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New Covenants and Holy Tattoos

Jeremiah 31:31-34

October 21, 2007

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 out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke through 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 must they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord! 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.

This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Hope Coming Judah’s Way

The days are surely coming, says the Lord. Our text today was written for a people who longed to see days other than their own. These words were spoken for people in Judah yearning to hear of something different than the darkness in which they found themselves. War was raging. The poor were dying. The people were despairing. Their little nation was tossed about between empires. And the faithful had forgotten God…again.

The vast majority of his book is filled with Jeremiah doing his very best to wake the people up with fiery sermons, to shake them up with bold prophecies, to inspire them with promises of justice. And I’m not going to go through the whole book of Jeremiah today, but the bottom line, after forty years of ministry,

is that it didn’t work, at least not the way Jeremiah might have expected.

As a talented preacher, Jeremiah’s sermons might inspire them to new faithfulness for a week or two. As an Organizer, his cadences of social responsibility might open their eyes to the poor, for a while. But always they returned to their old ways. When their eyes grew tired of seeing people’s need, they closed their eyes. When their ears became anxious with news of corrupt wars, silent superbugs and metro-cities running out of water, they just turned off the news. Often they were complacent. Too often they were too busy to notice, and nothing ever seemed to change.

We caught a glimpse of them today when we said the Prayer of Confession: We have sinned against God in thought, word and deed--by what we have done and what we have left undone--We have not loved you with our whole heart and mind and strength.-- have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

The problem in little Judah ran deeper than any one sin the people committed, or any one law they broke. The problem wasn’t about legalism; it’s about identity. Even created by God, called by God…they forgot who they were. Even freed from Egypt by God….they forgot whose they were. And though they could see darker days in exile looming ahead these people of little Judah were stuck.

No amount of yelling or shaking a righteous fist was going to move them. These weren’t spiritual entrepreneurs. They couldn’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They were mired down in the muck of sin, spiraling hopelessly into the darkest days they could remember.

And it’s right there---at this lowest low point—that we discover a most extraordinary thing. It’s here that the preaching of Jeremiah reaches truly profound. In what’s called the Little Book of Consolation, Jeremiah’s words change tunes—and what used to be wild warnings of wrath suddenly become gentle whispers, suddenly seem soothing words of Comfort.

Which is all really incredible because Jeremiah hasn’t changed his mind about their past. He’s not taking back any of the challenging words already spoken. Jeremiah insists that the God he proclaims is the God of Justice. But here’s the thing, and he knows it:

God’s justice isn’t giving people what they deserve.

God’s justice is giving people what they NEED!

And what they needed was hope—Hope, for God’s sake! With the prophet-sized faith, Jeremiah knew

that though his people would never find their own way to Hope, Hope was already finding it’s way to them. Real Hope! Hope of a future. Hope of a land. Hope of peace, for the Hope of God was coming to them, breaking light into their darkest despair.

Hope, hope, hope was coming, God says, for “The days are surely coming…when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

Genuinely New

A New Covenant. That’s what Hope looked like for those war-weary, sin-stained people of Judah. A New Covenant! Not another Old one, not some dusty legal thing based on rules and laws. Not a covenant used to keep people out, but a Covenant to bring people in. Not a covenant to judge the people, but one to forgive them.

What those broken people needed was New Hope--not written into stone, nor any external thing that could be broken, desecrated, forgotten, but the New Hope of God written into their very selves. And by God, that is just what God does.

“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.”

This is a Covenant unlike any before. This is a connection—some sacred bond—between God and a people that was sealed for all time--but not inked on paper to be lost or stored in the hard drive to be deleted--but written on their very hearts. These are daring, radical powerful words, and so many centuries later, we have to be careful not to domesticate them, especially God’s use of the word heart.

One author I read this week said it better than I could. She writes, “In the evangelical tradition in which I grew up, we spoke of ‘letting Jesus into our heart.’ He stood there patiently and knocked, waiting as long as it took, and when we were ready, we swung the door open and invited him in. But the God of Jeremiah will have none of that.”

