REFLECTION 2 FEBRUARY 2025 

By Rev Dr Fei Taule’ale’ausumai 

“I do not know how to speak, I am too young

My early journey into the Presbyterian ministry had its hiccups to say the least.  I had been waiting for over 5 years to preach my first sermon in my home parish as my minister at the time said to me, once you have preached a sermon in my pulpit we can then talk about going in to the ministry.  He never invited me over those 5 years.  However, after I had built up the courage to tell him I was going down to Otago as a private student to study theology on the Friday before I left for Dunedin on Monday, he finally rung me on Saturday night at 9pm and said to me.  “You can take the 11 o’clock English morning service and the 3pm Samoan service.  OMG, I had 13 hours to come up with two sermons and one of them was in Samoan.  As a NZ born my Samoan language skill were near non-existent.  I could understand but I didn’t know how to write let alone preach in Samoan.  My father who was a lay preacher looked at me and said, don’t worry you go and write your English sermon and I will go and write your Samoan sermon.  We did not discuss any biblical texts or themes each went our own way.  At about 1am in the morning my faither and I had finished writing and we met in the lounge to share our reflections.  Guess what?  We both had the exact same text and our sermons were very similar “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.”  I was 25 years old at the time and culturally I was deemed too young to speak.  Our reflections continued with the ensuing verses “Do not say, I am too young….I have put my words in your mouth”.  That Sunday was a very emotional and spiritual experience for me and my family.  It was the beginning of my journey towards learning and speaking Samoan.  I’m not comparing myself to Jeremiah a prophet, but those words from verse 9  seem to sum up my experience too. I couldn’t speak although I didn’t think I could, but I did. 

God told the young prophet Jeremiah not to worry that he was only a boy, but that God would give him the words to speak.  And then God added the divine messenger’s words: “Do not be afraid…for I am with you to deliver you.”  This is the same God who says, before I formed you in the womb I knew you.  In Jerusalem at the time of Jeremiah’s call, religious practice had become completely corrupt. The writer of Jeremiah tells readers that the temple, once holy ground, no longer occupied the meaningful place it once had in the people’s hearts. The whole nation was in need of repentance. God chooses Jeremiah to be this prophet, despite his youth and inexperience. 

Jeremiah did not volunteer for this call. The divine imperative described in 1:10 was no easy task, but though he was young, Jeremiah seemed to sense the scope of this responsibility.  

According to Walter Bruegemann, stories about the life of Jeremiah comprise one of the signature features of the book that bears his name. Narratives of imprisonment, commitment to God’s command not to marry or have children, persecution, false accusations of treason, forced exile to Egypt, destruction of a manuscript by King Jehoiakim, and an unfruitful search for just one righteous person. 

Jeremiah’s home, Anathoth, is located just three miles north of Jerusalem. He is a member of a priestly family that was displaced years earlier by Solomon. Brueggemann goes on to explain the significance of Jeremiah’s family background: 
The importance … is that this family of priests … had long been opposed to the ostentatious self-indulgence of the Davidic house in its trajectory of economic-military autonomy on which Solomon had set it. This means that Jeremiah was a product and representative of a theology grounded in hostility to the Davidic establishment that is both very old and very deep.  He was a preacher’s son, for his father Hilkiah was a priest. He labored as God’s prophet for forty years or more, from 627 b.c. to some time after 586 b.c. Four decades is a long time to be a weeping prophet.

Jeremiah lived when little Israel was tossed around by three great superpowers: Assyria to the north, Egypt to the south, and Babylon to the east. He served — and suffered — through the administrations of three kings: Josiah the reformer, Jehoiakim the despot, and Zedekiah the puppet. He was a prophet during the cold November winds of Judah’s life as a nation, right up to the time God’s people were deported to Babylon. Jeremiah himself was exiled to Egypt, where he died. 

What kept Jeremiah going for over 40 years? Quite simply, he was encouraged by the promise of God’s presence (1:8). The book of Jeremiah records God speaking this same message to Jeremiah six different times. Although Jeremiah feared persecution and ridicule throughout his career, he stayed true to his message, and trusted God’s promise.  Also, there is this wonderful assurance that God knows Jeremiah well: “Before I formed you in the womb” (4:5a). How can Jeremiah fail when he is known so well and held so closely? 

What message do you think God is trying to send to the world? How does our community encourage any and all to speak out? 

What was it like for you when you were young like Jeremiah.  At your school, in your neighbourhood?  Many of us had grown up with stories of abuse that went unreported because it had become so normalized that it was just the way that life was.  Whether you lived in West Auckland or Khandallah or Porirua or wherever, domestic violence and child abuse is not selective and does not discriminate just because you live in a state housing area or a mansion or because you are unemployed, domestic violence does not discriminate according to where you live.  We didn’t necessarily speak up as children, as young people when we witnessed or heard about abuse and violence?  We talked with our friends but never with concerned adults about it.   

I remember sitting at my parents dining table as an adult with my siblings and I pointed geographically to the horror households that surrounded our home during our childhood.  Across the fence and one house to the left a foster son named was fed his food like a dog outside, he was often seen huddling in a corner eating his scraps thrown on the ground like a wild animal.  We heard his beatings day after day after day.  Sometimes he would run through our backyard escaping his usual beatings.   I saw him much later in his old age now a man of over 60 years at that time who looked way older than his years, his face bearing the battle scars of his horrific upbringing.  Across the street and around the corner a young boy was constantly hung on the clothesline and beaten with the vacuum pipe by his adopted father, the kids in the neighbourhood talked about it at school the day after every time it happened.  This young man committed suicide later on his is early twenties he would be about 65 years old now.  Across the road from him was a household of girls whose father was jailed for fathering a child to his own biological daughter…. When he was discharged from prison he went back home and the abuse continued for many many more years with my best friends.   The mother was aware but turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to what was going on in her house.   

What did we do?  What could we do? We were all the same age?  We only knew because our friends trusted us as their best friends with their stories.  We became the quasi counselors, mentors.  We became the receptacles, the carriers of the horror stories of our friends; we carried their secrets because they didn’t want anyone to find out even though many already knew but turned a blind eye, a deaf ear.   

Where did they go to seek safety besides their friends at school?  Many had nowhere to go in our neighbourhood many came to Number 5 Kiernan Place Kelston, our place, our home.  It is easy to understand why mum received her Queens Service Medal for her services to health and the community.   

Jesus entered our history not to play it safe, to keep everyone happy, but to bring healing, wholeness, love and hope to a despairing world.  We are the hands, and legs, the eyes and voices of those who cannot walk, or feed themselves or see or hear.  We have been given a gift to trust those among us regardless of age to share their story and trust that they know of our love. 

As in 1st Corinthians chapter 13 the love chapter, God continues to reveal the extravagant love that compels us to speak but also to speak out against the wrongs and injustices that we see going on around us regardless of age, circumstance, or experience.   

I’m sure many of us here can relate to having a Jeremiah moment in our lives when we were afraid to speak, when we felt inadequate to speak up to speak for justice to represent the voices of the voiceless.  This Jeremiah story gives us hope that this mystery whom we name God journey’s with us and gives us the words to speak in the midst of injustice, in the midst of crisis but also in the midst of grief and love.   

Does this biblical passage give us a sense that we are known by God?  If so, what do you think God is calling you and I to do and say that will build up or tear down, in order that God’s love will be known by all?  Amen. 

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