It's Not About God..., Mountain View United, Aurora, CO, 3/25/2012, by Rev Steven R. Mitchell

It’s Not About God…
By Rev Steven R Mitchell
Mountain View United, Aurora, CO 3/25/2012
Based on Jeremiah 31:31-34

“The time is coming when I will make a brand-new covenant…” This message was delivered from God, by Jeremiah. The actual reading says, “The time is coming when I will make a brand-new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,” who were living as captives of the Babylonian Empire. I have chosen to broaden this declarative by not directing “who” this promise is being made to.
Jeremiah is giving this new promise to a people, whose understanding of their captivity is a direct result of their disobedience, their turning away from the God who brought them up out of Egypt, a turning away from the God who gave them the “law” in which to live by, a turning away from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. As a people who live on this side of the Cross, a resurrection peoples, rarely do we interpret disasters or attacks upon our nation by foreign entities as “judgments” from God. So what importance do books like Jeremiah have for folks like us?
In last week’s reflection based on the book of Numbers, I bought out the idea of “trust”, which develops by acting in faith. This week the theme is “hope”. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord…” this statement is talking about the future, a future that consists of a new covenant. Again, as a people who live on this side of the Cross, what does this have to do with us? Isn’t the cross the fulfillment of that new covenant? I don’t think it is. I think that we are still waiting for this new covenant to come to fruition.
The Epistle reading for this week comes out of Hebrews, where it speaks about Jesus as being appointed as the “High Priest”, yet I when I read this promise from God, I think we would be better informed about what this promise entails if we were to read Paul’s message to the church in Corinth as written in 1 Corinthians 13, which is more commonly referred to as the “Love” chapter.
I view what this promised covenant means through these words:
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
God tells us that this new covenant will be placed within our hearts, no longer having the need to teach one another, for we shall all know God, from the least to the greatest and God will forgive us of our iniquity and remember our sin no more. These are powerful words! What is happening with this new covenant isn’t just another set of new rules to follow, rules that are placed on a tablet that we can go to, read, and know about, rather, the day is coming when the law will be engraved in our hearts and displayed in our lives. No longer will we know about God – all the right words, all the right theology. The days are surely coming when we, from the least to the greatest, will know God – with all the intimacy that is entailed with personal knowledge. Feasting on the Word, Yr B, Vol. 2, Richard Floyd, pg 124
This new covenant is best compared to that of a couple who are totally in love with one another. Their minds are filled throughout the entire day about the other. Thoughts of what their beloved has said to them, thoughts about what they will be doing in the future together, thoughts that are totally focused on the other. Their actions will be loving actions toward their beloved, working for the betterment of the one their love is focused upon. They are in a state of being where their heart is totally open and focused with their beloved. This is an example of an intimate relationship.
Now let me take us into the other direction for deeper contemplation. Consider an intense relationship between two people, locked in a degenerating fight for power and recognition. The law of love, as written in the Ten Commandments, is easily forgotten in the heat of the struggle. But if that law were written on their hearts through the agency of the Holy Spirit, they would be filled with enough positive sense of self and enough fulfilling goodwill that they would not have to fight to steal it from the other, but could give love to the other from the overabundance in their hearts.
Consider religious prejudges, whether between Christians or those of other faiths. When people of a particular religious outlook see themselves as having a lock on the truth and are convinced of their own virtue and of the others apostasy, their self-righteousness leads to hurt and divisiveness. If the law of God were written on the hearts of all concerned, a new day of peace and freedom would dawn.
Consider ways that Western humans currently exploit the creation. We walk as if our trampling of fragile vegetation has no value within our eco-system. Through a ravenous consuming lifestyle, we overuse the earth, leading to global warming, habitat destruction, species extinction, and the general fouling of our planet, which is home to us. We violate the law of God given in Genesis to “till the garden and keep it.”
What would it be like if God wrote the law on our hearts so that we would live within the creation, not above it, so that we would cherish our neighbors, the birds, animals, and fish? What would this creation look like if we lived with restraint and humility, living for the whole creation, not just for our singular, insular selves and our own narrow corner of creation?
Here at the end of the season of lent, this passage begs us to explore the ways that we need the law of love to be written on our hearts. Feasting on the Word, Yr B, Vol. 2, pg 127, Woody Bartlett As we continue living our lives on this side of the Cross, Jeremiah is telling us through this promise, “it isn’t knowing about God”, that will help us live in the love that we have seen exhibited through Jesus, it is in “knowing God”! It is “this knowledge” of God that moves us from reading the outside tablet, to “knowing” this promise found on the inside tablet that we call the “heart”. It doesn’t happen with the head, it comes from the heart. As we develop our trust in God’s leading, we walk with the hope that, “The time is coming when God will make a brand-new covenant…” A covenant that will be laid deep within all of humanities hearts. Amen