Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

My friend Myca pointed out that Encanto doesn't have a villain.

Disney villains are almost as popular as the princesses — they even have their own board game.

And the animated movie Encanto, available for streaming on Disney+, would seem ripe for villainy.

The magical Madrigal family at the heart of the film begins to lose the magic that made them special — surely someone is to blame!

But no one lurks in the shadows, twirling a mustache and absconding with magic.

Instead, the story of Encanto is one of families, systems, and prophets — one that can serve as a warning and a balm to churches struggling to cope with a changing world.

In an invigorating opening number, Mirabel introduces us to her family.

Led by their abuela, Alma, who came (as an undocumented asylum seeker, it’s implied) to this new land, each person in the family has a magical ability.

Mama Julieta heals people with food and Mirabel's sister (Isabela) conjures flowers, for instance.

But Mirabel doesn't have a gift.

At her ceremony, when each person’s gift is revealed, she receives nothing.

What’s wrong with Mirabel?

Mirabel begins to notice cracks in the casita, the magical house the Madrigals call home.

When she tries to point them out, Alma dismisses her concerns: “There is nothing wrong with la Casa Madrigal.

The magic is strong!”

As she dives into the secret of the magic, Mirabel begins to see the cracks in her family.

Mirabel begins to suspect that the magic mirrors the health of the family, and the problem is the family’s health.

She raises this concern to Abuela, who snaps, “I don't know why you weren’t given a gift.

But it’s not an excuse for you to hurt this family.”

Abuela’s anger is familiar to anyone who’s been part of a toxic group — a family, a business, a church.

The more established and successful any system becomes, the harder it is to remain open and responsive to change.

Message

Welcome to Fall at Catalyst.

Our Fall series is called Black Sheep.

We’re exploring what happens when our love for God marks us as weirdos, strangers and outsiders.

Specifically, we’re asking what happens when remaining faithful to God puts us at odds with the larger Church.

The last several years have been difficult for many of us.

We’ve watched people we love - parents, grandparents, grown children, or maybe an influential pastor, deacon or Sunday School teacher from when we were growing up - we’ve watched many of the very people who taught us who God is and now God loves us become angry, hate-filled and spiteful.

We’ve seen them reject calls for racial justice.

We’ve bitten our tongues around meal tables as they repeat fake news about elections or vaccines.

We’ve wept as they celebrate and support policies and beliefs that actively hurt people we deeply love.

We’ve heard non-Christians lamenting that so few Christians in our culture actually look like Jesus.

It’s enough to make us wonder… are we the crazy ones?

Would you believe we’re not the first people to be in such a situation?

God’s prophets have a long history of calling God’s people back to faithfulness - in times where the people did not (or would not) acknowledge they were being unfaithful.

That’s not how we usually think about prophets.

We think of prophets as fortune tellers.

We imagine the prophets to be weird guys in robes offering far-off predictions of what will happen one day.

But that’s not what a biblical prophet does.

The role of a prophet in the Bible is to speak truth to power.

God calls prophets to represent God to kings and priest, to the politicians and religious leaders who so often use religion for their own ends.

Prophets do sometimes tell the future - we’re going to see that in Jeremiah.

But when they do, the focus is still always on the present.

Maybe the best modern example of a prophet telling the future to influence the present is Dr. King’s famous “I have a Dream” speech.

He looks forward to a day of racial harmony that clearly exists in the future - half a century later, we still aren’t there.

But he wasn’t just telling the future; the dream was a way to call attention to the racial injustices of his day.

And he gave that speech standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial - a clear message to President Johnson and the rest of the politicians who had the authority to pass anti-racist laws.

[Jeremiah Timeline] So during this series, we’re going to sit with the prophet Jeremiah.

God called him to prophesy in the years leading up to Babylon’s destruction of the Southern Kingdom of Judah.

The prophets understood Babylon’s oppression - and eventual destruction - of Judah as a direct consequence of God’s people’s refusal to be faithful to God’s covenant.

They warned over and over that if God’s people didn’t change their ways, return to loving and serving God, then God would allow Babylon to destroy them.

Well - obviously, they didn’t listen.

And that’s why we’re going to try to learn from Jeremiah over the next couple of months.

Because we live in a time where faithfulness to God makes us feel like we don’t belong, like the Black Sheep of God’s family.

We need to remember what Jeremiah knew - that faithfulness can bring a sense of alienation even from God’s family.

Turn with us to Jeremiah 1.

We’re beginning with a text we’ve received a few times over the last couple of years.

It’s part of Jeremiah’s call narrative.

One of the reasons I find it so provocative is that Jeremiah is probably one of the most reluctant of the Hebrew prophets.

We’ll see during this series that he hates his calling as a prophet - and that’s understandable.

Why?

Well no one likes to be the guy who is telling you to shape up or face judgment.

We’ll see several of Jeremiah’s objections over the next several weeks.

But I want to start, well, at the beginning.

Let’s work through the opening of Jeremiah, and as we do, I want to observe several keys that will be important for our series:

Jeremiah feels wildly underqualified.

He complains that he’s far too young to be a prophet.

What makes you feel unqualified to speak for God?

Maybe it’s your age.

Maybe it’s your lack of knowledge or biblical insight.

Maybe it’s your past.

Whatever it is, you know how Jeremiah feels, right?

That sense of knowing there’s a lot wrong with how God’s people are claiming to follow God right now, and wishing someone would say something.

Can you hear God’s words to Jeremiah?

I know you.

I made you.

My calling is not a mistake.

You are the perfect person for this calling.

Catalyst, you are the perfect church for this calling.

Not because of who you are, but because of who I am.

It’s important that Jeremiah remember this begins and ends with God because God warns Jeremiah his ministry will involve both uprooting/tearing down and building/planting.

A prophet’s job is to give a truthful accounting of the state of reality.

Some of what the prophet reveals needs to go.

We’re going to find weeds and rot.

Stuff there’s no saving.

It’s just gotta go.

But we’ll also find signs of life - places that need to be nurtured and built on.

That, too is the prophet’s job.

Both deconstruction and reconstruction.

But this can only happen when we ourselves are rooted firmly in who God says we are, and how God sees the world around us.

Song

There are two other things I want to note that are going to be important as we enter into this series.

Let’s keep reading:

Then the LORD said to me, “Look, Jeremiah!

What do you see?”

And I replied, “I see a branch from an almond tree.”

12 And the LORD said, “That’s right, and it means that I am watching, and I will certainly carry out all my plans.”

13 Then the LORD spoke to me again and asked, “What do you see now?”

And I replied, “I see a pot of boiling water, spilling from the north.”