Jeremiah 31:31-34
John 8:31-36
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.
Sometimes I wonder what someone new to faith and religion, someone who identifies as “spiritual but not religious”, or perhaps even a “none”, a person with no experience with religion or the church, sees when they come into our worship spaces. Especially on a day like today when we are celebrating Reformation Sunday and recalling Martin Luther’s boldness, when pageantry and exuberance energize the air, and we take in the music and the red paraments and banners,
what do our neighbors see?
A preaching colleague regularly reminds us to “show ‘em Jesus” and certainly, that is my prayer, that people encountering us for the first time see Jesus.
But showing people Jesus doesn’t mean only reading and teaching the parts of Scripture, what we call the New Testament, and particularly the Gospels, that include the stories of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection. The Old Testament texts also show how “the Word of God [has entered] communities of faith by calling, warning, exhorting, judging, redeeming and forgiving.”[i] These texts narrate the experience of our spiritual mothers and fathers.
In tonight’s Old Testament text, we hear from Jeremiah, a prophet and an unpopular truth-teller commissioned by God who was active from approximately 627 BCE through the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 587 BCE. Remaining in Judah until he was forced into exile in Egypt, Jeremiah tried to awaken Israel to the ways that the people had been un-faithful to Yahweh.
He repeatedly charged God’s people with fickleness and urged them to return to their God, warning them of the destruction that would follow rebellion, and worse, their indifference, to their sovereign Lord. In defiance to royal posturing, Jeremiah announced God’s severe judgment and offered lament for the unavoidable devastation of Jerusalem.
In contrast, the text we just heard comes from a portion of Jeremiah called “The Book of Consolation” or “The Book of Comfort” because the verses in these chapters voice “comfort, consolation, assurance and hope”, rooted in the character of God.[ii]
From the beginning, God created humankind for relationship, establishing a covenant that was carried through the generations. “Covenant” is a 50-cent word for relationship. First with Noah, and then with Abram, Isaac and Jacob, and again with David, God established a covenant with God’s people, promising to be in relationship with them.[iii]
The covenant God created was meant to be eternal, for-ever, but again and again throughout Scripture, God’s people rejected their covenant relationship with God,
grasping for power, wrenching control away from God and insisting on their own plans.
When Jeremiah speaks on behalf of the Lord in these verses, God’s people are in exile, suffering their punishment for breaking their covenantal relationship with God. And it is into that disconsolation and despair that God promises a “new covenant”. (v. 31)
For we Christians, it is important to remember that these words were spoken first to Israel. The words are ours only because they were spoken to people who were our ancestors in faith. God has not forgotten or replaced Israel.
God names this a “new covenant” because God is offering God’s people a “new” way of being in relationship with God. It is a “new” covenant” because it transforms us, reconciling us to God.
In these verses, Jeremiah explains how this transformation will take place. The teaching and instruction that were written on stone tablets and given to Moses at Sinai were neglected by God’s people, and their hearts were corrupted by sin and willfulness.
Now God’s law will be written in our hearts, at the center of our being, so that it will become part of our nature so that, instead of an impulse toward rebellion against God, we will be instinctively drawn into life with God. As Walter Brueggemann writes, “Our identity will now be internal, “so obeying will be as normal and as readily accepted as breathing and eating.”[v]
This “new covenant” is not an ethereal or ambiguous hope. It is a divine promise that God enables us to live in covenant and relationship with Godself, and empowers us to live according to God’s instruction. [vi] With abundant grace, mercy and forgiveness, God un-binds us from our sin and frees us to begin again.
This promise is at the heart of the Reformation.
This grace-filled God is the one that Martin Luther discovered when he learned Hebrew and Greek and read Scripture in its original languages. Even after he had become an Augustinian monk, Luther had remained terrified of the vengeful God who would exact punishment upon pitiful sinners, but then he discovered the evidence of God’s grace throughout the canon and gained a new understanding of the depth of God’s love for each of us. In his famed 95 Theses, Luther argued against church practices that were corrupt or kept citizens captive to papal authority and he urged reform. His intent was never to separate from the Catholic Church but, like Jeremiah, to speak truth to a culture, authority and institution that was faltering.
One of the revelations that Luther shared was that faith was rooted in direct relationship with God and no one mediates faith for another person. This is the idea of covenant; God’s covenant is not with Rome or with our bishops or denomination authorities, it is with each and every one of us.
