Reformation Sunday
When I think of the prophet Jeremiah, I think of anger and sorrow. We get the word “jeremiad” from the prophet Jeremiah, after all. Jeremiad is defined as “a prolonged lamentation or complaint; also: a cautionary or angry harangue.” While I was working on this sermon I did a search for images of artistic renderings of the prophet. Here are three of them that really captured my attention.
They each communicate something a little different, but for me personally, the most striking of the three is Rembrandt’s painting Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem. It really captures what most of us probably picture when we think of Jeremiah. He sits there, rather forlorn looking, painted against a dark background, leaning his head on his hand. It’s an image of abandoned hope.
But why should this surprise us? Jeremiah, after all, is the prophet who, according to tradition at least, is credited with writing the book of Lamentations. There’s a deep mournful tone that runs throughout the book that bears his name. This is the prophet who cries, “Therefore thus says the LORD: See, I am laying before this people stumbling blocks against which they shall stumble; parents and children together, neighbor and friend shall perish” (Jeremiah 6:21) and “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” (Jeremiah 23:1). It’s no wonder that Jeremiah is often called the “Weeping Prophet.”
It’s important to remember where Jeremiah is coming from. According to the opening verses of his book, Jeremiah’s call occurs in the “thirteenth year” of King Josiah’s reign, approximately 627 BCE. He’s active through the downfall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 587 BCE. He remains in the land until after the assassination of Gedaliah, the Governor appointed by Nebuchadnezzar under whom many of the Jews returned to Judah from exile. At that point he is forced into exile in Egypt. The book ends without telling us what happens to the prophet in the end. Suffice it to say that Jeremiah lives through one of the most turbulent and catastrophic moments in ancient Israel’s history.
All of which serves to make chapters 30 & 31 that much more of a surprise, because in the midst of all of this lamenting we suddenly read: “1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Write in a book all the words that I have spoken to you. 3 For the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will restore the fortunes of my people, Israel and Judah, says the Lord, and I will bring them back to the land that I gave to their ancestors and they shall take possession of it.” And we are blessed suddenly with two chapters of brilliantly gleaming hope! And it’s from this portion that we get our reading for today.
Today we hear the promise of a new covenant. It’s not something that’s entirely new or different from the first covenant, made with the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. But it is a reformulation or “reformation”, if you will, of that first covenant. God promises “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”. This promise connects this new covenant with the preceding covenant between Israel and Israel’s God. But it will be different!
In Deuteronomy, when God gives the Law to the people of Israel, God says “18 You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead.” Now God says, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts”. Everyone will have equal access: “34No 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…” But most astonishingly, God promises “for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
This promise of such a radically new and hopeful covenant reveals a God very different from the one that we’ve experienced up to this point. Up until this point, we’ve seen a God who demands fulfillment of the law and promises punishment to those who fail to do so. But now we see a God emerge who is a healer, who forgives and restores a broken relationship, even if that break is the fault of the people. For the first audiences of Jeremiah 31:31-34, the divine promise of “the new covenant” might be set in the future, but it does not seem to be a far-off future.
Clearly this is a God who is not against doing the unexpected. So why should this, then, be so surprising?? We see this from the very beginning in the opening lines of the book of Genesis! “1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” Unlike the creation stories of other contemporaneous middle eastern religions, this was a creation which was brought about not by a dalliance between two gods or the desire for revenge by one god upon another and the ensuing cosmic battle. This was a creation story in which there is but one God, and all that one God must do, to bring about order out of chaos, is to speak.
This is the same God who, frustrated with the course in which humanity is running, floods the whole world, wiping out all of creation, except for Noah and his family. That’s surprising and unexpected enough in and of itself. But then afterwards, God decides that maybe this wasn’t the best course of action and vows to never again do such a thing.
This is the same God who picks Abraham to be the father of a nation. Not because of who or what Abraham is; Not because of anything that Abraham has done; But just because!
This is the same God who goes from being a God too glorious to behold with human eyes, who when all else fails, takes on human form and lives in our midst: God in the flesh!
