The Promise of Renewal
Jeremiah 31:27-34
27The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow
the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed
of animals. 28And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down,
to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and
to plant, says the Lord. 29In those days they shall no longer say: “The parents
have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” 30But all
shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall
be set on edge. 31The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a
new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32It will not be
like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand
to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was
their husband, says the Lord. 33But this is the covenant that I will make with
the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: 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. 34No longer shall they
teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all
know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will
forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
Today
is the fourth and final sermon in our Lenten series on the Promises of God.
Each week, we have heard a text and sought to understand what God can be
promising to us. We have heard about God’s promise of presence, the promise of
overturning, the promise of whosoever, and today, the promise of renewal. Throughout
our Lenten season, we have turned our prayers to God in these specific and
direct ways, including Ash Wednesday when we wrote our prayers, and sent them
back to God in a fire. We have written our prayers, and woven them together
into a tapestry of truth-telling.
On these slips of paper are the words and names
and hopes of us – this gathered congregation –
that we have collectively given back to God.
What a sacred, beautiful and honest work of art
we have created together. Here, in our worship,
we have prayed these prayers, and sought out
what it means to live into God’s promise to us.
This
is also the time for us to consider our Lenten journey, and observe how we have
changed during this time of reflection and self-denial. In giving up eating in
restaurants, I, for one, am fitting into clothes I haven’t worn since before
Sloan was born. But Lenten disciplines aren’t about what we get from
them, they are about how we open ourselves to change. If you have taken on a
discipline during this season, consider how your life and rituals and patterns
have adapted to your intentional choice. I used to take a little cream with my
coffee. In this season, I have left behind the dairy I thought so necessary.
Now, I am an adaptable creature, who can consume coffee without any
modification. I am liberated. I am changed.
Today,
we are expecting to hear about God’s promise of Renewal. This is the greatest
hope for us, isn’t it? That we might find new life, new strength, new hope.
Renewal is the promise that it will get better, that we will have the
resources, that we will be transformed. It is the goal of our Lenten journey,
in short, and our Christian journey, in full. As the Old Testament scholar
Walter Brueggemann writes, “Lent is our season of honesty. It is a time when we
may break out of our illusions to face the reality of our life in preparation
for Easter, a radical new beginning. Lent is a time for honesty that may
disrupt the illusion of well-being."[1]
So, as we approach Palm Sunday, the Passion of Holy Week and the promise of
resurrection, we do so with the hope and anticipation that we shall have a new
beginning because of this season of deliberate awareness.
It
seems fitting, then, that the prophet Jeremiah should bring our closing word to
this season. The prophet Jeremiah came from Anathoth, a village in the hill
country of Benjamin, one of the tribes of Jacob – also called Israel – in the
north of Judah. He was the son of a priest, the grandson of a priest, and his
line of succession made it no surprise that he might be called to serve in the
temple.
Jeremiah’s
story seems like a fairy tale, set in an ancient land in a far away place,
rustic and humble. His is the story of a man – a simple man – who was appointed
by God to be the voice of one crying out. His voice sounded like Moses,
resonated with the same authority. This man, Jeremiah, was to be the voice of
reason, the voice of love, the voice of redemption to a people who were broken
and scattered. It was Jeremiah of whom it was said, “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.” (Jer. 1:5)
By
the time we meet Jeremiah, the Israelites have endured assimilation into the
Babylonian Empire. Jeremiah, along with the tribe of Judah, witnessed the
destruction of Jerusalem and the holy Temple, the fall of the Assyrian Empire
and the death of King Josiah. Most of
Jeremiah’s words to the people are cries of lament. Jeremiah incessantly warned
his people to mend their ways, to return to God, to take up the faithfulness of
their ancestors and to live into the promise of what God would do.
As
we encounter our text today, we do so, not as Christians with an eye to the
promise of the resurrection, but as broken and scattered people, with only
prayers of lament and sorrow in our throats. Jeremiah has preached repentance,
to no avail. So now, his sorrowing is past, and he uses the gift God has given
him – that of prophecy and truth-telling – to preach a new covenant.
