Stop Pleading Inadequacy: What Jeremiah Teaches Us About Surviving Saturday
I have a confession to make: I am not a "ringer."
For those of you who don't know (and honestly, I just learned this recently), that's what devoted fans of The Lord of the Rings call themselves. My familiarity with Tolkien's masterpiece is, to put it generously, limited. Yet everywhere I turn—in Christian books, commentaries, sermon illustrations—I come across references to hobbits and wizards and epic quests. It seems I've missed some essential memo about being a proper pastor.
But recently, I found myself chewing on a particular exchange from The Fellowship of the Ring, and it felt like exactly what our church community needs to hear as we move into 2026. The scene comes just after Gandalf has explained to Frodo the shadowed history of the ring, insinuating that Frodo can no longer stay safely in the Shire. Frodo's response is devastating in its honesty:
"I am not made for perilous quests. I wish I had never seen the ring. Why did it come to me? Why was I chosen?"
Gandalf's reply cuts through Frodo's desperation: "Such questions cannot be answered. You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess, not for power, not for wisdom. But you have been chosen and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have."
I get Frodo. I get him deeply.
The Kind of Person I Actually Am
Like Frodo, I don't feel built to withstand the kinds of adventures that would continually place me on the knife edge of life and death. There's a joke I return to whenever the subject of military service comes up: no matter how complex my thoughts about it might be, I could never join anyway because I would absolutely be the first person to die. I would shoot myself in the foot on day one. I am not made for such things.
The largest part of me just really wants to read good books and sip hot tea. That's genuinely what I want to do with myself.
Perhaps you enjoy watching superhero movies because, in some ways, it helps you rest assured that you don't have to be one yourself—that you can be brave and do incredibly hard things by association. I understand that impulse. But the life of faith, real spiritual formation in the way of Jesus, will not let any of us get off that easily.
By virtue of our discipleship, we have been chosen for a perilous quest whether we feel ourselves up to it or not.
The Letter We Needed to Hear
Some of you were present last September when Pastor Anthony preached one of the most important sermons I have yet to hear concerning our common life together. He was reflecting on the letters to the churches of Asia Minor in Revelation 2 and 3, and he imagined what a letter to The Table Church might contain. Here's a portion of that brilliant, anointed reflection:
"But I have this against you. In your necessary work of tearing down false idols, you have become afraid to encounter the living God. Your deconstruction has been brave, but where is your reconstruction? You speak beautifully of justice and community, but when did you last allow yourself to be undone by mystery? To be surprised by grace? Your cynicism, though earned through pain, has become a wall that keeps out not just harmful religion, but transformative encounter. You've learned to critique worship, but forgotten how to surrender in it. You analyze scripture, but resist letting it analyze you. You've become so good at spotting spiritual manipulation that you've lost the ability to be spiritually moved."
That letter was a particularly anointed word for our community. And it's a word I hope we can carry into 2026. How can we set ourselves toward encountering the living God this year? How can we allow ourselves to be undone by grace and by mercy? How can we become those who sense and respond to the movements of God? In a word, how can we become saints in the traditional sense of that word? Why Jeremiah? Why Now?
When we look to the Bible, we might expect it to be full of people who are unquestionably saints—people we can simply imitate. But the hard truth is that apart from Jesus, nearly all the prominent people in Scripture come to us flawed. Yet a few people stand out, and one of those people is the prophet Jeremiah.
Jeremiah was summoned by God to a perilous quest. And along the way, despite the dramatic ups and downs of his life, he became what Richard Beck calls "a human thin space between heaven and earth." For our first sermon series of 2026, we're going to spend time with the book of Jeremiah, exploring both the prophet's life and the prophet's words.
The book of Jeremiah has the distinction of being one of the only prophetic books that contains both stories about the prophet and words from the prophet. He was a man who lived faithfully inside of the adventure that God had invited him to. And he lived faithfully during a time of exile.
See, the nation to which Jeremiah belonged was constantly subject to the whims of much more powerful nations. When Babylon, the dominant empire of the time, invaded—not once, not twice, but three times—it destroyed the Jerusalem temple and carried off the population to Babylon in waves that essentially decimated the nation. It was a time of national collapse and theological disaster.
