| The days are surely coming, says
the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house
of Israel and the house of Judah. It 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. But 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. No 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. |
|
| Jeremiah 31:31-34 |
| Jeremiah’s Book of Comfort which comprises chapters
30 and 31was written to give hope to God’s people in
exile in Babylon. God’s prophet had warned of wrath for
the people’s sinfulness for years. The days he warned
of had dawned. During a series of deportations, many Jews were
exiled to Babylon and the temple was destroyed. Eventually
Jeremiah himself would be forced to flee Jerusalem and was
taken by friends to refuge in Egypt. The Book of Comfort’s
tone is a shift from his earlier proclamations. Now words of
comfort come to the exiles. Words of hope and restoration. |
| The adage “Out with the old; in with the new” seems
to apply to our text. What is this “new covenant” though?
Is it a break from God’s prior covenants with Israel?
Christian tradition has tended toward supersessionism when
we read this text. This means that past Christians, and some
modern ones, claim that what God did later on in Jesus to extend
God’s covenant to the Gentiles, supercedes God’s
covenant with Israel. They point to this passage as justification
for such a theological position. Such a view is not a part
of the plain meaning of the text! We find in the passage that
God makes yet another new covenant with all of Israel who are
scattered in exile. Jeremiah’s words show God rebuilding
the old covenant anew for Israel’s sake, not for Gentiles.
God’s intent remains the same “I will be their
God, and they shall be my people.” Only now the people
from the least to the greatest will know God in a new way!
Instead of God taking the people by the hand to bring them
out of exile—mirroring Egypt, God will put the law within
them and write it on their hearts. God chose to forgive and
forget Israel’s sin providing for their reconciliation
in this new covenant. |
| Israel will again know and claim God with them on an intimate
level. This time they would be obedient because God will inwardly
transform human hearts. Jeremiah puts his money where his mouth
is. Shortly after our passage Jeremiah pays good money to buy
a field in the land of Benjamin—right as it is being
seized in battle! He bought it because it was a sign from “The
Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: that houses and fields and
vineyards shall again be bought in this land” by the
Jewish people. It is a tangible symbol that the new covenant
will be fulfilled by God! |
| It seems apparent that God was determined to stick with the
covenant people—despite knowing they would continue to
break God’s heart. God simply chose not to be God without
them. We hear this in Jeremiah’s words to those in exile, “I
will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall
they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the
Lord,” for they shall all know me.” After much
affliction, hope and salvation came to those that had broken
their end of a covenant with God. What the people have broken,
God remakes anew. Old and new covenants are bound together! |
| Knowing God in one’s heart is more than an old story
retold over and over as an observer. The old story must interact
with the new way God offers restoration, forgiveness and life
out of the death of exile. The new thing God is constantly
doing then and now must be proclaimed. What we glean from the
scriptures and Judeo-Christian history should lead us to fresh
insights in our lives. Like Jeremiah, we must proclaim the
new way God is as work in our lives. The authority of forgiveness
was granted and written on the hearts of the people Israel
by God in Jeremiah. Our Greek scripture alludes to the hour
that has come to change everything for those who would come
to know Christ as our savior; the hour will show Jesus with
the authority to forgive our sin. This is how God brings us
in from exile and alienation from God and one another. We know
the new as it is written on our hearts and they are transformed. |
| Paul Tillich commented on our Jeremiah passage in light of
what God has done in Jesus for us saying, “And so I repeat:
the first thing about the new is that we cannot force it and
cannot calculate it. All we can do is to be ready for it….The
second thing we must say about the new: it must break the power
of the old, not only in reality, but also in our memory; and
one is not possible without the other.…We cannot be
born anew if the power of the old is not broken within us;
and it is not broken so long as it puts the burden of guilt
upon us….Forgiveness means a throwing out of the old…by
the strength of the new.” (1) We know the new and we
throw out the old as our hearts are opened by God’s revelation
to us and the Word dwells within. When we hear the promise
of forgiveness, love and God’s grace and apply that to
our lives and the way we view others. |
| My friends and I went to see “Inherit the Wind” at
the Geva Theater two weeks ago. In this fictional take on the
Scopes Trials in the 1920s, the writers show a group of small
town Christians who believe that God’s word is written
on their hearts through a strict literal or fundamentalist
reading of the Bible. When that reading was challenged, they
felt that all knowledge of God and obedience to God was lost.
