““Planted in our Hearts”

Jeremiah 31:31-34

John 12:20-33

Rev. Dr. Marisa Laviola

First Congregational Church of Morrisville, VT

March 29, 2009

 

“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.” 

Now, at first we may ask the question: again, God?  Again another covenant?  Didn’t you make a covenant with Noah?  With Abraham and Sarah?  With the Hebrew people after you led them out of Egypt?  Haven’t we been hearing about that over the past several weeks?  But Jeremiah tells us this covenant is different.  It’s not something external like a rainbow or the promise of many children or a stone tablet with laws on it.  It’s something much deeper.  “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.”  And Jeremiah tells us that this covenant will go so deep that:  “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.”

Wow, what do you think of that?  According to Jeremiah, God is essentially saying, I know that people mess up.  They’ve messed up before, over and over.  And they’ll probably mess up again. But my steadfast and patient love is greater than any mess up. 

Jeremiah refers to God as husband in these passages.  At least one commentator wonders if parent is the more appropriate metaphor, and so do I:  A parent’s unconditional love and belief in a child who has messed up over and over again.  As I read this passage this week, I was reminded of the parents and teenagers I used to see in psychotherapy early in my psychology career.  Very often for these families the theme was around parents having a terrible time adjusting to their kids growing up, how to negotiate and renegotiate boundaries along the traverse of adolescence.  Unfortunately these parents who were genuinely worried about their children’s safety and were also feeling the pain of the loss of their children’s dependence on them, were almost entirely focused on their anger:  anger when he wouldn’t do something immediately when he was told; anger when she would be 15 minutes late for curfew.  I thought about how frustrated God must feel when we keep messing up. But then I also thought about the main work in therapy with these young people and their parents.  As the parents were able to work through the anger and come to the feelings underneath:  the feelings of loss and worry, then the real work of therapy could begin.  I could work with them around their loss, and they could sit down with their kids, express their concerns, and calmly negotiate boundaries.  And the kids responded.  The kids responded because as parents owned the feelings of loss and worry, they were also able to break through to the deep love they have for their children. 

It got me to thinking about how God can be really mad and then can move deeply to love and compassion, remembering how much God loves people, is concerned for people, and desires people to come and be with their Creator-parent God.  And from this deep place of abiding love, God offers a new covenant, one that is planted deeply within the hearts of God’s people.  So deeply that it goes beyond words and teaching.

The great scholar of the Hebrew Scriptures, Walter Brueggemann, calls this covenant the "core memory" of Israel about God: that God will do today, in this bad circumstance, what God has done in the past: God will give a new covenant, a new relationship, a new creation. According to Brueggemann, God doesn't do these things merely out of some kind of stubborn faithfulness but out of deep, wounded love and profound grief that have moved God beyond anger to tender caring. It's a thing of the heart, really: God decides this time that the law will be written not on stones, not on something external, but inside, deep inside the people, written on their hearts.

             As we contemplate the passage from Jeremiah, and this new covenant from God, we can wonder how it relates to our lives of faith as we anticipate Holy Week:  the confusing juxtaposition of hailing Jesus as sovereign on Palm Sunday, and then just a few days later mourning his death on a cross. 

The passage in the Gospel of John brings this covenant immediately down into the personal human level in a very intense and gripping way.  We meet Jesus, along with some strangers from Greece, in the throes of that life and death dilemma.  The strangers tell Philip, “We want to meet Jesus. “  And meet him they do, as Jesus is genuinely struggling with what to do as the hour draws near for his crucifixion. 

             “My soul is troubled”, he says.  Should I ask God to save me from certain death, or do I follow through?”  Even though he knows in his spirit that he will be glorified and will rise again, his humanity supersedes.  His pain is real. 

             He uses a metaphor as he grapples with his decision.  He reasons, if a grain of wheat doesn’t die it’s not worth much.  But if it does die, it bears much fruit. Given that the people lived in an agrarian society, the metaphor is a relevant one.  And philosophically, it makes sense.  But his struggle is genuinely human.