Yet Jeremiah lived a faithful, God-saturated life through all of that. He had experienced the Friday of his people—the Friday in which it must have felt like God had died. And his words and his life make clear that he looked forward to the Sunday when his people would know resurrection and restoration.
But the book of Jeremiah holds us on the long Saturday. The devastating in-between time.
Living Through Our Own Saturdays
I think it's crucial that we learn from the prophet Jeremiah how to survive the Saturdays of our lives—how to be faithful in seasons of exile.
Maybe you were already disillusioned with the history and politics of our nation, but you thought the foundations of our democracy would hold. Or maybe you knew that armed officers would come for Black and brown bodies, but you didn't realize they would come for a white woman, a mother of three, in broad daylight. Or maybe you just thought that the days of brazen imperialism were behind us. It is so easy to go numb when we have lost what we had taken for granted.
For some of us, what we took for granted has nothing to do with our country. Maybe you took for granted certain theological ideas. Maybe you believed that everything happens for a reason—until the worst tragedy of your life struck and it didn't make sense. Maybe you believed firmly that God answered prayers until God didn't answer the one that you most needed God to. Maybe practicing faith has just become too difficult, too confusing, too much of a stretch, and it's just easier to consume rather than to commit. It is so easy to stay stuck when we have lost what we were once willing to stake our lives on.
The book of Jeremiah is a survival guide of sorts. Through its multi-voiced conversations, we find space to consider how to heal. It asks us to settle down into the uncomfortable places and to believe that we can be faithful and maybe even flourish in times of exile. While not softening the difficulty of the Saturdays of our lives, it gives us lessons about how to return from the abyss, how to survive the ends of our world, and how to remain steadfast on our perilous adventures.
The Call of an Inadequate Prophet
Let me take you to chapter one of the book of Jeremiah. The opening verses give us key information: his name (which means "the Lord exalts" or "the Lord hurls"), his father's name (Hilkiah), his hometown (Anathoth, north of Jerusalem), and his priestly lineage. Then we get the most important bit of information about him: "The word of the Lord came to him" (Jeremiah 1:4).
Jeremiah is called as a prophet during the reigns of King Josiah, Jehoiakim, and then Zedekiah. He witnesses some of the best days of the nation, but also some of the worst days when they go into exile. And through it all, he's faithful.
In this passage, we get the beginning of his story. Before he does anything, before he's even born, he is given an adventure. Listen to what God says to him:
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 1:5).
Imagine it. Jeremiah is someone who likely was trained as a priest like the rest of his ancestors. He would have been given the foundations of faith he needed to live in covenant with God—foundations he was trained to pass on to his community. But here in this passage, God comes to him saying, "I'm going to consecrate you not for the sanctuary, but for the streets."
God remixes the plot of the song Jeremiah thought he knew by heart.
"God does not set Jeremiah apart for the clear role of a priest. He identifies him as a prophet—someone whose authority would always be questioned and whose role in the religious landscape would always be unclear."
Later, we find out that the very people who shaped his faith in Anathoth are vehemently against his message. They set the direction of his faith, but they will not be able to understand the words that are put in his mouth. Some of us might be able to relate to that.
"I Am Only a Boy"
When Jeremiah receives his appointment as a prophet, it's no wonder that he hesitates. It's no wonder that he might have felt something akin to what Frodo did: I am not made for perilous quests. Why was I chosen?
What Jeremiah actually says captures that same sentiment: "Alas, Sovereign Lord, I do not know how to speak; I am too young" (Jeremiah 1:6).
And who can fault him? Jeremiah is living in a culture that believes wisdom and insight come with age. By that measure, he's pretty young. He's completely unqualified.
But God commands him to not say, "I am too young." God promises to be with him. Then God touches his mouth, giving him what he needs to meet the task to which he has been called—the work of dismantling and rebuilding.
The very first lesson I want us to learn from the book of Jeremiah is this: God is commanding us to stop saying, "I am only." Jeremiah was not qualified, but he was called. Jeremiah did not have the right competencies, but he was called. Jeremiah did not have executive presence or a charismatic personality or a compelling ambition, but he was called.
