1 Before
Knowing that the fully developed, passionate humanity of Jeremiah necessarily had a complex and intricate background, we prepare to examine it. But we are brought up short. We are told next to nothing: three bare, unadorned background items — his father’s name, Hilkiah; his father’s vocation, priest; his place of birth, Anathoth. We want to know more. Without more information how can we gain an adequate understanding of the humanity of Jeremiah? We need to know the social and economic conditions of Anathoth. We need to know whether the father was passive or assertive. We need to know if the mother was overly protective and when she weaned her son. We need to know the teaching methods used by local wise men. The questions pile up. Lack of evidence frustrates us. What we need is a breakthrough manuscript discovery in seventh century B.C. Anathoth, manuscripts containing anecdotes, statistics and letters — raw material for a reconstruction of the world into which Jeremiah was born.
We fantasize an archaeological scoop. Meanwhile what we have right before us turns out to be far more useful — a theological probe. Instead of being told what Jeremiah’s parents were doing, we are told what his God was doing: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jer 1:5).
2 The first move
Before Jeremiah knew God, God knew Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” This turns everything we ever thought about God around. We think that God is an object about which we have questions. We are curious about God. We make inquiries about God. We read books about God. We get into late night bull sessions about God. We drop into church from time to time to see what is going on with God. We indulge in an occasional sunset or Symphony to cultivate a feeling of reverence for God.
But that is not the reality of our lives with God. Long before we ever got around to asking questions about God, God has been questioning us. Long before we got interested in the subject of God, God subjected us to the most intensive and searching knowledge. Before it ever crossed our minds that God might be important, God singled us out as important. Before we were formed in the womb, God knew us. We are known before we know.
This realization has a practical result: no longer do we run here and there, panicked and anxious, searching for the answers to life. Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out. Rather, we come to God, who knows us and reveals to us the truth of our lives. The fundamental mistake is to begin with ourselves and not God. God is the center from which all life develops.
All wise reflection corroborates Scripture here. We enter a world we didn’t create. We grow into a life already provided for us. We arrive in a complex of relationships with other wills and destinies that are already in full operation before we are introduced. If we are going to live appropriately, we must be aware that we are living in the middle of a story that was begun and will be concluded by another. And this other is God.
My identity does not begin when I begin to understand myself. There is something previous to what I think about myself, and it is what God thinks of me. That means that everything I think and feel is by nature a response, and the one to whom I respond is God. I never speak the first word. I never make the first move.
Jeremiah’s life didn’t start with Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s salvation didn’t start with Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s truth didn’t start with Jeremiah. He entered the world in which the essential parts of his existence were already ancient history. So do we.
Sometimes when we are in close and involved conversation with three or four other people, another person joins the group and abruptly begins saying things, arguing positions and asking questions in complete ignorance of what has been said for the past two hours, oblivious to the delicate conversational balances that have been achieved. When that happens, I always want to say, “Just shut up for a while, won’t you? Just sit and listen until you get caught up on what is going on here. Get in tune with what is taking place, then we will welcome you into our conversation.”
God is more patient. He puts up with our interruptions; he backtracks and fills us in on the old stories; he repeats the vital information. But how much better it is if we take the time to get the drift of things, to find out where we fit. The story into which life fits is already well on its way when we walk into the room. It is an exciting, brilliant, multi-voiced conversation. The smart thing is to find out the identity behind the voices and become familiar with the context in which the words are being used. Then, gradually, we venture a statement, make a reflection, ask a question or two, even dare to register an objection. It is not long before we are regular participants in the conversation in which, as it unfolds, we get to know ourselves even as we are known.
3 Choosing sides
The second item of background information provided on Jeremiah is this: “Before you were born I consecrated you.” Consecrated means set apart for God’s side. It means that the human is not a cog in a machine. It means we are chosen for something important that God is doing.
What is God doing? He is saving; he is rescuing; he is blessing; he is providing; he is judging; he is healing; he is enlightening. There is a spiritual war in progress, an all-out moral battle. There is evil and cruelty, unhappiness and illness. There is superstition and ignorance, brutality and pain. God is in continuous and energetic battle against all of it. God is for life and against death. God is for love and against hate. God is for hope and against despair. God is for heaven and against hell. There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square foot of space is contested.
Jeremiah, before he was born, was enlisted on God’s side in this war. He wasn’t given a few years in which to look around and make up his mind which side he would be on, or even whether he would join a side at all. He was already chosen as a combatant on God’s side. And so are we all. No one enters existence as a spectator. We either take up the life to which we have been consecrated or we traitorously defect from it. We cannot say, "Hold it!" I am not quite ready. Wait until I have sorted things out.”
