Mar. 29. 2009 - Written on Our Hearts - Jer. 31:31-34
I read an interesting axiom this week that went; ‘A preacher's job is to comfort the afflicted - And to afflict the comfortable.’ If that is true of most preachers, that is doubly true about Jeremiah. Jeremiah is often called the Weeping Prophet because he spent most of his ministry preaching gloom and doom, prophesying about the destruction of the nation of
Jeremiah was on the scene in
Right in the middle of all Jeremiah’s dire predictions is a short passage called the Little Book of Comfort that runs through chapters 30-33. It is from this little section of a book that is longer than any other in the Bible except Psalms that we take this morning’s reading. In the midst of all Jeremiah’s predictions about the dark future of
From the hand of a man who lived 600 years before the preaching of Christ, we find the only explicit reference to the New Testament – the new covenant - a foreshadowing of the time when God will do something new – a time when each person will know God because that knowledge will come from the heart – and the promise that judgment is not the final word!
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These words could not come at a better time in the history of
They had no doubt that it was deserved. As a nation, they had turned away from God and God’s covenant – and they knew it was not the first time the nation had done so. They could look back over the nation’s history and see that they had broken every covenant God had made with them: There was more than the covenant written on the stone tablets at
There had been earlier covenants between God and Noah, between God and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Even after the giving of the Ten Commandments at Sinai, there had been renewals – or revivals – led by Moses on the plains of
Whenever the people realized their sin, whenever the people worried if God had deserted them, God took the initiative to reach out to the people once again, to assure them of his love and care, to renew the promises and to grant forgiveness.
God stands always ready to reach out to the afflicted and heal their wounds. God stands always ready to reach out to those who mourn so that we may be healed. God reaches down to the sinner with words of forgiveness and promise.
Throughout the season of Lent, the people of Christ pause to remember how we have also strayed from God’s love – how we ourselves have broken God’s covenant – to realize that we are rightly condemned for our lawlessness.
Like the people of ancient Judah who first heard the words of Jeremiah, we are right to wonder if God has left us, has condemned us and withdrawn the holy presence from us because we have failed once again. Each of us has, by our own hand, hammered another nail into the cross of Christ by our stubborn refusal to act according to God’s will and by our selfish worship of our own desires. Each of us by our own failure to do good, our own failure to forgive and our own failure to love, failed to live a life pleasing to God
Like the people of ancient
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At a time when people believed God had justly deserted them, Jeremiah prophesied that God was not done with the Hebrew people. At a time when the people believed their sins were too many to be forgiven, Jeremiah prophesied that there would be a new covenant. At a time when those called to be faithful realized their lack of faith, Jeremiah prophesied of another contract between God and humanity: ‘After those days, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people. (Jer. 31:33b NRSV)’
As the people looked toward a dark future of exile, they knew that even after all their failures God was not a God of vengeance and condemnation – but a God of mercy and pardon.
God promises not another set of external rules and regulations – not a seemingly endless series of laws and rules with rigid interpretation and fixed consequences – but God promises an internal set – an intuitive knowledge where people who life their lives in faithfulness to God will simply know – a time when people will not need to be told what the truth is, because God’s spirit will be there teaching from within.
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There are two more promises in this morning’s passage from Jeremiah, ‘I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more (Jer. 31:34b, NRSV).
We are comforted by the first promise – the promise of forgiveness, but we have a great deal of trouble with the second half – ‘and remember their sin no more’.
We find it easy to say we believe in God’s forgiveness, but it is when we have to believe that God forgets – well that just seems too good to be true. Of course the Judeans never believed that God actually forgot anything – the ancient Hebrew mind did not thing in those terms. But in saying that he would remember their sin no more God promises not to hold it against them, not to use it as the basis for any other judgment or condemnation – God writes the slate clean and they – and we – get a completely new start at out relationship with God. We may be older, wiser and a little beat up, but in God’s eyes, we come to the Holy throne as fresh and innocent as the newborn. From the perspective of eternity, the few years we have spent here are just a puff of smoke the memory of which will disappear in an instant.
This is the New Covenant God makes with us: forgiveness and forgetfulness and fresh starts. This is what God can do that humanity has so much trouble with. Haven’t we all heard people say ‘I will forgive it but I will never forget it?"
There is more to the good news that comes to us from the stylus of Jeremiah. The forgiveness of God does not depend on anything we do. The covenant proclaimed by Jeremiah does not depend on repentance, conversion, feelings of shame, performing exhaustive good works, or self-flagellation – which means beating ourselves us to show how sorry we are.
This covenant depends only on the love and mercy of God.
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As we approach the season of Easter, we begin to understand more fully the gift of the covenant God had given us. We understand that it is the Spirit of God living within us who both comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. We understand that Jesus came into the world to make that covenant possible, that his death was not the last word from God, that his resurrection sealed us into the new covenant, sealed us into new life and sealed us into new relationship with both God and human.
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In just a moment, we will celebrate Communion – a remembrance of God’s gracious promise, a time of joining together to partake of the body and blood of Christ, a time of participating is a special means of grace where we recall God’s love and care and forgiveness – a time when we ourselves as newborn babes take the milk of God’s word into our hearts.
Let this be a time of renewal, a time when we will remember no more life under the oppressive weights of our own sins nor encumber others with the chains of their own.
Amen.