Jesus continues, and rightly so, in this vein of being and doing the unexpected. No wonder, particularly in the Gospel of John, people have such tremendous difficulty comprehending him. Just look at the way people struggle with the things he has to say! Earlier in chapter six, they’re completely flummoxed. “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”
And in the reading for today they are just as confused. “31Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ 33They answered him, ‘We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” They have apparently completely forgotten their history and the fact that they were enslaved in Egypt for generations.
“34Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. 35The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. 36So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.’” Once again, Jesus makes it clear that apart from God we can do nothing to save ourselves. It’s the Son who frees us. And from whom does the Son receive such authority? It comes from the Father, of course. No one can effect their own salvation except by accepting the salvation and forgiveness already achieved and offered to us by sheer grace.
God sent Jesus. And then God sends us to Jesus.
Jesus makes this most clear in the way he conducts his ministry. Jesus cares about those who are on the edge. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus encounters people whom society has declared unfit and wants to ignore. But Jesus sees them, recognizes them, seeks them out, spends time with them and, in doing so, honors and blesses them. This is not what the people expect Jesus to do. It’s not what any self-respecting messiah should do. God has standards! And if God isn’t going to stick to those standards and punish sinners and reward the righteous, then what can we count on? How can God just forgive sin? Shouldn’t God’s forgiveness at least be preceded by genuine repentance? If God is holy and just, then sin should be punished, right? Or at least repented? Because if that isn’t the case, what’s to prevent us from taking advantage of God and making a mockery of God’s justice.
The God we meet in Jesus doesn’t care about our sense of justice. The God we meet in Jesus doesn’t care about our sense of fairness. The God we meet in Jesus doesn’t care about any of the other ways we seek to order our world. The only thing this God cares about is seeing – and seeking out – the lost and bringing them home again. God’s love routinely supersedes our sense of justice. And God’s compassion overrides all our sense of fairness. Which can be rather upsetting – whether to the crowds of Jesus’ day or to us.
At least until we are the ones who are down and out. Until we are made to feel invisible, whether because of our actions or those of others, whether because of illness or loss, whether because of our gender or race or age or sexuality or whatever. Whenever we feel like we’re on the outside, abandoned, invisible… that’s when we need a God who sees us, seeks after us, and promises to bring us home.
What Luther and the Reformation recognized was that they had been worshiping the wrong God. Martin Luther was taught to see and fear a God of holiness and justice, a God who expected righteousness and punished those who could not meet that standard. But because God’s righteousness demanded satisfaction, someone had to suffer for the sins of the world, and that someone turns out to be Jesus. From this point of view, Jesus becomes little more than a whipping boy. Jesus simply becomes the one who stood in and took the beating we deserved.
Luther agonized over God’s righteousness. And then he finally realized that righteousness isn’t the standard God sets for us. Righteousness is the gift God gave to us. Righteousness isn’t a requirement! Righteousness a promise!! The God Luther expected was all about justice; the God he met in Jesus was all about love. Jesus didn’t die in order to make God forgiving. Jesus died to show us how forgiving God already is. No wonder Luther described meeting this unexpected God by saying it was like having the gates of heaven opened to him.
I know I’ve used this illustration in the past, but it’s one that sticks with me because it causes me such deep distress to contemplate its implications. I once read about pastor who shared that, when one member of her youth group asked her friends what they imagined Jesus thought about them, the overwhelming answer was disappointment. They assumed Jesus and God were disappointed with them. How sad is that? It just breaks my heart. And you have to ask yourself, “Why would they even think that?”
Well, it’s because in the popular imagination we still define God in transactional terms of righteousness, sin, punishment, and so on. We still believe in works righteousness. We still have a hard time comprehending the radical nature of God’s grace.
I know I’ve said this before and I will continue saying it until the day I die, but there is only one thing that Jesus specifically asks of us. The one specific task that Jesus assigns us; the one specific responsibility with which Jesus charges us is to make disciples. We do that by opening the gates of heaven for others, just as Luther had the gates of heaven opened for him!! We do that by embodying and proclaiming God’s Kingdom values to the people around us. We feed the hungry. We clothe the naked. We visit the imprisoned. We comfort the sick. And we love unconditionally. Let’s surprise the world – just like Luther and the crowd gathered around Jesus were surprised – by God’s unexpected salvation and grace. It’s a message that is still needed to be heard and so easy to share: God sees us, God accepts us, God loves us, and God frees us. No exceptions! AMEN