Sermon August 31: "Your Words Were Found, and I Ate Them . . ."

THE TWELFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Year A, Lectionary 24

August 31, 2014

Jeremiah 15:15-21

Romans 12:9-21

Matthew 16:21-28

Pastor David Tryggestad

Concordia Evangelical Lutheran Church

Duluth, Minnesota

Folks like you who show up on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend probably are the last ones who need to hear Jesus’ admonition to deny yourselves and to take up your cross and follow him. No doubt, all of you might have chosen to do other things this morning than to attend worship.

But I wonder if Jesus’ words might sound and feel different if we were to hear them, not as admonition, but rather as invitation.

More on that later.

I have always been drawn to our prophet Jeremiah’s somewhat strange image:

Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart;
for I am called by your name,
O Lord, God of hosts. (Jeremiah 15:16)

I cannot but help to hear Jesus’ words to Satan, who is tempting Jesus in his hunger to turn stones into bread: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).

Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart . . .

The image of eating the words of God evokes the adage, “We are what we eat.” If it is true with nutrition, that “We are what we eat,” how much more true might it be that “We are what we eat” when what we eat is the word of God?!

I am reminded of Psalm 42: “As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you” (vs. 1).

Our souls hunger and thirst for God.

For our prophet Jeremiah, it is not enough to read God’s word; it is not enough to hear God’s word; it is not enough to sing God’s word. Jeremiah longs to eat God’s word.

“We are what we eat.”

Jeremiah goes on, “. . . for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.”

By what or by whose name are we called? Would anyone know to call us Christians? Would anyone know to call us Christians by our words? By our actions?

What is our “diet”? What words do we read? What words do we hear? What words do we sing? What words do we eat?

“We are what we eat.”

Jeremiah, who lived one of the loneliest and most tragic lives in all of Scripture, found joy in the word of God:

Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart;
for I am called by your name,
O Lord, God of hosts. (Jeremiah 15:16)

The older I get, the more convinced I am that people are desperate for a measure of joy in their lives, and they search desperately trying to find it. Tragically, we tend to look in all the wrong places. Often, our desperate but misguided search has devastating consequences on those around us. I believe that people are desperate for a measure of joy in their lives. Jeremiah knew where to find it.

Maybe the Apostle Paul had discovered what Jeremiah had also discovered some 600 years or so earlier. Paul had also found that joy. Paul and Jeremiah shared in being persecuted for their faith in God. Yet Paul could write: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (Romans 12:14).

In this light, Paul could go on to declare: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (vs. 21).

How different might the world look if we responded to evil with good? How might God work though good rather than through evil?

I’d like to return to the question I threw out at the beginning of my sermon: I wonder if Jesus’ words might sound and feel different if we were to hear them, not as admonition, but rather as invitation.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?” (Matthew 16:24-26).

What if we heard these words as invitation rather than admonition?

I heard an interview on the radio yesterday with Jeffrey Kluger talking about his new book, The Narcissist Next Door: Understanding the Monster in Your Family, in Your Office, in Your Bed—in Your World. He asserts that narcissists are extremely sensitive to criticism because their self-esteem is brittle, contrary to the mask narcissists put on to conceal their extreme self-loathing. But it’s not only narcissists who are driven by self-interest. It’s human nature to be consumed by self.

What might it be like to be set free from obsession with self? Is freedom to be found in self-denial so that we might embrace something larger than ourselves?

One of the potted half-barrels in my garden is filled with Coreopsis “Summer Punch,” an annual with a beautiful, small, bright yellow and deep burgundy flower that resembles a miniature Denver Daisy. Last weekend it seemed all the plants had stopped blooming; all that was left were the many brown and dried up blooms. I decided to cut the plant way back, hoping it would come back yet this fall to bloom again. I remember it was dusk, almost dark, and we were getting ready to go out of town for several days, and I left the cuttings lying on the grass around the barrel. Yesterday afternoon, after I had returned, when I walked through the garden, I saw all these bright and beautiful flowers seemingly blooming in the grass. When I got closer, I discovered they were blooming on the remnants of the cuttings I had discarded earlier in the week.

I thought of Jesus’ words in our Gospel for today: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Let’s go back to our prophet, Jeremiah, who found his life, though to the outside world it seemed he had lost it. He had found the source of true joy in the midst of his persecution:

Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart;
for I am called by your name,
O Lord, God of hosts.

The Gospel writer John insists that Jesus himself is the Word made flesh. In the Lord’s Supper, we are invited to partake in eating and drinking of this Word: “This is my body given for you. This is my blood shed for you.”

When we partake in the Lord’s Supper, we become the Body of Christ, individually and collectively.

When we eat of the Word of God, which is Jesus himself, we become what we eat.

Your words were found, and I ate them,
and your words became to me a joy
and the delight of my heart;
for I am called by your name,
O Lord, God of hosts.

“For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26).

Thanks be to God!