Sermons
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God’s Covenant, Our Heart – The Rev. Michelle Meech
March 17, 2024
NOTE: A portion of this sermon is not written out, but is in the audio recording.
In ancient Israel, prophets were counselors for the rulers. Prophets were understood to be especially attuned to God’s desires and plans. So rulers would rely upon them to both give them direction, and to explain to them why something was happening and how they could address problems.
Not all prophets had an exclusively royal audience. Some would be more of, what we might call, a “performance prophet” or a “preaching prophet.” Someone who would use words or dramatic actions to express God’s concerns about humanity.
We aren’t without these people today – writers, performance artists, poets, movie makers, play rights, songwriters, visual artists, even comedians. When these people are engaged in commentary about our common lives, we are witnessing something similar to what some of the prophets of the Bible did.
Prophet Jeremiah (1968), Marc Chagall
Jeremiah, in particular, is this kind of prophet. Jeremiah was mostly known for the performance of symbolic acts. He did things like wore a linen belt, buried it, then dug it up. He wore a yoke, like an ox would. He bought a field for no reason other than it was a symbol to do so. He buried stones. He wrote on a scroll, read from it, then threw it into the Euphrates River.
These symbolic acts were ways of helping people see a bigger picture. Prophets and artists of all kinds are those in our culture who are engaged with this work – commenting on justice, oppressive forces, and the plight of humanity – helping us to see the forest for the trees.
And when someone like Jeremiah points out something to us that is painful or even horrific to see in our society, there is a variety of reactions. Some people see them as a welcome wake-up call. Others see them as a problem to be gotten rid of. But for so many, it’s just too painful to be woken up to problems because, how can we change a system that is so broken? How can we heal a whole society? So, we fall asleep to the issue again.
Jeremiah is a prophet speaking to the society in which he lived. And, in order to understand this piece of scripture better, it’s worthwhile to consider the context. What was going on that Jeremiah was speaking to? We begin several millennia before Jeremiah himself was born with the larger story of Israel.
The 12 tribes of Israel were people who lived in the area that we now call Israel, Palestine, and Jordan – the Holy Land. For eons they were deeply affiliated with each other, considering each other cousins and, even siblings. It’s a little like how we think of the states, here in our country. But there was no federal government. And these people were nomadic. There were some permanent dwellings but by and large the population lived in tents and followed their herds as they grazed.
After a while, the lack of centralized government became a problem. Land became more important as agriculture became more evolved. And other nations around them began to build up armies under kingly leadership. The lands where the ancient Israelites resided began being invaded and sometimes annexed.
In response, the leaders of these 12 tribes decided they too needed a king. But, as scripture tells us, God did not want that to happen. A significant portion of our scripture is devoted to this argument between God and the people of Israel. Well, really, the argument was between the prophets and those proponents of earthly power.
The argument went something like this: God didn’t want them to have a king because God knew that the people would lose their sense of loyalty to God and to one another. A king, God said, would take your children and make them fight a war on behalf of the king. But the people persisted. So God basically said, ok. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.
And God gave them Saul, who spent most of his time unifying them and developing an army. When Saul died, the people took David as their king. David wasn’t the most ethical king but built up the wealth of the kingdom through, what many considered to be, unholy alliances. When David died, they chose Solomon, who used the wealth to build the first temple where they housed the Ark of the Covenant. The seat of mercy. The seat of God.
At this point in history, we’re looking at a rather powerful monarchy… with land, boundaries, wealth, cities. So when Solomon died, there was a fight for the throne. Which caused a split. The Northern Kingdom kept the name Israel and their capital became Samaria. The Southern Kingdom had the capital city of Jerusalem and, therefore, the temple, took the name Judah.
Of course, 2 smaller states who are angry with each other are not as strong as one strongly united nation. Soon, both the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms were attacked and their governments and their people placed under subjugation. The Northern Kingdom fell to the Assyrians first about 200 years after Solomon’s death. The Southern Kingdom lasted about 150 more years before it fell to the Babylonians. Enter Jeremiah.
