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Back in 2018, my whole family was gathered at the Veterans’ Affairs Hospital on the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s campus as my dad was honored for his years of service at the VA on the day of his retirement. We knew he would continue to hold some hospital hours and see some patients at UAB, though this would be a big scale back in his professional life. It was going to be a big change.
As the rest of us started to adjust to this shift, I began to notice something new in my dad’s life. Whenever I would visit, my dad usually had the Bible or some other theological text about him, particularly as he was getting ready in the morning. Then my dad turned his focus to learning more through programs like Education for Ministry (EfM). Soon after, I remember getting asked about CPE, short for Clinical Pastoral Education, which is a program for training in hospital chaplaincy that most seminarians take at least one unit in. After some conversations with the UAB Chaplaincy department, my dad went through the CPE program there and fell in love with it. He realized there was one group being underserved which, as a doctor, he was particularly well suited to help: the health care staff. Now doctors respond best to those with the right credentials, and this work of servanthood fit within a vocation already in the church: the diaconate.
In a nutshell, this is the process my dad went through to take him where he is today. Throughout his discernment he was listening to what God is calling him to do as well as how the gifts he already possessed were leading him towards this new work God had planned for him.
It is in this vein that our reading from the Prophet Jeremiah particularly speaks to. When Jeremiah is uncertain about God’s call for him to become a prophet, the Lord says to him, “Do not say, ‘I am only a na’ar’; for to all to whom I send you shall go, and whatever I command you shall speak. Be not afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.”
I use the actually Hebrew word in this passage because it is mistranslated here. Yes, the word na’ar can mean “boy”, or “youth”, but the word is more appropriately translated in it’s fuller meaning as “servant”.
You see, there is an idea here, one that is different from how we often interpret this text. Jeremiah’s father was a priest, which in his day and age would make him a priest as well, at least when he reached the right time of his life. Whether preparing for this role in the Temple or currently living it out, Jeremiah’s concern is not merely, or at least solely, his youth, but instead to his vocation, future or present, as a priest of God’s people. He sees this, his servanthood in the Temple, as preventing his worthiness to serve God as a prophet. God does not see it at all that way.
What we can all agree on is that God calls people to new tasks regardless of their age and experience. He called Abraham and Sarah to be parents when they were quite old by the biblical account. God calls those in middle age as well. God called Moses to serve after he had spent many years in a comfortable family life with a job, a wife, and children. Jesus called Peter and the sons of Zebedee from their profession as fishermen to go out with him and “fish for people.” Paul was called by the Risen Lord after Paul spent a long time persecuting the church. God called other prophets from their own professions, like Amos who was a shepherd and a “dresser of sycamore trees”. God even calls the very young as he did with Samuel in the Temple and Mary from maidenhood to be the mother of God in Christ Jesus in this world.
In all these cases, and especially with Jeremiah, we see the need to be open to what God is working in us. We need to be open to God knowing how best our talents fit into the Lord’s work, even if we don’t recognize those talents in ourselves. We have to accept that God may be calling us to something new and different, such as serving as a deacon after a lifetime as a physician.
Being called to something new and different, being called to a change, can be a very scary thing. That is true whether you are being called by God from your current servanthood, like Jeremiah, or if you are going towards it, as with the diaconate. The word “deacon”, like na’ar, means servant. Like all ministries, lay and ordained, the diaconate is called to represent Christ Jesus to all people.
In accepting God’s call to this servant ministry in the order of deacons, my dad has heeded God’s desire for him to serve in a new way. He has taken the call to be a servant to all, even those healthcare professionals he has worked with over the years. He has taken the call to represent Jesus Christ as a servant directly to his colleagues, a role that Jesus Himself reminds us in our Gospel lesson according to Luke, a physician. As we will shortly hear in our Bishop Glenda Curry’s Examination of my father, a deacon is called to bring the needs of the world back to us in the church. In this way he will be an example to those he serves in his ministry as well as to all of us here.
Yet there’s an important way the The soon-to-be Reverend Doctor John Ira Kennedy Jr. has begun to be an example to us already, and I hope you will all take this example home with you. God often calls us to new service in our lives. That is true if we are young, middle-aged, or old, or even if we are lay or ordained. As we see in my father’s life, and with Jeremiah’s, Paul’s, and all those who have come before us, we do not know when God will call us, or what God will call us to do. If we can remain open, if we can allow ourselves to see the trajectory that God has given to each of us throughout our lives, then we will see how God is, and has been, molding and shaping us to serve our Lord in this world. All of us have the vocation to heed God’s call for us. That is all any of us can ask from one another, and it is all any of us can do.