Their view of evolution according to a literal interpretation
of Genesis One and Two had to be preserved—no one could
deviate from a literal interpretation! For me this view of
God’s word written on our hearts is way too narrow. Strict
literalism has little to do with God’s forgiveness, covenant
and love. It stems from human fear of losing God’s love,
not that new covenant written on our hearts. |
| I believe that knowing the new, the word God writes on our
hearts, is best shared by our personal faith stories. When
I met with the PNC they asked me to share some of my faith
journey and I used a method of faith sharing taught to me by
Dr. Craig Dykstra the head of the religion division of the
Lilly Endowment. In this method you share your faith through
relationships that have revealed God to us. I’d like
to share three vignettes of how I “know the Lord” how
God has written the good news on my heart. |
| When I was a young child and we were in the middle of a move
from Yuma to Tempe, I became sick with meningitis. My Grandma
Godfrey took care of me the whole time. She cuddled me and
fed me chicken soup. I was nurtured and unabashedly loved.
I felt God’s presence and love for me through her care
by the warmth of her tender touch and calming presence. She
was the presence of the Other: compassionate, loving, providing.
This scene is the earliest spiritual moment or time of my life
I can remember. |
| Linda Hunter was our Associate Pastor’s wife, my youth
leader and my confidant. I babysat for David and Linda’s
children before I was old enough to drive. Linda would come
and pick me up and we would talk on the way to their home.
It was on one such trip with Linda that I took a great step
of faith as God used Linda to reveal the limits of any human
relationship. I had been unable to accept my own families’ limitations
as a teen. I was griping and moaning and then these words came
out of Linda’s mouth that hit me like a ton of bricks.
I can’t remember exactly what she said, but it made me
realize for the first time that God was the only One who was
with me always. God was the only One who would ever meet all
of my needs and understand everything about me. My family would
always fall short as I do for others. No relationship except
God’s covenant with me could be all knowing and loving. |
| Then there was Dr. Kenda Dean’s Spirituality in
Small Groups class. Dr. Dean is a great professor at
Princeton. I wasn’t enrolled in her greatest class
ever though. We only met once a week and our class was cancelled
about half the time, for good reasons, but cancelled nonetheless.
I didn’t learn as much as I had hoped about small groups
from the class, but I learned something even more important
from Dr. Dean. Every time we met, she loved on us. She made
our small class into a celebration each time. It was like
a perpetual love feast with the atmosphere set just right.
Food and drinks laid out for our nourishment. Dr. Dean is
hospitality incarnate. I learned all about the importance
of showing God’s abundant love through hospitality
for the other. Dr. Dean delighted in our lives and provided
much needed nourishment in the midst of academia. Is there
a better way to teach God’s faithfulness to us? |
| Jeremiah’s Book of Comfort gives hope to the faithful,
even in exile. Hope that they will know God’s new covenant,
that they will know the Lord in their hearts again. Come in,
come back, speak up, share your knowledge of God what God has
written upon your heart. Share the story that God has given
you with another. The good news should not remain captive within
us! It is meant to be proclaimed as God reveals it to us and
we come to know it. |
| Amen |
| Beth E. Godfrey - April 2, 2006 |
| Central Presbyterian Church, Geneseo, New
York |
| 1. "Behold,
I am Doing a New Thing," Paul Tillich, from The
Shaking of the Foundations, 1955. At Religion
Online. |
|
| Top |