Neither she nor I am criticizing that evangelical tradition, but what’s happened here is more than that. This is not the story of a people who were seeking out God—that’s just the problem. This is a story of the God who is seeking out His people. A God who has grown weary of seeing Her people suffer in sin. So writing God’s law on their hearts is more than sweet pillow talk.

In biblical Hebrew, many parts of the body served as metaphors. Nose represented anger. One’s Right Arm signaled strength. The throat spoke of greed. And the heart is so much more than it is in English. It isn’t just Emotion – love, compassion, even grief—so much as it is will. In Hebrew, the heart is the place of intention and decision making. It is the place that chooses how we will live. So to love God with all our heart means a lot more than having warm feelings, and to have God’s law written on the human hearts…well, that friends, is a matter of Identity.

More than any pious conversion, this New Covenant is more like being branded by God. More like having God’s name, God’s handprint written invisibly but permanently on us, the holiest tattoo of our lives! “Who are we?” the people of Judah cry. “This is who you are,” God says, “You are mine.”

This New Covenant in Jeremiah really is New, unlike anything the people or prophet have ever seen before, for at root, this New Covenant is not based on them. Not on how well they follow the law or how poorly they live their lives.

This is a Covenant made and written and sealed by God- the One who knew those people better than they knew themselves. The One who claimed them before they were born, and had not given up on them yet though they had long given up on themselves.

Listen to how one-sided this covenant is described by God:

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.

An Uneven Covenant

Even though they will fail over and over again. Just like us. As a Presbyterian pastor I get asked this question fairly often: Shelaine why do we have to say a Prayer of Confession every single week? Half the time I never did those things in that prayer anyway! It’s such a downer. The answer is I try to give is simple.

We gather together as the people of God--created by God, sustained, called into being as Christ’s church by God. God has held up God’s side of the covenant, but we haven’t. Part of worship is about seeing that with clear eyes, and hearing again with open ears that this covenant we share with God is one of forgiveness not judgment; one of being brought in not shut out. Part of worship is bumping into the startling reality we will never be even with God. No matter how much we do-in love or work- we will never outdo God.

I would like to share with you a poem today that has meant a great deal to me over the years. It has helped teach me what it means to be in such an uneven New Covenant with the God who loves me beyond imagination. So hear with me “The Lanyard,” by Billy Collins.

The other day I was ricocheting slowly

off the blue walls of this room,

moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,

from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,

when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist

could send one into the past more suddenly-

a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp

by a deep Adirondack lake

learning how to brad long think plastic strips

into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard

or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,

but that did not stop me from crossing

stand over strand, again and again

until I had made a boxy

red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,

and I gave her a lanyard.

She nursed me in many a sick room,

lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,

laid cold face cloths on my forehead,

and then led me out into the airy light,

and taught me how to walk and swim,

and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

Here are thousands of meals, she said,

and here is clothing and a good education.

And here is your lanyard, I replied,

which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,

strong legs, bones and teeth,

and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,

And here, I wish to say to her now,

is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,

but the rueful admission that when she took

the two-tone lanyard from my hand,

I was as sure as a boy could be

that this useless, worthless thing I wove

out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Marked, Baptized, and Beautiful

We’re not even, not nearly even in this New Covenant with God. But God knew that going in, generations upon generations ago, and we are no worse and no better than the saints who came before.

Yet God continues to create, continues to call, and with that holy water of baptism running down our heads, continues to mark us with the holiest tattoo of our lives.

In our darkest hours, when we cannot muster the faith even to reach our and grab Hope, know friends that Hope is coming to us. Coming, coming, for ‘the days are surely coming,’ says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” Not upon anything out here that we can forget, ignore, rationalize, or break. But written inside our own selves. Who are we, the saints of old asked? This is who you are, God answered, You are mine.

Let us go from this place weaving our lives, strand by strand and day by day, into some small beautiful thing for God. Amen.

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