Called for the Life of the World

What’s the fire burning within you?

Our reading from Jeremiah today is an intimate one. So intimate, in fact, that it almost feels like we’re eavesdropping. God comes close, so close to Jeremiah to tell him that God has formed him and that God has known him before he was in his mother’s womb. And then God sanctifies him, touches his mouth, gives him words to speak as a call upon his life like a fire within his belly.

But it’s not a call Jeremiah has signed up for. It’s not something he has spent years working toward or training for. And it is not a distant, desired or disillusioned dream either. It is deeply personal, woven into Jeremiah’s very being. Before he was born, before he was conceived and before any inkling of his existence, God had already imagined him, shaped his purpose, and planted
a call deep within him. And, yet, when the call comes, Jeremiah resists. “Ah, Lord God! I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” He is too young, too small, too unqualified, too *not enough* to take on the grandeur of this call.

But Jeremiah is not the first to feel this way. He joins a long list of reluctant matriarchs, patriarchs and prophets – Moses, who stammered; Sarah, who laughed; Mary, who was perplexed; and Paul who persecuted.… Time and time again, God calls the least likely, the least prepared, the least impressive to bring about God’s kingdom. This is God’s way. Because calling is not about our aptitude, ability, or age —it is about who God has formed us to be not for our own sake but for the sake of the world. For this is what a prophet is after all:
not to foretell the future – but to call the world back into the reality of the
present moment and the truth of who they are: children of God.

And so, when God speaks, though Jeremiah may not fully understand it yet, something like fire begins to burn within him. A fire he will describe 20 chapters later that has “shut up in his bones” – a fire so strong that if he tries to hold it in, it will consume him completely. And this fire becomes known to him not at the height of his prophetic ministry, but rather, at its lowest. Because here’s the thing about calling: it’s rarely easy. Jeremiah’s task is no simple one. God’s words within him will “pluck up and pull down, destroy and overthrow, build and plant.”
His calling is to disrupt, to turn the world on its head, to tell the truth when people would rather not hear it. And that makes him wildly unpopular.

His own people reject him.
His community turns against him.
He is scorned, mocked, cast aside.
And yet, he cannot turn away from God’s words burning within him. Because this call is not for him. It is for the life of God’s world.

What is the fire burning within you?

Because, just like Jeremiah, God comes close, very close to us too. God knows us before we were in our mother’s womb. God imagined us before conception. And each one of us has a calling woven into us before our very existence. We may not have had an experience like Jeremiah’s. We may not have heard God’s voice in a burning bush, been blinded by light, or received a divine message in a dream.
But we have been called.

And here’s what we often misunderstand about calling —it’s not about what we do, it’s about who we are becoming. And when we step into the person God has formed us to be, we come alive in ways we never quite imagined. We feel the fire in our bones not for our sake but for the sake of the world. But just like Jeremiah, that fire often leads us into difficult places. Because calling isn’t just about building—it’s also about tearing down. It means speaking up when silence is easier. It means confronting injustice when it would be more comfortable to look away. It means choosing love when bitterness and division tempts us. But, the most frightening thing about calling is that, it will cost us our whole lives.

This week marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. An anniversary that could not have come at a better time in light of the increasing anti Semitic attacks and threats in Sydney. And it is an anniversary that reminds us of those who refused to turn away from the fire burning within them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was such a person. A German pastor and theologian, he watched as Hitler rose to power, as his country became consumed by fear, nationalism, and hatred. He watched as the church—the very people meant to proclaim the truth—fell silent or joined ranks with the Nazis. And something within him burned.
He could have stayed safe. He had the chance to remain in the United States and avoid what was coming. But he couldn’t turn away. So he went back. He joined a movement that rejected Nazi ideology and sought to reclaim what it meant to follow Christ. He preached against Hitler. He helped organize secret networks to rescue Jewish people. And eventually, he joined a plot to overthrow Hitler himself. It cost him everything. He was arrested, imprisoned, and ultimately executed just weeks before the war ended. But even in prison, the fire did not go out. His letters reveal a man who had come alive in his calling, even and particularly in the lowest points of his fight against Nazism. At such a point he wrote: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

What is the Fire Burning within You?

Jeremiah didn’t become a prophet because he was particularly wise, or brave, or good at public speaking. In fact he was arguably the least impressive and the least skilled prophet in the Bible. But he became a prophet because it was woven into him before he even existed, and it was a fire within him that he couldn’t shut up.

The same is true for us. We’re not called to create our own mission. We’re not called to manufacture some grand purpose for our lives. Rather, we are called to listen to the voice of the One who knew us and formed us before we were in our mother’s womb.  

So what is the fire burning within you?

Maybe you feel it when you witness injustice. Maybe you sense it as a deep longing to create, to heal, to teach, to serve. Or maybe it’s a pull toward something that scares you, something that feels too big, too uncertain, too impossible. Because if we deny listening to God’s call on our lives, we deny ourselves from the very reason of why Christ came: so that we might have life and to have it abundantly. Because here’s the paradox of calling: those who try to save their life will lose it, but those who lose their life will find it. Jeremiah, at his lowest, felt like he had lost everything. And yet, it was in that very place that he felt the fire of God’s presence, the fire of his own calling, breathing new life into his soul. Because God’s call, no matter how tumultuous or terrifying, is an invitation into true life that will pour forth into the life of the world.

So, what is the fire burning within you?

What is waiting to be breathed, born and blessed through you?

May you have the courage to listen and become who God has formed you to be—for the life of the world.