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Larry R. Hayward
August 22, 2004
Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

What's Your Thing?
Jeremiah 1:4-10

Presbyterians have long been associated with the doctrine of predestination. In its purest form, this doctrine maintains that God chooses — or predestines — some for salvation and some for damnation. It is not a doctrine to which we still adhere; but it is one with which we are often saddled.

At first glance the passage we have read today supports predestination. The passage describes the call of Jeremiah, a Hebrew prophet who lived over six hundred years prior to Christ. Words and phrases Jeremiah uses to describe "the word of the Lord" that "came to" him give rise to predestinarian thinking:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you
[says the Lord],
And before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you [Jeremiah]
To be a prophet to the nations. [1]

By locating Jeremiah's call prior to his birth, by claiming that he called Jeremiah prior to Jeremiah's conception, God appears to have pre-determined Jeremiah's fate. Hence, predestination.

Yet listen to what one scholar writes about Jeremiah's call:

The call of Jeremiah is one of the clearest and most explicit biblical formulations of the experience of election.

Indeed, it is a genuine example of predestination, but not in the sense of a predestination to salvation or damnation.

The destiny that matters in Jeremiah's case is his calling, his vocation.

Jeremiah was predestined to be the bearer of God's word.

He came into being under the divine commission.

There was…no escaping this calling.

He could not…go back to some other vocation.

Jeremiah was brought into the world to be a prophet of the Lord. [2]

This scholar reframes our understanding of predestination. Instead of predestination primarily pointing to our fate in the life to come, it points to our destiny, our role and purpose, indeed our calling in this life.

II.

The idea that God has a calling — or destiny — for each of us is appealing. I for one am comfortable believing and saying that God's destiny for each of us may in fact be set prior to our birth. We are conceived, created, born for a purpose. Our task is to discover our purpose, understand it, and live toward it and from it, in it and through it.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
Before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you to be ________.

Discovering what God intends to be in the blank, filling in the blank, living according to the way God intends us to fill in the blank — this is our destiny.

III.

Jeremiah's destiny — bearing God's word — often meant bringing a word of warning, a word of doom.

I have put my words in your mouth
[said the Lord to Jeremiah].
Today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms,
To pluck up and to pull down,
To destroy and to overthrow… [3]

Like Jeremiah, some of us are destined not for tasks that are pleasant and affirming, but for tasks that bring hard truths to people and situations who do not want to hear them, people and situations that often turn on us or against us when we tell hard truths.

Some of us are destined:
- To ask hard questions

To bypass easy answers
To refuse to accept what everyone else accepts.

Some of us are destined
- To push people to accept greater challenges
- To push organizations to go beyond business as usual
- To push institutions to look beyond short-term goals into long-term achievements.
Some of us are destined
- In the families in which we live
- In the city in which we reside
- In the corporation for which we work
- In the nation in which we vote and pay taxes

To criticize long-accepted norms, old habits, established powers.

If we are among those called to bear a word of hard truth, Jeremiah is our spiritual forebear. Jeremiah's primary task was

Plucking up
Pulling down
Destroying
Overthrowing.

His role was one of warning and criticism. There was very little building and planting for Jeremiah.

By the same token, not all of us are destined to be as critical as Jeremiah. Some of us are simply called to enter our vocations, to live life with joy, wonder, and hope, to bring joy to others. We are not destined to bear words of doom, but to bear equally powerful — and equally true — words of joy.

I do not watch a lot of TV, but I must tell you the last six months I have been captivated by Eddie Steeples.

Eddie Steeples is the twenty-something, African American male who stars in a series of commercials for Office Max.
Steeples is better known as the "Rubberband Man."
He "dances round his customized delivery cart to…while distributing Office Max supplies" — rubber bands, staples, an alarm clock.
He moves.
He dances.
He jumps.
He shakes.
He spins.
He turns cartwheels.
He rocks.
He rolls.
The "Rubberband Man" delivers products under his legs and around his back.
He tosses them through the air with perfect aim.

Unlike Jeremiah, the "Rubberband Man" is destined to make "the office happy and everyone's life easier." [4]

While Steeples is dancing and delivering, words and music to the 1970s hit by the Spinners —'Rubberband Man' —animate the commercial. In this song, a man cannot wait to go out to a rural, honky-tonk, to catch the performance of a singer/artist who makes music with a rubber band.

Hand me down my walkin' cane
Hand me down my hat
Hurry now and don't be late
'Cause we ain't got time to chat
You and me we're goin' out
To catch the latest sound
Guaranteed to blow your mind
So high you won't come down.

Hey, ya'll prepare yourself
For the Rubberband man
You never heard a sound
Like the rubberband man

You're bound to lose control
When the Rubberband starts to jam
Oh, Lord, this dude is outta sight
Everything he does
Seems to come out right.

Once I went to hear him play
At a club outside of town
I was so surprised, I was hypnotized
By the sound this cat's puttin' down

When I saw this short fat guy
Stretch a band between his toes
Hey, I laughed so hard
'Cause the man got down
When he finally reached his goal

When the rubberband starts to jam
Got that rubberband
Up on his toes
And then he wriggled it up
All around his nose

…

How much of this stuff do he think we can stand
So much rhythm, grace and debonair
from one man, Lord
And then he had nerve to wriggle his left toe
To his knee, got the feelin' in his head. [5]

"Everything he does seems to come out right."

"So much rhythm, grace, and debonair from one man."

"Got the feelin' in his head."

As Steeples delivers office products — rubber bands — he exudes the same joy, energy, delight, as the singer in the song, making melody with something as simply as a rubber band.

The song and the commercial raise questions for us:

What would it be like to so know we have a destiny from God that we are as joyful as the Rubberband Man at the club and the Rubberband Man in the commercial?

What would it be like to have the rhythm and grace in the exercise of our calling that the Rubberband Men have in theirs?

What prevents us from so knowing what God calls us to do that, like them, we have "the feelin' in [our] head"?

Jeremiah is called to

Pluck up and tear down
To destroy and overthrow.

The Rubberband Man is called to lift the spirits of everyone to whom he delivers a Bic pen.

The commercial ends with a question that is pasted across every Office Max poster and ad.

The question: "What's your thing?"

My friends,
What is your thing?

What is the one thing God destines you to do,
Even before you were born?

Is it pluck up and destroy?
Is it to bring joy?

What's your thing?

What can you do to get its "feelin' in [your] head"?

1 Jeremiah 1:5. go back
2 Patrick D. Miller, "The Book of Jeremiah: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections," in The New Interpreter's Bible, Volume VI, Leander Keck, General Editor (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), 580. go back
3 Jeremiah 1:10. go back
4 http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/oro721/cgw079_1.html?printer=1. go back
5 "Rubberband Man," by the Spinners, at http://www.webfitz.com/lyrics/Lyrics/1977/811977.html. go back

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First Presbyterian Church of Cedar Rapids
310 Fifth Street SE Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
Phone: 319-364-6148
E-mail: church@fpccr.org