Proper 16C - 2025

Sermon for Proper 16, Year C
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
The Rev. Andrew McLarty

They say that you need 10,000 hours to master a subject or skill: putting in the work, making mistakes, learning the rules, then learning how to bend or break them for efficiency or innovation. It’s a journey from novice to expert. Eventually, others seek your advice, and you can guide them. This is the way of the world: mastery is earned through effort and time.

But the ways of God turn the ways of the world upside down.

Today, we hear from young Jeremiah. The voice of the Almighty calls him to preach, teach, and prophesy. Jeremiah responds in sheer, relatable panic: “I do not know how to speak; I am only a boy!” He doesn’t have 10,000 hours. He has zero. He feels his youth, his inadequacy, his profound lack of mastery.

And he is not alone. Who among us hasn’t stood before a challenge, a calling, or a responsibility and felt simply not enough? Not pious enough, not brave enough, not knowledgeable enough to speak in faith? We feel the weight of our own un-mastery.

But God’s response is our hope, a glorious subversion of human expectation: “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy.’ You shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid, for I am with you.” Then God touches Jeremiah’s mouth. God does not ask for mastery; He offers His presence and His words. The call begins not in ability, but in grace. The mission launches not from expertise, but with promise.

I believe God knows what adults forget—that children and youth possess a pure, effortless understanding of the Divine, something we adults blur and overcomplicate as we get in our own way.

In our Gospel, we see our human inadequacy amid divine sufficiency. A woman has been bent over for eighteen years—physically limited, socially marginalized, spiritually burdened. Jesus meets her limitation with abundant mercy. Beside her stands the synagogue ruler, a man whose identity is wrapped up in mastery. He has put in his 10,000 hours. But in his zealous adherence to the form of the law, he loses sight of its function. His mastery becomes a barrier to mercy.

Then Jesus reframes everything. The Sabbath was created not for strictness, but for joy, freedom, and life— God’s gift to humanity, not humanity’s test for God. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel wrote, the Sabbath is a “palace in time,” a sacred sanctuary where we step from mundane toil into God’s eternal presence. It is a foretaste of paradise, reminding us that our worth is found in being, not doing.

Jesus, Lord of the Sabbath, enters that palace and furnishes it with liberation. He unties the woman, proclaiming the Sabbath the perfect day for God to loose bonds of suffering. He exposes the hypocrisy of untying a donkey for water, a work of necessity, while refusing to untie a human being for wholeness, a work of liberation.

So to our children and youth beginning your programs today: hear this good news. Do not think your youth or questions preclude you from praising God. You are not called to be masters, but witnesses. Like Jeremiah, God touches your mouth. He welcomes your curiosity and will give you His words.

And to all who feel the pressure to be experts, who feel like imposters, or who trust more in rules than grace: enter Sabbath rest. Step into the “palace in time” not to prove devotion through strictness, but to receive liberation. Stop doing and simply be in His presence.

As we receive this unshakable grace, let us worship with reverence and awe: with the trust of a child, the hope of Jeremiah, and the joy of a woman standing straight. We worship a God who doesn’t count our hours, but offers His presence. We are not called to be masters; we are called to be His. And that is more than enough.

Amen.

(if you want to read more, check out Heschel's book, "The Sabbath"(https://a.co/d/21Ye5Sz) It is realy good. ~Andrew)