For a long time all Christians called each other “saints.” They were all saints regardless of how well or badly they lived, of how experienced or inexperienced they were. The word saint did not refer to the quality or virtue of their acts, but to the kind of life to which they had been chosen, life on a battlefield. It was not a title given after a spectacular performance, but a mark of whose side they were on. The word saint is the noun form of the verb consecrated that gave spiritual shape to Jeremiah even before he had biological shape.
Remember when you were at school and sides were being chosen. Perhaps, like me, you were always the last one chosen. Imagine that when everyone else had been chosen, you are left standing in the middle between the two teams. The captains argued over who was going to have to choose you, and suddenly you realize that having you on the team was a liability. You went from being a zero to a minus.
But not with God. Not a zero. Not a minus. I have a set-apart place that only I can fill. No one can substitute for me. No one can replace me. Before I was good for anything, God decided that I was good for what he was doing. My place in life doesn’t depend on how well I do in the entrance examination. My place in life is not determined by what market there is for my type of personality.
God is out to win the world in love and each person has been selected in the same way that Jeremiah was, to be set apart to do it with him. He doesn’t wait to see how we turn out to decide to choose or not to choose us. Before we were born he chose us for his side — consecrated us.
4 The great giveaway
The third thing that God did to Jeremiah before Jeremiah did anything on his own was this: “I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” The word appointed is, literally, “gave” (nathan) — I gave you as a prophet to the nations. God gives. He is generous. He is lavishly generous. Before Jeremiah ever got it together he was given away.
That is God’s way. He did it with his own son, Jesus. He gave him away. He gave him to the nations. He did not keep him on display. He did not preserve him in a museum. He did not show him off as a trophy. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16).
And he gave Jeremiah away. I can hear Jeremiah objecting, “Wait a minute. Don’t be so quick to give me away. I’ve got something to say about this. I’ve got my inalienable rights. I have a few decisions about life that I am going to make myself.” Imagine God’s response: “Sorry, but I did it before you were even born. It’s already done; you are given away.”
Some things we have a choice in, some we don’t. In this we don’t. It is the kind of world into which we were born. God created it. God sustains it. Giving is the style of the universe. Giving is woven into the fabric of existence. If we try to live by getting instead of giving, we are going against the grain. It is like trying to go against the law of gravity — the consequence is bruises and broken bones. In fact, we do see a lot of distorted, misshapen, crippled lives among those who defy the reality that all life is given and must continue to be given to be true to its nature.
Birds have feet and can walk. Birds have talons and can grasp a branch securely. They can walk; they can cling. But flying is their characteristic action, and not until they fly are they living at their best, gracefully and beautifully.
Giving is what we do best. It is the air into which we were born. It is the action that was designed into us before our birth. Giving is the way the world is. God gives himself. He also gives away everything that is. He makes no exceptions for any of us. We are given away to our families, to our neighbors, to our friends, to our enemies — to the nations. Our life is for others. That is the way creation works. Some of us try desperately to hold on to ourselves, to live for ourselves. We look so bedraggled and pathetic doing it, hanging on to the dead branch of a bank account for dear life, afraid to risk ourselves on the untried wings of giving. We don’t think we can live generously because we have never tried. But the sooner we start the better, for we are going to have to give up our lives finally, and the longer we wait the less time we have for the soaring and swooping life of grace.
Jeremiah could have hung on to the dead-end street where he was born in Anathoth. He could have huddled in the security of his father’s priesthood. He could have conformed to the dull habits of his culture. He didn’t. He believed what had been told him about his background, that God long before gave him away, and he participated in the giving, throwing himself into his appointment.
5 Dignity and design
Many critical things happen before I am conceived and born that predetermine the reality that I experience: biological things that make me a person that walks and not a fish that swims, geographic things that provide me a temperate zone instead of an ice age, scientific things that produce physicians to visit when I am sick and not witch-doctors, political things that make me a citizen in a democracy and not a servant on an estate. But the most important things are what God did before I was conceived, before I was born. He knew me, therefore I am no accident; he chose me, therefore I cannot be a zero; he gave me, therefore I must not be a consumer.
Jeremiah sets the pattern for us for authentic living. Has anyone lived so well out of such deep reservoirs of dignity and design — no hollow piece of strutting straw — as Jeremiah? He did it from a base of meditation on the awesome before of his life, and he lived out of this background and not against it. This, not Anathoth, was where he came from, and the accent in his speech betrays his origins to anyone with a sensitive ear.
We get no help from our contemporaries who rarely go back further than the minutes of the previous meeting in an attempt to understand the agenda of their humanity. We are so used to considering everything through the prism of our current feelings and our most recent acquisitions that it is a radical change to consider the vast before. But if we would live well, it is necessary. Otherwise we live feebly and gropingly, blind to the glory that we are known, chosen and given away by God.
