The Days Are Surely Coming

They just couldn’t do it! The Israelites could not keep their side of God’s covenant with them. They could not live as God had intended them to live. In our journey with the Israelites from Egypt to Sinai we saw clearly that they were unable to do what God had commanded. Even after the Israelites reached the Promised Land, even after they crossed over the Jordan and settled in Canaan, they could not follow God’s commands. They persisted in worshipping other gods, they lied, they stole, and they committed adultery, just to name a few of their sins. Their stories fill the Hebrew Bible books that follow the Torah. The stories in Judges especially seem to set the cycle for the Israelites’ relationship with God. The Israelites sin, bad things happen to them, mostly the consequences of their sins, they cry out to God for help, and God, who as we know is “slow to anger and of boundless compassion,” comes to their aid and raises up a new leader for them. When they finally demand that the prophet Samuel provide a king for them, they get Saul, David, and Solomon, but they continue their sinful ways. Time and again, the prophets call the people to repentance. Through Amos, God thundered, “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Hosea was directed by God to name his first child, lo’ammi, “not my people.” God directed Isaiah to deliver his message to “this people.” Like us, the Israelites were sinful and broken, and they continued to forsake God’s law.

The situation of the Israelites became particularly acute during the time of Jeremiah, in the sixth century B.C. The old kingdom had been divided, and the northern part had come under the rule of the Assyrians a century before. In the southern kingdom, Jeremiah had helped King Josiah institute needed reforms and bring the people’s religious life closer to what the law had laid out. However, after Josiah’s death in battle in 609, his successor Jehoiakim entered into a series of disastrous alliances. The southern kingdom was conquered by the Babylonians in 587, the temple destroyed, and the leadership of the country taken into Exile, an exile that lasted more than seventy years.

For most of his prophetic ministry, Jeremiah had been considered a traitor, since he repeatedly denounced Jehoiakim’s alliances and proclaimed that the Babylonians were acting as instruments of divine justice. He risked his life on several occasions, was thrown into a well, and was put under house arrest. Yet after the Exile – Jeremiah himself followed a group that settled in Egypt – Jeremiah had something else to offer God’s people: consolation. Most especially in chapter 31 of the book of Jeremiah, from which today’s reading comes, we hear God’s words of consolation and promise to God’s people. For a people grieving and lamenting their terrible losses, for a people who acknowledged that their own sinfulness had brought them to the dire straits in which they now found themselves, God’s words of consolation must have been good news indeed.

And what did that good news consist of? Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann reminds us that we can hear four important themes in God’s words of consolation. To begin with, it is important to remember that, strictly speaking, this is not a “new covenant.” God reminds the people that the Torah, the summary of the old covenant, the law, will still be their guide to a holy life. But God also seems to be taking a more realistic view of humanity. Israel’s history had repeatedly shown that, despite the best intentions, the people cannot by themselves fulfill God’s requirements for a holy life. Therefore God proposes a new way for them to fulfill the covenant. God will no longer impose God’s commands on them from the outside, as the earlier covenants had done. Rather, in the future, God will make it possible for the people to internalize the law, to embrace it from within, and to regard it not as a burden, but as a privilege and a blessing. Second, God restates God’s everlasting commitment to the Israelites: “I will be their God and they will be my people.” Third, God reminds God’s people that God’s relationship is offered to all the Israelites, “from the least to the greatest.” Moreover, that relationship will be as intimate as that of a marriage, the people will trust and obey God, and they will have the will to care for the poor and needy. Finally, God’s recommitment to God’s covenant with the Jews does not arise out of repentance or conversion on Israel’s part. It is God’s unilateral action, and it is God’s choice and desire to “forgive their iniquity and remember their sins no more.”

By God’s mercy and grace, God’s words of consolation to the exiled Jews are also words of consolation for us. At this point in Lent, we too need words of consolation. As we look at ourselves honestly, as we confront our own sins, as we come closer to Jerusalem and Jesus’ death there, perhaps we fear that God has abandoned us because of our sins. Perhaps we are in exile, perhaps we have stayed away from the church, or neglected the good works that God has given us to do. Perhaps we are estranged from family members or friends. Perhaps we have been unable to forgive those who have wronged us. Perhaps we have a rule of life but constantly find ourselves unable to live up to it. Perhaps we turn a deaf ear to the cries of those around us, or we forget that we too have promised to “strive for justice and peace among all people.” We too need consolation. We too need to hear again God’s unilateral offer of forgiveness and God’s promise that God will enable all of us to know God more intimately. “The days are surely coming,” says Jeremiah. My brothers and sisters, we need to hear those words too.

Yes, the covenant that God has promised to us through the words of Jeremiah continues to stir us, continues to offer hope to all of us weak, sinful, and broken human beings, continues to offer us a vision of a renewed humanity. Jesus too offered us that vision. Jesus too offered us a “new covenant,” sealed in his death and resurrection. Even so, Brueggemann cautions us Christians against any sort of supersessionism, any belief that suggests that the covenant God articulated with the Jews in Jeremiah 31 has been nullified, superseded or made obsolete by Jesus. Make no mistake: Scripture, the New Testament included, makes clear that God’s covenant with the Jews stands forever. God has not revoked is to enable all the rest of us to be grafted on to Israel. In Jesus, God has spoken God’s covenant to all of us, to Christians, and ultimately to all of humanity. All of us are now included in God’s never-ending covenant. In Jesus the Jew, who became Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Christ, God has drawn all of God’s people into a covenant with God and with each other that stands forever. As we look at the enmity and conflicts in our world, as we grieve with those Jews who are still the targets of hatred, as we look at the distrust and lack of cooperation among the members of the Body of Christ, as we look at the conflicts and distrust even within our own church, do we not hear good news in this promise? God’s condemnation of our enmities, of our distrust of each other, of our sinfulness is not God’s last word to us. God still offers us the hope of forgiveness, renewed relationship, and unity with all of God’s people.

As we look toward Jerusalem, as we draw near to the end of our long Lenten journey, we are also filled with anticipation. Palm Sunday is coming, and we look forward to joining the people of Jerusalem as they welcome the coming of their King. We shiver a little as we anticipate the grief, gratitude, passion, and hope that come with Holy Week. Yet we know that Good Friday turns into Holy Saturday, and Holy Saturday overflows into the joy of Easter. How can we not be thankful for all of God’s promises to us, for God’s enduring love for us, and for God’s most precious gift of God’s Son?

As we turn to God in gratitude for God’s faithfulness, the words of today’s collect seem particularly apt. Hear them again: “Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”