Jeremiah 18:1-11
Semi-continuous Revised Common Lectionary
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 7, 2025
Can we agree from the top that Jeremiah has a terrible job?
My first job wasn’t that great. In high school, I worked in data entry for a company that consulted with colleges about their application processes. My job was to input survey data from handwritten forms. It was incredibly mind-numbing and repetitive — though, in retrospect, it was flexible, peaceful, and involved basically no intra-office politics. Lots of jobs are far worse.
And at least I didn’t have to tell an entire country that God had judged them and found them wanting.
Of course, Jeremiah isn’t alone among prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures whose jobs I don’t envy. Who wouldn’t rather get to be Isaiah, at least in the book’s second and third volumes, delivering a message of comfort and deliverance? Why would anybody want, for example, Amos’s job, which is just to call his people to an uncomfortable repentance: spend more time worrying about social welfare, and less time worrying about religious niceties, or you will incur God’s wrath.
If anything, though, Jeremiah has it worse. By Jeremiah’s time, biblical Israel had run out of options. The enemy is at the gates. Jerusalem is about to fall, and the people are about to be brought into exile. Their fate, at this point, is sealed — at least for the generations who will experience captivity. Jeremiah has little repentance to offer. His entire call is just to be the bearer of bad news. His job is to be the messenger, and hope he doesn’t get shot.
I’m glad I don’t have Jeremiah’s job, though, to be honest, some days it feels like I do.
I’m glad I don’t have Jeremiah’s job, though, to be honest, some days it feels like I do. I suspect it feels the same way for you. It’s hard to stand in a pulpit and bear the bad news about the state of the world. It’s hard to come to a session meeting and bear the bad news about the state of the budget. Notwithstanding the everyday joys of ministry – of which there are many – I think Jeremiah would quickly recognize the emotional landscape of church leadership in 2025. We are trying to tell the truth. We are trying to share good news. Sometimes it’s hard to do both at the same time.
But of course, as Jeremiah 18:1-11 reminds us, God’s creative power is at least as strong as God’s destructive power. It may be easier to shatter a pot than to build one, but the powerful image of God the potter reminds us that God can easily do both, and that God has as much capacity for rebuilding as God does for dismantling. Nobody enjoys living through a season of shattering — even though that does seem to be where we find ourselves. Telling the truth about the world as it shatters is a terrible job. But there’s another truth worth telling: that God the potter is also always reusing and rebuilding the broken pieces.
Our job is to tell the whole story: the truth about the world as it is, and the truth about the world as God calls and rebuilds it to be. Neither of those stories are particularly easy. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news, but in my experience, right now, people are much more willing to believe it. In some ways, telling the good news is even harder, because it defies our senses. It asks us to believe something about the world that we can’t always see, and struggle to imagine. Even for Jeremiah, who does occasionally try to tell good news — later on, he buys land in Jerusalem in anticipation of a post-exilic return — even then, his optimism is met with just as much disbelief as his original prophetic gloom. It seems like telling good news can be just as hard a job.
Tell it anyway. Do it anyway.
It seems like telling good news can be just as hard a job. Tell it anyway. Do it anyway.
Yes, we are living through a time in which we are witnessing the shattering of so much of what we value and hold dear. But God is still rebuilding.
Yes, we are living through days in which the torrent of bad news seems unending. But Jesus Christ is still Lord of Heaven and Earth.
Yes, we are called to tell the truth about the world as it is — about the country, about the church budget, about the fear running through so much of our system. But we are also called to tell the truth about the world as it can be, the world God calls us to be.
It’s a hard job. Do it anyway.
Questions for reflection on Jeremiah 18:1-11
- What’s the worst job you’ve ever had? What made it difficult?
- What are the hard truths in your community right now? Whose job is it to name them and share them?
- Where is God rebuilding in your community right now? How do you hear stories of God’s imagination for the future?
View the corresponding Order of Worship for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
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