You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
Yahweh/God
made the first covenant through Moses.
It was after the Hebrew slaves had escaped from bondage in Egypt. They had left behind the so-called Fertile
Crescent, which had been recently ravaged by plagues of locusts and frogs because
Moses and the Pharaoh’s magicians had gone head-to-head on who was backed by
the most powerful sacred presence. The
result was animals lying dead in their grazing fields, and the Nile River turning
to blood.
When
the Hebrews fled from Egypt, they had followed a holy pillar of fire by night
and a protective cloud during the day.
They had crossed the Red Sea and praised Yahweh/God even as they watched
the Egyptian soldiers and horses drown before their very eyes. They had also complained a lot as they
trudged through the wilderness and noshed on quail and manna, that odd dewy
bread said to come from heaven itself.
Finally,
they had reached Mt. Sinai. It was there
that Moses climbed up and up to the very summit and, as the story goes,
received stone tablets on which were etched the Ten Commandments, symbolizing
the gist of the relationship that Yahweh/God intended to have with the
erstwhile Hebrew slaves: I will be your God, and you will be my
people. If you obey these commandments,
all will be well, and you will thrive.
However, if you disobey, prosperity will elude you, war will pursue you,
freedom and land will be a fleeting dream.
Of
course, when Moses returned to the valley some days later with God’s promises
(the covenant) – which we know as the Torah, the Pentateuch, the first five
books of our Bible – returned with them in hand, lo and behold, the Israelites
had already swapped out Yahweh for a golden calf around which they were working
up a sweat whirling and dancing as they pursued a local god who seemed to be
more responsive to their momentary needs – or, at least, a god who was a lot
more decorative and easily transportable.
It was not a good way to start out with a God who considered herself to
be the one true God when it came to the people of Israel.
As
far as the covenant was concerned, it went downhill from there. As the years went by, the Israelites insisted
upon doing things their own way. And so,
in time and not surprisingly since Yahweh had said misfortune would hastily
follow disobedience, the mighty Assyrians wiped the Northern Kingdom of Israel
off the face of the earth. A couple of
generations later, the Babylonians besieged and conquered Judah to the
south.
And
Jeremiah, our prophet for today, watched as his civilization went up in
flames. Jerusalem was leveled, and the
temple was reduced to rubble. The royal
family, priests, prophets, and anyone with leadership potential were
exiled.
As
Old Testament scholar and Episcopal priest Wil Gaffney wrote: “broken families
would have been ravaged by grief and loss; those left behind would have had to
scramble to find surviving relatives and a place to sleep if their homes had
been destroyed. Produce and food animals were either destroyed or taken. Every
object of value was plundered. Anyone with any authority or skill to help
rebuild the society was dead or gone.”
Is
it any wonder then that Jeremiah, prophet and witness to not only the
destruction of the land and the Holy City, but also to the loss of an entire
civilization – is it any wonder that he was called the “weeping prophet”, the
complainer, the lamenter, the doomsday voice?
Is it any wonder that his words as recorded in the Bible are despairing,
angry, and shrill, calling the Israelites to account for their sin and
wrongdoing that had led to this unbearable situation – no temple, no home. They were a dispersed community, if you could
call them a community at all.
In
no uncertain terms, Jeremiah rails and reminds the people that the covenant
claiming them as God’s own is broken – and has been for a long, long time. As Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann
notes, “They have violated the Ten Commandments of Sinai by economic policies
that abused the poor, by foreign policy that depended on arms, by theological
practice that offended God and by illusions of privilege before God,” and the
sanctions, as anyone with half a brain could see, were not unfair, but were certainly
severe.
The
world is a mess: That is Jeremiah’s message, and what is more, he says, you
have made it so. In other words, the
covenant was broken right from the start, not because there was anything
inherently wrong with the covenant itself, but because there was something
wrong – dreadfully wrong – with the people with whom it was established. The Book of Jeremiah is not a happy book!
And
yet, right in the midst of its doom and gloom, we find two chapters that offer
profound hope for a world spinning itself into chaos. These two chapters are sometimes called the
Book of Comfort, a book within a book so to speak, and that is where we find
ourselves this morning.
The days are surely
coming (Jeremiah says)… I will make a new covenant.
