The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

 © 2022, Dr. Tamilio

I had just finished my Master of Arts degree in English.  It was the spring of 1992.  I should have already applied to Ph.D. programs in English but found myself twiddling my thumbs instead.  Something was holding me back and I did not know what it was.  This had been my dream for the better part of six years.  I wanted to be a stuffy, old, English professor offering insight into twentieth-century literary theory and, of course, the work of T.S. Eliot.  What was I waiting for?

It was at this same time that I found myself returning to church.  Like many young adults, I drifted away from church after I was confirmed.  You may know the old joke about the head Deacon who came to the minister to tell him that the church building was infested with mice.  He asked him, “Reverend, how can we get it so that these mice leave and never return?”  The minister said, “Let’s confirm them.”

Unlike the mice, I returned.

Our church had a new pastor.  Well, she wasn’t really new.  She had been there for a few years, but she was new to me.  Anywho, as my daughter says, I met with this “new” pastor and told her my story.  I said that I wasn’t applying for Ph.D. programs in English, because I was looking for a way to combine my three loves: literature, philosophy, and theology.  However, I had little training in theology and did not know which way to turn.  She looked me straight in the eye and literally said, “It sounds to me as if you’re being called into the ministry.”  What I wanted to say (what I wanted to say) was, “It sounds to me as if you’re insane.”

So, I spent the better part of the next year thinking and praying about her “belief.”  I found myself sending away for catalogues from local seminaries.  As I read through them, and especially their course offerings, two thoughts went through my mind:

Thought #1: “Wow, this is really interesting.  I think I would love this!”

Thought #2: “What the heck am I doing!”

It got to the point where I wasn’t making any headway.  Finally, I decided to roll up my sleeves and dive in.  (I may be mixing my metaphors a bit here, but you get the point.)  My reasoning was that if worse came to worst, then I could always transfer the classes I took into another degree program.

There was something else troubling me, though.  I did not feel as if I was worthy to be a minister.  (I still don’t — if you want to know the truth.)  In my mind, ministers were incredibly righteous people who spent all day reading the Bible and praying.  They certainly did not play lead guitar in bands that played at places like the Paradise, the Channel, and the Rat.  I wasn’t a bad person.  I did not do drugs or anything like that.  However, I did not exactly see myself as ministerial material.  It was then that I discovered Jeremiah.  Actually, the same pastor I mentioned a moment ago pointed me to the prophet, particularly the words he offers to evade his calling.  Let’s back up a bit.

Jeremiah hears the voice of God declare that before he (Jeremiah) was even in the womb, God appointed him to be a prophet.  Jeremiah says, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.”  “I am no prophet,” T.S. Eliot declared through his character J. Alfred Prufrock, and it sounds as if Jeremiah felt the same way.  I also felt as if I was too young.  I was a ripe twenty-four years old at the time.  (Isn’t it funny how young twenty-four seems the older you get.  I was a child!)

Still, the Word of the Lord came through my Pastor.  It was as if I was hearing the words he spoke to Jeremiah: “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’  You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.  Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you.”  Hebrew Bible scholar Robert Davidson claims that Jeremiah “feels he is being pitch-forked into a task for which he is totally unprepared and wholly inexperienced.  He is overwhelmed by a sense of his own personal inadequacy.”[1]  We do not know how old Jeremiah is.  “The word translated ‘youth’ covers a wide range in the Old Testament, from a newborn child to a man on the threshold of marriage.  It may indicate that Jeremiah was still a teenager.”[2]  Charles L. Feinberg, another Hebrew Bible scholar, claims that Jeremiah was probably about twenty.[3]

But, in the end, it really isn’t about age.

I do not think there are too many of us who feel qualified to speak for God.  But “ay, there’s the rub,” as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet.  None of us are qualified, but, thankfully, God qualifies the unqualified.  He makes right the unrighteous, which is all of us.  How?  Through Jesus Christ.

We have been talking about this in our Bible study recently.  Jesus is the only head of any religion who claims to be God.  That’s because he IS God — he is God incarnate.  The chasm that sin carved between humanity and God can never be bridged by us.  It doesn’t matter what you think, or believe, or do.  Only God can overcome that gulf, and he has definitively for everyone.

Jesus is the authority on which we stand.  He is the authority, not us.  Before we engage in any ministry, we pray for him to empower us, to use us, and to speak through us.  It does not matter what the world thinks.  We do not need secular approval or any sort of human licensure.  Well, you do if you’re ordained, but it is still Christ working through pastors that give the latter their authority.

When you speak God’s Word, you have authority.  It is not a word that you manufactured or conjured out of thin air.  It is a word that was placed in your heart by the God of love who continues to reach out to us all and guide us in our individual and collective ministries.

Jeremiah did not feel he could speak, because he was too young.  Others feel they are too old.  Some feel that they do not have anything worth saying.  Some feel they are too dumb, or too boring, or too unworthy.  We could make a list as long as Rapunzel’s hair.  The truth is that the answer that God gives to Jeremiah he gives to us as well.  In verses 9 and 10, God says to the prophet, “Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, ‘I have put my words in your mouth.  See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.’”

God has touched our mouths as well.  We have been blessed with the Word.  Go forth and declare it with God’s fingerprints on your lips.  Declare it for the world to hear.  Amen.

[1] Robert Davidson, Jeremiah, vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Know Press, 1983), 13.

[2] Ibid., 12.

[3] Charles L. Feinberg, “Jeremiah” from The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 6 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan/Regency Reference Library, 1986), 383.