Worship Leadership & Sermon @ Scottsdale Congregational UCC, 8/24/25
Introduction: Naming the Moment
Friends in Christ, I know you may have come here today hoping for a nice, comfortable sermon. Maybe something about grace, or a message of peace that would send you off to brunch with a happy feeling! Well, I’m here to tell you that for the next few minutes, your job isn't to sit back and listen, but to get a little uncomfortable. I’m going to ask you to consider the absurd, even blasphemous idea that you—yes, you, the person who might be thinking about your grocery list or what’s for lunch—are a prophet. Not just for this hour, but from this day forward.
We’re living in sobering times. The worst parts of humanity have erupted into our public life in ways this country has not seen in generations. We see it in the fear of difference, in anger at cultural change, and most dangerously, in discrimination, exclusion, violence, and lies—often done in God’s name. This isn’t just a political or social issue; it’s a deep spiritual crisis that reveals something broken in our nation’s soul. We are only tenuously holding on to a commitment to decency and covenant relationship. If ever there was a time we needed new prophets, it’s now.
Understanding the Shadow
So where does all this hatred, xenophobia, and thirst for power come from? Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung would say these are all aspects of what he called the "shadow."
Have you ever had a part of yourself you just didn't like? Maybe it’s a feeling of anger you try to hide, a selfish impulse you’re ashamed of, deep feelings you were told made you weak, or even a talent you were told was "not okay." The shadow isn’t some evil twin. It’s simply the unconscious part of our personality that we’ve pushed away because we were told it was "bad" or "unacceptable." We didn’t get rid of it; we just hid it.
Jung believed everyone has a shadow. When we refuse to face these hidden parts of ourselves, they can erupt, causing us to project our own fears and flaws onto others. It can usually be identified when you point your finger at someone and passionately proclaim “You’re so this!” or “You’re so that!”. This is when prejudice, anger, and intolerance bubble up. But by shining a light on our shadow, we can understand ourselves more fully and move toward becoming whole. Jung would say that what we are seeing today is our nation’s collective shadow coming to the surface.
One of the clearest manifestations of this collective shadow is the rise of Christian Nationalism. It replaces compassion and vulnerability with a thirst for power. It fuses faith with political dominance, twists the gospel into a tool of exclusion, and baptizes fear as righteousness. Christian nationalism proclaims that to be a faithful Christian is to belong to a certain culture, race, and political identity. But this is not the Gospel. It is a direct affront to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who came to tear down the walls of elitism and exclusion. And I believe he would do the same thing today.
A Prophetic Calling
Yet even in the shadow, there is good news: this moment of darkness is also a moment of calling God’s people to prophetic witness. The United Church of Christ reminds us that “God is still speaking.” And what God speaks today is a call to courage. Not the absence of fear, but the courage to name injustice, to live God’s love out loud, and to dismantle what is false so that new life can grow.
This calling is not new. Our ancestors in faith faced their own times of upheaval. They, too, were pressed to the margins and tempted to despair. So let’s turn to the prophet Jeremiah, who shows us what prophetic courage looks like when shadows rise.
Jeremiah’s Call: Courage in the Face of Fear
Jeremiah began his work as his society was falling apart. He saw a nation torn by injustice, unfaithfulness, and political lies. He delivered a hard message, urging his people to turn back to God and address the brokenness around them. For this, he was seen as a traitor. He was beaten, publicly humiliated, and imprisoned in terrible conditions. He even faced death threats from his own neighbors.
But he did it all because he was deeply faithful to God and he wanted to save his people. And who he was makes his story all the more remarkable.
In the first chapter of Jeremiah, he is called by God to do God’s work:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
This isn't just a job offer; it's a declaration of who Jeremiah was always meant to be. God is saying that his purpose was not a random assignment but was woven into his very being from the beginning. The work God calls us to do is an essential part of who God created us to be.
Jeremiah, however, responds as so many of us do when faced with a difficult task:
“Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.”