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.
I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no
more.
For
once, Jeremiah offers solace rather than anger to a hopeless and dispersed
people. All is not lost…all is not lost
(he proclaims)….the days are surely coming. Jeremiah whispers a promise, a
sacred promise: God’s people will
survive.
However,
this time, he says, the covenant will be different. The relationship with God will no longer rest
on conditions. God will forgive - not
just forgive but forgive and forget – all that has gone on lo these many
centuries. The prophet declares that God
has resolved to begin anew in a relationship – one this time based on
generosity and grace.
What
is more, the covenant will not be written on stone tablets. It will not be a “take it or leave it”
external sort of bond. Oh, the gist of
the covenant will be the same. The laws
will not change. The Torah will still be
its foundation, the Ten Commandments its anchor. But this time, it will be written on the
heart – like a brand or a tattoo. It
will be etched into the center of your being. It will be part of your DNA,
encoded in your cells. It will be who
you are. The heart of God will be in your
heart. You will be marked.
Oh,
it will not be an easy transition. Being
branded, tattooed, marked is never painless.
However, without pain, the mark would not be indelible, permanent. And if it was not indelible, permanent, then
it could be washed away and what it revealed about you would not matter very
much. As Baptist pastor Stacey Elizabeth
Simpson reminds us, “Tattoo your arm with "Roseanne" in your 20s, and
you better still be married to her 30 years later.”
God
will invade your heart. When this new
covenant is written into the very essence of who you are, Simpson continues,
“This is as permanent as any brand. Whereas laws written in stone can be broken
and put aside, God’s covenant in hearts is more enduring. God’s hold on us
cannot be erased without cutting out a part of ourselves.” This new covenant
will be a different framework in which to live out our lives of faith.
So
where does all this leave us, now deep in Lent and fast approaching Holy
Week? “The days are surely coming,” says
Jeremiah. Though perhaps meant as a consolation, his words cannot help but be a
poignant reminder that those days are not here yet. Though
God’s intention may be clear, the “when” is not. We live in an in between time – placing our
hope in the new covenant of which Jeremiah spoke, affirming that Jesus embodied
the essence of that new covenant, trusting that it was most assuredly written
on his heart, yet wondering if God will ever so clearly write it on our hearts
as well.
We are not there yet. If we were, the world
would be a lot different than it is now. The Kingdom of which Jesus preached
and in which he so fervently believed is not yet established. The problem – as always – lies with us and
with our faulty hearts.
As
Walter Brueggemann wrote: “Where there
is no forgiveness and no forgetting, society is fated to replay forever the
same old hostilities, resentments and alienations. What forgiveness
accomplishes, human as well as divine, is to break the vicious cycles of such
deathly repetition. For now in our society, it seems we prefer that terrible
repetition, unbearable as it is.”
However,
Jeremiah’s words come down to us even today as words of consolation, as sacred
words of scripture that once long ago brought hope at a terrible time of crisis. In this little Book of Comfort, set in the
midst of Jeremiah’s shrill words of anger and despair, our prophet whispers
that God did not abandon the Israelites in their world, and God will not
abandon us in ours.
For
you and me who faithfully sit here Sunday after Sunday, the days are surely
coming. Every now and then we catch a
glimpse of them – when we are engaged in a moment of peacemaking or in a time
of reconciliation. It is those moments –
those holy moments of compassion – that keep us going.
Two
millennia may be gone, but someday, someday, the covenant will be written on
our hearts, and, without giving it a second thought, we will work for a world
that is just: where wealth is
distributed more equitably, where the bowls of the hungry are filled, where
compassion lies at the core of our policy-making and moral decisions. But for now, we continue to trust and to
“expose our naked hearts to God” through the Christ-like actions here and there
that we do take. (Simpson)
Those
random acts of kindness: therein lies our hope.
Therein lies our strength as we walk with Jesus into Jerusalem, as we
watch with horror his betrayal and arrest, his trial and conviction.
Therein
lies our courage as we carry the cross with him, are crucified and even die
with him, as we leave our old identity behind (painful and wrenching as that
may be) and wait our three long days until we are born into a new identity with
the covenant finally – finally – written on our hearts.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine
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