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During Lent we have spent time at the bends in the river, contemplating the covenant between God and God’s people.
We have seen Noah and the rainbow.
We have heard God promise blessing to all
through Abraham and Sarah.
We have meditated on the law—
the 10 commandments.
We have sat with the people grumbling
in the wilderness—
and dealing with fiery snakes.
Today we come to Jeremiah’s prophecy
of a different type of covenant,
one written onto people’s hearts.
We often talk about the “old” and “new” covenant—in fact we use those words every week at the Lord’s table, hearing Jesus say about the cup: “This is the new covenant shed in my blood.” New, at least for Jesus, meant the latest iteration of what was an old constant—God’s covenant with God’s people. The covenant didn’t change. What changed was how God expressed the covenant (or dare I say, how people thought God was expressing the covenant).
What strikes me is the tenacity of God—it reminds me of the psalmist’s words “God’s steadfast love endures forever. No matter what, God’s steadfast love endures forever.” God is going to keep trying and trying, until we believe in God’s love for us.
The covenant starts at that rainbow—after a flood has wiped the slate and the earth clean. No more—declares that covenant. All of creation can count on God’s promise seen in the clouds.
But it isn’t enough for God to promise what God won’t do. The covenant moves to a more human-oriented restatement—God picks a specific couple, Abraham and Sarah.
“I will bless you,
and you shall be a blessing,
and through you
shall all people be blessed”
God says.
With the law, the 10 commandments and all that they bring, the covenant tries to become practical. The 10 commandments try to answer the questions:
“How should I act?
What do I have to do to fulfill my part
of the covenant?”
This is not so much about God (God’s steadfast love endures forever), but about us. In some ways, it is a maturing of the human species—understanding that we bear some responsibility in this contract with God. The covenant isn’t just God bestowing or not bestowing things on us. The covenant is a two-way street. God’s blessings, God’s love, should prompt us to respond to God, and to others in kind.
But, of course, we are human. And we fall short of what we, and God, desire. That to me is the beauty of the story of the serpents in the wilderness.
Yes, we are going to grumble.
Yes, we are going to be faced with difficulties.
Yes, that is what it is to be human.
But the covenant does not disappear because of our failings.
God’s steadfast love truly does endure forever. And God reaches out, in that story, to try to provide a symbol, an icon, a talisman—something we can hold onto, look up to, even be “healed by,” when we face the problems of life. That bronze serpent, lifted up, is concrete evidence of God’s healing, loving presence with us.
By the time we get to the prophet Jeremiah, God’s message of “steadfast love enduring forever” had reached a “tough love” time. Jeremiah is often called the “angry” prophet because he got the hard job of telling the Israelite people that they were going to go into exile. They were going to lose their land, their freedom, their place of worship. But, in chapters 30-33 of the book of Jeremiah, we hear the small, but steady word of hope, of consolation. You may lose all that—Jeremiah says, but God will still be our God and we will still be God’s people. And this promise comes with a new pledge—God says, “I will make a new covenant, one you cannot forget, for it will be written on your hearts.”
It is as if God said,
This covenant between you and me isn’t just an abstract thing like a pretty rainbow in the clouds.
This covenant between you and me isn’t just a gift, a blessing for all peoples.
This covenant between you and me isn’t just an intellectual or moral exercise, commandments to be obeyed.
This covenant between you and me isn’t just about comfort, or healing.
This covenant between you and me is about etching the knowledge of my love, (God’s love) on your hearts.
This covenant between you and me is about a relationship. And it is so personal that it becomes part of each of us, written on the center of our very being.
How much closer could God and God’s people be? Surely this will be the last tweak to the covenant needed—the last “new” covenant.
And so, God etched a message of love,
a message of forgiveness,
a message of newness,
a message of life
on our hearts.
And what happened?
God’s steadfast love may endure forever,
but humans, especially human hearts are fickle.
We forget.
We turn away.
We act in anger, or hurt, or despair.
And so, God, who is ever attempting something else to bridge the gap, to make the covenant clearer, to finally get through our thick skulls, tries a different tack.
God decides to become human.
To be born.
And to die.
To wipe away the space that separates us from that covenantal love—in rainbows, and blessings, and law, and symbols, even in the etchings on our own hearts.
Jesus comes to have a heart to heart with the world.
Jesus is the ultimate way to express the covenant, God’s steadfast love for us.
In Jesus, God gets to look into our eyes, hold our hand, speak our language, embody what God has been trying to say from the very beginning—“It is good.” “You are my beloveds.” “I love you.”
The story of Jesus, especially the story of Jesus’ passion and death, (that we are rapidly drawing near to), seems a repudiation of God’s writing anything on human hearts.
What do we see but betrayal, and denial, and cruelty, and death? It is hard to see God’s love very clearly. It is hard to believe that we humans, even we followers, have even remembered the covenant.
It is a stark story to tell ourselves year after year. All the more so, because it has been repeated, ad nauseam, in every century, in every culture, in every place where humans have existed.
And yet …
And yet …
God gets the final word.
God will not forsake God’s promises.
God will not forget the covenant.
God’s love is a force more powerful than anything.
And God’s steadfast love endures forever.
That is what is written on our hearts, if we would only look and see.
Written heart to heart
God and us
Together in covenant
May it be so. Amen and Amen.
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