When the leadership of Judah, the Southern Kingdom, was taken into Babylonia by their captors and placed in exile, people were bereft. The temple had been destroyed, the Ark of the Covenant lost – the thing known as the Mercy Seat, so God’s mercy was gone. And the Jewish leaders themselves, while being held captive in a foreign land, were desperate and unsure. This is when Jeremiah began his ministry amongst those who were exiled in Babylonia.
So in today’s scripture when Jeremiah says that God will make a new covenant with us because we destroyed the one we already had with Them, it helps to be reminded of why Jeremiah was talking about this. Israel was in despair. They knew their leaders had made poor decisions. And because of how they understood their relationship to God, believed that God was punishing them. And Jeremiah was offering Hope.
The covenant that was broken takes us back to Moses and the promises he made on Mt. Sinai, when the ancient Israelites were still wandering the desert after their escape from Egypt. Before they came to the Promised Land and became the 12 tribes of Israel. Before they became jealous of the other nations around them who had kings and insisted on a king of their own. Before they became more loyal to the idea of the nation that needed to be protected and defended by an all-powerful king and his army, than they were loyal to God and the covenant of care they were supposed to provide one another.
Before all of this, Moses climbed Mt. Sinai and, on behalf of the people he was leading, promised God that they would obey the Law that kept them in community with one another. This was the covenant God desired because, in this kind of care for one another, God’s glory becomes known. God’s love is the true ruler.
Jeremiah is prophesying to the exiled people of Israel, telling them they will be restored because God will save them yet again. But having a written law is not enough. Instead, God will write this law of love on their very hearts so they don’t have to look anywhere but to themselves and their own compassion to follow God’s Will.
Jeremiah tells us God’s words: The days are surely coming when I will make a new covenant with my people. 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. But this is the covenant that I will make: 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 will they have to say to one another, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
I will forgive them and remember their sins no more. It’s a covenant of forgiveness. This is what becomes written on our hearts. The people who Jeremiah was prophesying to were so bereft because they felt shame. They either blamed themselves or turned that blame outward onto other people. Living a life where we always have to find who to blame, is a life in which no forgiveness can really ever enter in. What creates that need in someone to find blame, is usually the experience of having been a victim of someone’s abuse.
Have you ever been in a relationship of any kind with someone who was always looking for someone to blame? It’s painful. A friend. A sibling. A parent. A boss. A spouse. A co-worker. It keeps you on guard, always trying to cover your tracks and make sure you can defend yourself.
But what Jeremiah is telling us, is that’s not who God is. God IS forgiveness. The Ark of the Covenant is the Mercy Seat. And when we know forgiveness, we know God.
When we have felt that sense of relief that feels undeserved. When we are acting out in ways that are utterly disruptive to our own well-being and to the well being of others, and someone says, “I see you. I love you. Let me help you.” When that happens, God’s law becomes written on our hearts.
Let me tell you a short story that happened to me just this past week…
When you experience that, truly experience that sense of forgiveness, you stop looking for blame – in others, and in yourself. It may feel weird or even unbelievable. It may bring you to your knees or, at the very least, bring you to tears. But you come to realize that you too are capable of forgiving others their mistakes and foibles, and sometimes their very real sins. Perhaps more importantly, you begin to be able to forgive yourself. When you know forgiveness and allow yourself to experience it, you experience God’s love and God’s law becomes written on your heart.
So, as we step forward into Holy Week, we know that the story will be difficult. We know that we will be asked to spend time reflecting on and examining the ways in which humanity can get so lost in the game of privilege and our own egoic needs. And I invite you to remember that we are called to something greater. Not some kind of amazing feat. But the simple practice of forgiveness. Which is amazing, actually. The practice of forgiveness: Offering forgiveness to others. Asking for forgiveness from others. Receiving forgiveness for all our imagined (and sometimes very real) mistakes.
Because in opening our hearts to forgiveness, we will truly know God. God is forgiveness. God is Love.