Do you hear his hesitation? God says, “I choose you.” Jeremiah replies, “You’ve got the wrong guy.” His fear is familiar. When injustice towers before us, we think: "Surely not me. I am only… fill in the blank. Too young. Too old. Too ordinary. Too unqualified. Not worthy."
But God replies with a firm and tender reassurance:
“Do not say, ‘I am only a boy,’… Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.”
Here is the antidote to our fear: God's presence. Courage, then, is not fearlessness. It is acting faithfully in the face of fear, trusting that God’s presence will never leave us. Jeremiah is not told the task will be easy; he is simply told that he is not alone.
Then, God gives Jeremiah the prophetic mandate:
“See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”
This is a powerful, two-part vision for prophetic work: destruction and creation.
The first four verbs—to pluck up, pull down, destroy, and overthrow—are about dismantling what is false and corrupt. In Jeremiah's time, this meant confronting the worship of false gods and social injustice. In our time, it means speaking truth to power, exposing the lies of Christian nationalism, and resisting systems that dehumanize. We are called to "pluck up" the weeds of hatred and "pull down" the walls of exclusion.
But that is only half of the task. The final two verbs - to build and to plant - are about hope and creation. Prophetic ministry is not simply about tearing down; it is about making space for new life to grow. We dismantle what is rotten so we can "plant" something new - a more just society, a more loving community, a faith rooted in grace rather than fear. We “build” what is true and right. This dual mandate reminds us that our work is ultimately an act of hope.
We often don’t feel equipped to do this. We feel inadequate, we feel shame, we feel unworthiness. But this is the paradox of God’s call: the very places where we feel inadequate become the places where God’s strength shines most brightly. Jeremiah thought his youth made him unfit, but God saw his youth as the very vessel for a prophetic word.
When I was a teenager, I was deeply involved in my UCC church in Des Moines, IA. Even at that young age, I felt the call to ministry. But as a young, gay man, I also felt the same unworthiness that Jeremiah might have felt. It took me decades to develop enough of a sense of God’s love for me to heed the call and believe I was worthy to be a teacher and a prophet. What are the barriers that prevent you from speaking prophetically?
Facing the Shadow
This journey of confronting our own feelings of unworthiness has a profound public dimension. When we don't face our personal feelings of inadequacy and shame, we project them onto the world around us. In psychology, this is called 'shadow projection,' where we cast our own unwanted traits and fears onto others. When this happens on a national scale, it becomes a collective sickness, turning our personal fears into public hatred and our own unresolved issues into a blame game against our neighbors. This is the shadow we must face. Left unchecked, it turns destructive, fueling movements that glorify violence, cling to myths of supremacy, and replace the Gospel of love with an ideology of control.
The prophetic task of the church is not only to challenge harmful systems but also to heal the deeper wounds beneath them—the pain of shame, the hunger for meaning, the need for belonging. Christian nationalism offers a false answer. We must offer the true one: the inclusive, liberating love of God revealed in Christ. As hard as it may be, we need to offer that love even to those we consider our enemies. We will never win by out-arguing them. But we can witness and model the love of Christ and show them that Jesus’ Way is one of inclusion, liberation, and a mentality of abundance that believes there can be room for everybody.
The UCC’s Prophetic Mandate
So what is our prophetic mandate? Here our own UCC tradition shines. We proclaim that “Jesus and justice are inseparable.” We declare that “all are welcome and united by God’s love.” These are not just slogans—they are theological commitments that set us apart in an age of shadow.
Jeremiah’s call was to pluck up and pull down—but also to build and to plant. For us, that means more than saying no to racism, sexism, exclusion, and fear. It means saying yes to building community across differences, yes to pluralism, yes to justice as love lived publicly.
