Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, June 15, 2025
by Rev. Dr. Miles Hopgood, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: Faith is not a relationship, but God works relationally. Jeremiah is a prophet because God has placed the Word in his mouth. Just relationships between people—not the temple—are the habitation of God.
Most of us at some point will wrestle with impostor syndrome, that sinking feeling that anything we have accomplished—the school we attend, the job we were hired to do, etc.—was some sort of mistake that will be noticed eventually. The more competent a person is, the more likely they are to experience these feelings. No one seems to experience more impostor syndrome than the prophets who, going back to Moses, have all pleaded with God that their calling must be some sort of mistake. Jeremiah here is no exception, and all his excuses are classic ones: like Moses, he does not know how to speak; like Samuel, he is too young.
The way God deals with Jeremiah’s objections tells us much about not only what it means to be a prophet but what it means to be God’s people. Who we are before God is not something defined by what we have accomplished—it rests solely on what God has done for us. God knew and consecrated Jeremiah before he was even born, but this is not the heart of what God has done that makes Jeremiah a prophet. What makes him a prophet is the placing of God’s Word within his mouth. The Word is both the necessary and sufficient condition for Jeremiah to be equipped for the ministry to which he has been called. It does not rest on anything about him, only what God has done for him.
Who we are is defined by God, not by others or even ourselves. It isn’t what we have earned or accomplished, failed at or lost which gives truth to our existence: it is the Word of God, which has declared us God’s beloved children.
The way God defines us through relationship is a cause to celebrate human diversity, for what makes each of us unique is what God is naming beloved. It is also an insulation against the way the world would condition our value on our accomplishments. Most of all, as seen in Jeremiah 7, the manner in which God relates to us creates our right relationship to one another. God’s dwelling with the people is not a static thing arising from the existence of the temple; it is a dynamic living defined by the harmony between the worship of God and the just relationship between neighbor. To claim to be God’s people as a matter of ontological status—even one conferred by God’s Word—and not because of the way in which God relates to us and we to one another, is to be deceived. Not that our righteous living earns us our relationship with God or serves as remuneration for what God has done for us. It is simply to see the connection that God’s relating to us is the inauguration of a new relationship between one another, one that makes the walls of the temple porous, combining our worship of God with our love of neighbor as a distinct yet united act. We will never feel fully equipped in who we are or what we have to love our neighbor as we ought. In right living, we will always be impostors, boasting only in the truth and power of God’s Word to work through us what we could not do ourselves.