To use a phrase from Eugene Peterson, Jeremiah reminds us that it is time to stop pleading inadequacy. Inadequacy to show up faithfully in the fraught politics of our time. Inadequacy to deliberately pursue a reconstructed faith that can give us a place to stand. Inadequacy to live out that niggling call in the back of your mind that you know has nothing to do with your own good ideas and which won't let you go.
To stop pleading inadequacy as a church, believing that we are just some unicorn destined to toddle along but never to enjoy mature abundance.
Let me say it clearly: You are not inadequate for whatever God is calling you to. And we are not inadequate.
What You Missed in Fourth Grade
A few years ago, an acquaintance of mine named Brad Aaron wrote a poem that went viral. It explains with haunting beauty the weight of the inadequacy that many of us carry around. It's called "What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade." The premise is simple: Mrs. Nelson, a fourth-grade teacher, apparently taught a lesson that covered all the essential things about being human—things like "how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas, how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer." She took questions on "how not to feel lost in the dark."
After lunch, she distributed worksheets on "ways to remember your grandfather's voice." The class discussed "falling asleep without feeling you had forgotten to do something else, something important, and how to believe the house you wake in is your home." Mrs. Nelson drew a chalkboard diagram detailing "how to chant the psalms during cigarette breaks and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts are all you hear."
The poem ends with two devastating lines: "The English lesson was that I am is a complete sentence. And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions and feeling cold and all those nights spent looking for whatever it was you lost and one person add up to something."
I love that poem because if I'm honest, it explains how I feel most days. Like I missed something that everybody else knows. Like I don't have what I need.
But here's the truth: we haven't been chosen because of our merit or power or wisdom, as Gandalf says, but we have been chosen and must use the strength and heart and wits that we have.
God Is Not Surprised
This past week, famed gospel singer Yolanda Adams made headlines for her inclusive stance toward queer people on the Clay Cain radio show. One line that struck a chord with me from what she said was this bold comment: "God is not surprised by anyone he created." God is not surprised by anyone he created.
And I needed to remind myself of that. When people I meet are surprised when I tell them I'm a pastor, I have to remind myself that God is not surprised. When you tell people that you lead worship, and they look confused, God is not surprised. When you say you're starting a nonprofit, God is not surprised. When you tell people the kind of church that you go to and they look at you quizzically, God is not surprised that this place exists and that you are called to be here.
Whatever task you sense God calling you to, God is not surprised. God is the one who has anointed you.
The Watcher Tree
I want to end by pointing out just one aspect of Jeremiah's vision. After God gives Jeremiah the contours of his call, God gives him two visions. The first one is especially interesting: "The word of the Lord came to me: 'What do you see, Jeremiah?' 'I see the branch of an almond tree,' I replied. The Lord said to me, 'You have seen correctly, for I am watching to see that my word is fulfilled'" (Jeremiah 1:11-12).
What's not obvious in English is that this is a play on words. Scholar John Goldingay translates it this way: Jeremiah says, "I'm looking at the branch of a watcher tree." God says, "Because I'm watching over my message to put it into effect."
God shows Jeremiah a tree whose name in Hebrew sounds very similar to the Hebrew word for watching. God will shepherd his word to Jeremiah. God will shepherd his word to us.
No matter how large the national disaster, no matter how deep the disorientation and sense of displacement in your faith, God will not abandon you in what God has called you to.
You Have Enough
You can be faithful even in times of exile. Even when it feels like Sunday will never come and Saturday is all there will ever be. You have enough.
I am is a complete sentence.
Whatever the adventure you are being invited to by God, whatever form your sainthood is to take, your capacity for it is grace and gift from God. And that is true no matter how often you feel lost in the dark, no matter your hundreds of questions.
To all of us who are tempted to plead inadequacy as we consider the landscape of our nation and the rough places of our faith lives, hear this: Stop saying "I am only."
You are chosen. You are anointed. You have what you need.
*And God is watching to make sure that word comes to pass. *