Our history as a denomination gives us credibility here. The UCC was among the first churches to ordain women, to affirm openly gay clergy, to take a stand for marriage equality, and to march for civil rights. Each of these actions was an act of prophetic courage—an uprooting of injustice and a planting of new life. The UCC has not always been perfect, but we have consistently sought to live by the conviction that God’s justice and Jesus’ love cannot be separated.
Like Amos, who thundered, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,” we too are called to be both critics and visionaries: dismantling false gospels while planting seeds of God’s beloved community. The task is not simply to critique Christian nationalism but to model an alternative vision of faith—one that is spacious, welcoming, and rooted in love.
A Prophetic Example: Jesus and the Bent-Over Woman
As Christians, we can look to Jesus as the ultimate model of prophetic action. In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 13, we find him teaching in a synagogue. A woman is there who has been crippled for 18 years, unable to stand up straight. When Jesus sees her, he calls her forward, lays his hands on her, and immediately, she is healed and stands up straight.
But the head of the synagogue is furious. Not because a woman was healed, but because it was done on the Sabbath. He scolds the crowd, saying, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day."
Do you see the spiritual sickness at work here? This man prioritizes dogma over human compassion. He sees the law as an end in itself, not as a tool to bring life and freedom. His spiritual shadow, his need for control and adherence to rigid rules, blinds him to the very love and grace he should be celebrating.
But Jesus’s response is a stunning prophetic act. He calls the man out, saying, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it to water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?"
Jesus challenges the spiritual corruption of the moment. He dismantles the false gospel that prioritizes rules over people. He "plucks up" the hypocrisy and "pulls down" the walls of uncompassionate religion. And in doing so, he "plants" and "builds" a new way—a faith rooted in healing, liberation, and love for all people. This is our prophetic mandate, a call to live with the same courage as Jesus, to do what is right and just, even when it makes others uncomfortable.
Cultivating Courage Today
So how do ordinary people like us become prophetic voices like Jesus and Jeremiah in these shadowed times?
Anchor in God’s presence. God’s presence is the antidote to fear. Courage comes not from ourselves alone but from the One who formed us and consecrated us for this holy work.
Practice small acts of bravery. Courage grows in increments. Speak up in a meeting or with friends. Gently correct misinformation. Stand with someone being excluded. Each small act strengthens the next.
Care for yourself and one another. Prophetic work is demanding. Self-care—rest, prayer, joy—is not indulgence but fuel. The church must be a place of renewal so the work can continue.
Rely on community. Jeremiah may have been one voice, but we are called as a body. Courage multiplies in community. We are never alone.
Learn to communicate prophetically. Courage requires more than volume. It requires wisdom, empathy, and skill. We must speak truth boldly, but also in ways that open doors instead of slamming them shut. This is why the prophets often used poetry, parable, and story—they were speaking to hearts, not just minds.
Root prophetic work in love. We can easily be consumed by anger at injustice, but anger without love becomes corrosive. The prophets always paired judgment with hope. Jeremiah did not just tear down; he also planted.
Ground our action in scripture. When Jesus opened the scroll of Isaiah and read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me… to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives,” he claimed his prophetic identity. We, too, must root our courage in this scriptural mandate: to bring good news, to set free, to proclaim God’s love for all.
Conclusion: A Call to Courage
Friends, the shadows of our age are real. Christian nationalism is not just a political ideology—it is a spiritual sickness. But the Gospel gives us both the diagnosis and the cure.
Jeremiah shows us that God does not wait for the perfect or the fearless. God calls the hesitant, the unsure, the “only’s.” Only a boy. Only one voice. Only me. And God replies: “Do not be afraid, for I am with you.”
You—yes, you!—are a prophet in today’s world. So let us go forth with courage: to uproot what is unjust, to dismantle what is false, and to plant and build what is true—communities of love, spaces of belonging, a nation where God’s justice rolls down like mighty waters.
May we find our courage not in ourselves alone, but in the God who still speaks, still calls, and still equips us to be prophetic voices in a time of shadow. Amen.