The
days are coming, says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant. It will not
be like the old covenant that I made with their ancestors – a covenant that
they broke. But, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their
hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they
teach one another, for they shall know me, for I will forgive them and remember
their sin no more.” This is the only Old Testament passage where
"new" modifies "covenant.” The law remains a key point of
continuity between old and new; but it will be written upon the heart, no
longer a written Torah. [2]
Here,
God is telling the people of Judah that despite innumerable attempts to remain
faithful and live into the old covenant – the old promise of faithfulness and
steadfastness – that the old covenant is irreparably broken. It is here, in
this passage, that we learn something altogether wonderful about God: God does
not turn away from the people who consistently break covenant. Rather, God
finds a new way to be in relationship with them.
If
this is what we are striving to do in our own lives, seeking to live out in our
own way, then this promise of renewal is about more than just being changed or
turning over a new leaf. This promise of renewal, at its core, is about
forgiveness and reconciliation. It’s about relentlessly seeking out ways to be
in relationship with the most challenging of people, simply because we love
them. It is about setting aside expectation, and re-evaluating how we can make
it work.
What
God promises to do in this passage is utterly radical. God tells Jeremiah, “I
will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. I will be
their God, and they shall be my people.” If you consider the ways in which the
society of the Israelites was created and sustained, it was all done through
the temple and in the course of religious life. By saying that the law – which
had been in the hands of the experts to interpret and implement – would be
written on the hearts of the people, God is saying that there would no longer
be a need for the world to function as it had. God says, “No longer shall they
teach one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me.” Knowledge of
God, then, is inherent in their very being. The law is no longer written on
parchment, a limited, finite, protected entity. Now, the law, which isn’t just
rules, but the way in which to be in life-giving relationship with God and
others, is written on the hearts of all. “They shall all know me, the
Lord says, from the least to the greatest.”
This
new covenant is about what God chooses to do for us, in our hearts. Now, the law
is not to be logically understood. Now, there is a new covenant that is so
close that it is physically in our
hearts, coursing through our veins. What flows from our soul, what fires our
passions, is not just biology, but relationship. As our hearts beat, our life
is renewed, God’s promise is renewed, and we live into the covenant that God is
ours and we shall be God’s people. This is the commitment of God; the
covenant; the promise. That we are God’s. Now, forever.
It
is the last verse of our text today that demonstrates how this is possible. God
says, “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” If I’m
being completely honest with you, I have such a hard time with the language of
forgiving and forgetting. So often, my attempts to forgive turned into an
ongoing relationship that was harmful. The delicate balance between forgiveness
and boundary-setting is tricky to navigate, and I know that if I forget
previous wounds, I risk being vulnerable to them again. It is the remembering that
keeps me safe. But, this is not about our relationship with one another, per
se. This is about God’s ongoing relationship with us. Despite our repeated
refusal to keep covenant with God, God chooses not only to continually engage
us, but to re-define the covenant itself. God forgives, and forgets, and we are the only ones who benefit from this.
This tells us so much about God, and God’s insistence on relationship with us,
because “God does what Israel cannot: God forgets. In response to their
failure, God refuses to recognize it. In response to their infidelity, God
calls them faithful. In response to their sin and brokenness and very real
wretchedness, God's memory has to be pushed and prodded to find any recollection.
God forgets.”[3]
So,
the divine memory of our relationship with God is no longer marred, but
beautiful. It is less like the threadbare tapestry, worn by perpetual erosion,
and more like a beautiful work of art, restored to its fullness. Written on our
hearts is not just the law, but the promise that we are God’s people. Our
response, then, must be some kind of radical generosity, which alone can break
the cycles of resentment and revenge. As God’s people, we must learn to live as
people guided by our hearts, called to serve the Lord, love others and change
the world by living differently in it. “The way back to God, says Jeremiah, is
the way of forgiveness.”[4]
In
this, is the promise of Renewal.
In the name of the Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
O God who answers
prayer, I come before your throne.
O God who answers
prayer, I come to you.
By awesome deeds
you answer, with deliverance you answer.
You are the God of
my salvation.
[1] Walter Brueggemann, ON Scripture, Odyssey Networks,
2015. Video: Race in America. http://www.odysseynetworks.org/on-scripture-the-bible/ferguson-forgiveness-jeremiah-3131-34/
[2] Terence E. Fretheim http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2369
[4] Walter Brueggemann, ON Scripture, Odyssey Networks,
2015. Video: Race in America. http://www.odysseynetworks.org/on-scripture-the-bible/ferguson-forgiveness-jeremiah-3131-34/
[5] Psalm 65, Michael Eubanks, http://www.reverbnation.com/playlist/view_playlist/-4?page_object=artist_738286
