years and was mostly persecuted, imprisoned, and chased out of town. Jeremiah called for reform and he foretold the coming of an enemy from the north, and people did not want to change and they did not want to believe his predictions. Jeremiah says in chapter 20, “I have become a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me. For whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout, ‘Violence and destruction!’ For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long.”
So why does he continue? Why not tell God that he has tried, but feels no one listening to him, and wants to now rest and live the rest of his life in peace?
Because he cannot. He says, “If I say, 'I will not mention [God] or speak any more in [God’s] name,' [God’] word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.” He can’t quit because it’s too important not to quit. There’s a fire in Jeremiah that cannot be doused, that cannot be covered up and stifled. He cries out against this fire and and even curses the day he was born, but he cannot stop.
Do you know these people? People who do what they do because of the fire in their belly, people who might complain about what they do, complain about the lack of results, complain that people don’t listen, but wouldn’t do anything else?
If you feel strongly, if you find that one thing that stirs up that fire in you, you will bravely go into unsafe spaces, risking your personal safely, because it’s that important.
Moses went to the most powerful man, probably in the world at that time, the Egyptian Pharaoh, and told him, didn’t ask him, to set his people free from slavery. Jesus healed people on the sabbath, he ate with people on the margins, he spoke out against those in power, knowing where it could lead. People throughout history, those known to us and unknown, have been fighting for reform, standing up for justice, and protesting injustice, not because it’s easy, not because they knew they knew they could win, not because they didn’t fear for their safety, but because their hearts were on fire, because a fire was in their bones, and they had no other choice.
You know who I mean. Name them out loud. Those historical figures, those biblical figures, those figures in our own lives who can’t be silent, who have to speak up and speak out.
Friends, what I want to tell you is that these people that we are naming are just like us. They have feelings of inadequacy. They believe themselves to be too young or too old, not smart enough, or strong enough. They all wonder whether their actions will really make any difference, whether people will actually listen to them or take them seriously. They all doubt themselves and doubt their work.
When Jeremiah professed to being too young, God said, “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 Jeremiah felt God touch his mouth and heard, “Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” God had given Jeremiah a great responsibility but God was also telling Jeremiah that he was not alone and that God had given Jeremiah the gifts that he needed for the job. “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.” In other words, Jeremiah was born for this and God made sure he was prepared.
We have the gifts we need for the work that is burning in our hearts. It doesn’t mean we’re going to be a Moses, or a Gandhi, or a Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and by that, I mean that we may not be a name that is recognized by everyone, but we will be known to those who value our work, who need what we have to offer, who are grateful that we are taking the risk to do what we're called to do.
This month, we are talking about brave spaces. We talk a lot about safe spaces and I think we work hard to create safe spaces, but a space will never be completely safe for everyone. Sometimes instead we create spaces where people can be brave, brave to be who they are, to speak their truth, and to share the fire in their bones. Creating brave spaces can be risky; you never know who will step forward or with what you will be confronted. Creating brave spaces means being open to change and to being changed. Brave spaces can be uncomfortable, but they can also be filled with the movement and energy of the Spirit, creating space for new possibilities, making room for the gifts we all have to offer.
May the vastness of God keep us open to possibility. May the wisdom of Christ be our guide as we discern our gifts and discover the fire in our hearts and bones. May the energy of the Spirit move us towards a world of justice and peace and brave spaces for all May it be so. Amen.