“John’s Gospel, [especially] focuses on the Covenant and becoming one with God.”[vii] In tonight’s gospel text, Jesus, speaking to believers, says,
“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”[viii]
When we hear the word “truth” here, in our humanity, like Pilate we want to know, “What is truth?” “What do we have to know?” “What do we have to do to get the ‘true disciple’ badge?”
Is truth found in the right style of worship, the right number of members, the biggest vacation bible school, the prettiest stained glass windows or the best sound system? Is it known through strict piety with morning and evening prayers and daily confession? Tell us and we’ll do it!
Sometimes we want to know we have the truth so that we get the bragging rights. We want to feel special. So, too often, as we observe the anniversary of the reformation, we tell the story in such a way that it sounds like Martin Luther was the first and only one who challenged the Roman church, as though he must have been the one who knew the truth because his arguments prevailed. Of course, he wasn’t the only one, and the truth that Jesus names here isn’t ours to keep for ourselves.
The very first time we hear this word in John’s gospel is in the prologue in the first chapter, when the Evangelist tells us, “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth”.[ix]
Jesus isn’t using the word “truth” to describe a coveted treasure, a checklist, or an argument to be won. Jesus is the truth, and the embodiment of God’s compassionate mercy in the world.
God loves us because God cannot help but love us, and in Jesus, we see God’s love with skin on it.
Speaking about Jesus, the incarnation and the resurrection, Franciscan priest Richard Rohr describes the messiness of the world we live in and says, “the undoing is part of the remaking.” [x]
This past summer, I began pottery classes at the community college and, as a novice potter, I love that phrase: “the undoing is part of the remaking.” Seated at the potter’s wheel, one of the first steps is called centering. You use water and the rotating wheel to prepare the ball of clay, coning it upward and then cupping it and returning it to more of a ball. It gets the air out of the clay and gets the clay to sit evenly on the wheel. One of the ways you know the clay is centered is that your hands no longer shudder or vibrate as the wheel turns beneath them. If you don’t get the clay centered or keep it that way, your work will be lopsided, or as my instructor kindly says, “organic”. Other times, when you’re working at the wheel, the clay gets too wet or thin or collapses on itself, and when you know you can’t redeem it, you scrape it off and put the clay into a bag where it will dry out enough to be shaped into a new ball that can become something new the next week.
“The undoing is part of the remaking.”
The undoing, disorder or disorientation that we experience in our lives is not in vain. It is part of the reconciling work that God is about in the world.
Reformer John Wesley defined salvation as the restoration of our capacity to bear God’s image in the world.[xi] And Luther wrote, “We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road.”[xii]
In this way, we are semper reformanda, always reforming.
A life of faith isn’t predictable or linear and it rarely follows our plans. And sometimes it means starting over and waiting on God to reveal what’s next. A life following Jesus breaks open our ideas about where we find truth and meaning. And through this messy and unpredictable life together, Jesus reveals that God is working in and through us.
Redeemed by God through faith in Jesus, we are invited to participate in this new life and show forth the love of God to our neighbors and the world,
showing ‘em Jesus.
Let us pray…
Holy God, our Redeemer and Lord,
By your Word, you invite us into a new covenant, promising forgiveness and love.
Teach us to abide in Your Word, to remain in your love, to continue in your presence.
By your Spirit, guide us in the truth that is in Jesus, truth that does not exclude but includes, and sends us into the world to bear your love to our neighbors and communities.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
[i] Terence Fretheim. The Pentateuch. 21.
[ii] Brueggemann, Walter. Jeremiah. 264-265.
[iii] Breen, Mike. Covenant and Kingdom: The DNA of the Bible. 3DM. Kindle Edition.
[iv] Jeremiah 31:33, NRSV.
[v] Brueggemann, Walter. Jeremiah. 293.
[vi] Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination (p. 56). Augsburg Fortress - A. Kindle Edition.
[vii] Breen. Location 2014.
[viii] John 8:31-32, NRSV.
[ix] John 1:14, NRSV.
[x] “Jesus, Incarnation and The Christ Resurrection”. Another Name For Every Thing with Richard Rohr. Podcast audio. August 3, 2019. Center for Contemplation and Action. https://cac.org/podcasts/1-jesus-incarnation-and-the-christ-resurrection/.
[xi] Joy Moore. Sermon Brainwave #687. Luther Seminary. Podcast audio. October 27, 2019. https://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx.
[xii] Martin Luther, *Defense of All the Articles*, Lazareth transl., as found in Grace Brame, *Receptive Prayer* (Chalice Press, 1985) p.119
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