             I wonder if Jesus is grappling with the covenant with God that we read about in Jeremiah; the covenant implanted in his human heart.  But, we may recoil at that suggestion.  Jesus is grappling with whether or not to die.  Is that his covenant?  What kind of covenant is that?  Doesn’t God wish for our joy and fulfillment?  Especially for God’s anointed one?

I think that at any time Jesus could have chosen to save himself from crucifixion.  He had choices just like any of us has choices.  I would imagine he could have chosen to slip away to the desert or to the vast countryside, chosen to give up his confrontation with the political and religious leaders of the day, to give up his preaching of the realm of God, the preaching of good news to the poor, the captive, and the outcast; to give up his preaching of focus on God and others rather than focus on self and becoming worldly-wealthy at the expense of others.  He could have opened up a local healing booth and spent the rest of his days away from the center of the sin of humanity--and maybe even have done a little bit of good on the fringes. 

But I wonder if the choice of retreating to the countryside would have left him unfulfilled?  But how could face death be fulfilling?--a death that often comes to people who confront sin; who steadfastly stand up to evil, no matter what?  Why would he choose to die? 

Why did Martin Luther King choose to continue to preach a message of equality for all, non-violence and justice for all, when he knew he could very well die?  He had already been stabbed and almost died.  He could have chosen to pastor a church in Alabama and done some good.  Instead, he decided to try to change the world for the rights of all.  Why did Gandhi steadfastly insist on a massive message of peace, even when he had received death threats and knew he could die for this message?  Why choose a prophetic message when you know your life could very well be in the line of fire by those who do not want to be confronted with the message? 

Why put your life on the line for anything that is worthy? Why would anyone risk life for the sake of other people?  But police officers and firefighters do it all the time.  Service men and women in the armed forces do it all the time.  Good Samaritans pull people out of burning car wrecks, without apparent regard for their safety at the time.  And people choose all of the time to “die to self” as Jesus has suggested:  to live with a bit less financial cushion so that others can have basic needs met, to give of their time to God’s children most in need:  I’m thinking of you, lay ministers of this church, I’m thinking of hospice workers, caretakers of the elderly and disabled, those who care for the poor. People decide all the time to be good stewards of the planet and its creation.

We meet Jesus today, with those strangers from Greece.  They asked the question that people have been asking throughout the centuries, “I want to see Jesus.”  A question to which our hearts ascend.  They wanted to meet the man of whom they have heard: a man who seems different than the preachers and healers of the day--who preaches good news for everyone, not just for some; who heals with authority and tender touch, and does not allow people to praise him for the healing; who is as much of a servant as anyone they have ever heard; who seems as close to the heart of God as anyone can get.  

And they meet him, just as we meet him, grappling with the pain and agony of his impending death.  They meet him, just as we meet him, as deeply as anyone can meet; as deeply as anyone can stand to touch another--in the deep throes of a troubled soul, a disturbed spirit, an aching heart. 

In this meeting we can be comforted, because in this meeting, we can know that when our souls are troubled, when our spirits are disturbed, when our hearts are aching, the incarnate Jesus knows intimately every painful experience we have, even to the point of death. 

And when we come in prayer, we know that we have a God we can touch and reach, a God who does not hide behind ritual, pomp and circumstance, or denominationalism.  A God who honors our questions as we seek a faith that is relevant, who feels our pain and hurt when we bring them in prayer, who may ask us to make real changes to the hurt and harm that is alive and thriving in this world, but also a God who does not give up on us no matter how much we mess up; a God who calls us to our higher selves that are capable of forgiveness and discipleship; a God who stays with us every day, surrounding us with a deep heart of love. 

If the story of God’s covenant that is anticipated in Jeremiah and comes to fruition in the Gospel, stopped with Jesus’ death, we would not be sitting together here at all.  The grain of Christianity would not have been sown to bloom and to yield many fold throughout the centuries since.  Jesus died.  Our faith tells us, the witness of over 2000 years tells us, that Jesus rose again to new life; that indeed the grain of wheat that fell yields infinite-fold.  We are a people of Easter.  We know forgiveness; we anticipate the hope and ultimate reconciliation of new life in the risen Christ.