Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Jeremiah promises his people that God will make a new covenant with them. To fully grasp the enormous grace of this promise, let’s back up and take a closer look at the old covenant.
That covenant was forged between God and the people of Israel after God had liberated them from slavery in Egypt. Through Moses’ leadership, God had freed the people and was now guiding and feeding them on their journey towards the promised land. This was the core experience of God’s grace that bound God and people together.
The covenant asked the people to behave a certain way. God had liberated them, and now God was asking them to act like liberated people. Again and again, the laws that are part of the covenant agreement harken back to Israel’s experience of enslavement and liberation.
Here are a couple of examples:
You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:19)
Do not be hard-hearted or tightfisted toward your needy neighbor. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you; for this reason, I lay this commandment on you today. (Deuteronomy 15:7,15)
You shall not deprive the resident alien or the orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore, I command you to do this. (Deuteronomy 24:17-18)
And one more example from the Ten Commandments: Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:12-15)
The first covenant God made with the people of Israel at Sinai followed a common covenant formula of the time. It stated what the more powerful partner in the covenant had done (“I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt”) and what that partner would continue to do (“I will give you a land flowing with milk and honey”) and what was expected of the less powerful partner (the laws of the covenant). The formula also stipulated what would happen as a result of the people’s obedience or disobedience to those laws: “If you obey these laws, you shall live happy in the land; if you disobey these laws, all bets are off and you will lose the land.” (compare Deuteronomy 11:26-28)
Archbishop Desmond Tutu once told a story of teaching a confirmation class in which he outlined the meaning of the Mosaic Covenant. He went step by step through it, explaining the promise of God, that God rescued the Hebrew people from slavery and that they would worship only God and then act in ways that show themselves to be liberated people. And he showed them how that principle showed up in the teaching of Jesus later on. When finished he asked them as a review to tell him what he had just said. He got a variety of attempts, some close, some not. Then one little boy raised his hand and put it better than any theologian could have. He said (quoting God), “I saved your butts, so now you go behave.”
Well, Israel always struggled with that. Time and time again, they broke the covenant law: they were tempted by other gods; they didn’t care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger; they corrupted justice; they neglected faithful worship, and so on and so forth. God’s prophets warned them, reminded them that breaking the covenant could mean losing the land. But the nation didn’t listen.
Then disaster struck. During Jeremiah’s lifetime, the Babylonian army conquered Israel, destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, and deported thousands of people into exile in Babylon. Jeremiah can’t help himself: in the first half of his book, he repeatedly says “I told you so”. He points out to a dispirited, depressed people that they brought this disaster upon themselves by not obeying God’s covenant law. Breaking the covenant with the God who brought them out of bondage meant having to return to bondage, to exile in Babylon.
But then, in chapter 30, Jeremiah’s tone changes. He begins speaking of comfort and hope. It is in this section, called ”The Book of Consolation”, that we find today’s promise of a new covenant.
Now that we have looked at what the covenant was about and how Israel had broken it, we can imagine how desolate they must have felt. Their nation was in ruin, their leadership in disarray, their future frightening, their economy in ruins, their civic structures dismantled, their faith shaken. And they had brought it all on themselves.
Into these dark thoughts of gloom and doom comes Jeremiah’s promise of a new covenant. God is not giving up on the people. God is giving them another chance. You can imagine heads snapping up in wonder. Really? God is still talking to us?
Yes, God is still talking to them. God is opening a new future for them. God is offering them a new covenant that will be slightly different from the first one.
This covenant is based solely on God’s grace and forgiveness. God will forgive their iniquity. God will remember their sins no more. He won’t bring up again how they failed in the past. God offers a clean slate.
The covenant laws still apply. God still expects the people to act like a grateful, faithful, liberated people that cares for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor; that is just and fair; that reflects God’s glory to the world. But now fulfilling these expectations is no longer a condition for standing in God’s covenant grace, it is now a grateful response for the grace they have experienced already. These are no longer rules and restrictions pressuring them from the outside, but behaviors their heart is guiding them towards from the inside.
For the biggest difference between the old and the new covenant is the change in people’s hearts. God always desired a relationship based on love. In Jeremiah’s words, we can hear how sad God is that this didn’t work out in the first covenant: “a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband”. What was supposed to be a covenant built on mutual love became a transactional deal of obeying laws to keep on God’s good side.
This is the same attitude Martin Luther bemoaned when he served as a parish priest and heard people’s confession. They would confess their misdeeds and then ask what it would cost them. There was no true repentance, no sense of having hurt their relationship with God, of having broken God’s heart.
It was this experience combined with his study of Paul’s Letter to the Romans that made Luther write the 95 theses. The very first of these theses is: When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [Matt. 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. True repentance leads to a change of life, a change of heart, a desire for a closer relationship with God.
It is this new heart that Jeremiah’s vision promises. God’s people will be transformed into a people of God that naturally, automatically, joyfully lives according to God’s will.
And the transformed people of God will in turn transform the world. The liberated people of God will respond to God’s grace by working towards liberty and justice for all. Those whose butts God has saved will now go and behave.
It is interesting to note that Jeremiah’s prophecy addresses not just individuals, but also the kingdoms as a whole. By the grace of God, the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah will reunite and rebuild. The liberated and forgiven and transformed people of God will heal the nation. What a hopeful promise for us to hold onto during these divisive times around our midterm elections.
Jeremiah spoke to a devastated people and promised them that the days are surely coming when God’s grace transforms the world; days of restoration of nation and lives; days of rebuilding families and communities; days of returning to hope and faith and joy; days of intimate relationships with God.
Pastor Alan Brehm shared these words on his blog: Restoring the land and lives, rebuilding homes and families and communities, returning us all to hope and faith, renewing the joy of living. We can return to the task of working for change in our world inspired by the vision that there will come a time when God’s “commonwealth of peace and freedom” will be more than just a hope and a dream; it will define all life on the face of the earth. It may seem hard to imagine, let alone believe, but we can take comfort in the assurance these are the days when God is changing everything. And God is beginning that process of renewal by transforming us.
On this Reformation Sunday, we give thanks for and celebrate the grace of God that transforms us and gives us hope. God saved our butts, so now let’s behave accordingly. Amen.