Jeremiah 31:31-34
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 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, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: 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 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, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
John 12:20-33
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor. Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.
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Last summer, on vacation in New Jersey, Sam and I were shopping at one of my favorite bookstores when we found a display of curious little packages. Inside each small cardboard box was an egg. Not a real egg, but a ceramic egg, with a thin outer shell. Inside the egg, so said the package, was a small amount of soil and some strawberry seeds. The idea is that you take the egg home, crack off the top with a spoon, sort of like if you were eating a hard-boiled egg, water the soil and seeds gently, and then set this egg on its little dish in a window. The promise was that in a few weeks, you would have the first sprouts of a strawberry plant that you could then go plant outside in the garden.
Sam and I were intrigued. We bought one and flew it back home with us. We dutifully cracked the top, watered it, and placed it in the kitchen window. We watched it every day. After two days, no sprouts. After a week, nothing. After two weeks, nothing. After six weeks….nothing. It took Sam longer to give up than I did, but eventually we both came to the conclusion that this plant was really not going to grow.
It’s the risk you take, always, when you plant a seed. You take something small, you bury it in the ground, you tend it and water it, but it is sill always a mystery what will happen next. Once it’s underneath the soil, it is as if it is dead and gone forever. Every new shoot and sprout feels like an act of resurrection, which is why Jesus invoked this very image in today’s gospel.
Israel knew what it was to be a small seed, buried in the ground, seemingly dead and gone. They had suffered slavery and exploitation, drought and famine, natural disaster and military destruction, occupation and, now at the time of Jeremiah, exile.
The story of Israel up until this point has been a story of sprouting, and then being trampled back into seed and being shoved back under the dirt. It has been a story of God sprouting up covenants with the people - with Noah, with Abraham and Sarah, with Moses, with David - and then the people failing to be faithful. They worshiped other gods, they neglected the poor, they raised up wealthy and self-serving leaders - and in response, they faced judgement and destruction, fearing their lives, fearing their very existence.
It’s becomes a pattern: Israel falls into unfaithfulness. God sends destruction. Prophets interpret the destruction for the people as judgement. Prophets speak a word of God’s hope and urge the people to repentance. The people repent. God restores Israel, keeping up God’s end of the commandment.
The ancient worldview draws a straight line between faithfulness, favor with God, and the blessings of peace, prosperity, and security. Conversely, the ancient worldview draws a straight line between unfaithfulness, disfavor with God, and the judgement of unrest, natural disaster, and military or political threat. In the ancient worldview, there is nothing problematic about crediting God as both the source of judgement and mercy, even though today we might not be as comfortable with the idea.
According to the covenant, repentance and sacrifice were the ways that the people could return to the covenant. By their own volition, the people would turn back to faithfulness and seek forgiveness, hoping against hope that God, too, would return to the covenant, and that they might again find favor.
And what is amazing is that God returns to mercy, every time. No matter how unfaithful Israel has been, no matter how deep the destruction around them, no matter how feeble their return to faith and repentance, God always responds in mercy.
But the thing about God’s pattern of mercy is that it was never a guarantee. No matter how many times God restored Israel to hope, all of the covenants that God had made with them were still conditional. Praise be to God for responding with mercy each time those covenants were broken; but there was not a guarantee in Israel’s mind that God would respond this way always.
The live question, each time Israel was buried and then brought back from the dust, was whether this might be the time that God would give up on them; whether this might be the time that God might withhold forgiveness and mercy; whether this might be the time when God rendered the covenant null and void.
For us, looking back through the Biblical witness, we have learned through Israel’s story that God has always remained faithful. For us, God’s repeated reconciliation with the chosen people is a foundational part of our understanding of who God is. We look at this witness and say to ourselves, “God is always faithful, even when we are not.” And this has proved to be true.
But Israel didn’t have the luxury of perspective. And they didn’t have a guarantee.
At least until we get to Jeremiah.
“I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,” God says through Jeremiah. “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 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; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
What makes this new covenant so new is that God promises to forgive them, always. Forgiveness is at the heart of the new covenant; God’s relationship with the people will now be defined by the sure and everlasting promise of God’s mercy.
For Jeremiah’s first hearers, this new covenant is a future promise. God will bring Israel back from exile. God will be the agent of forgiveness, and take the lead. God will act and God will be faithful. No matter how buried they feel, no matter how much future peril might come their way, they have this assurance that none of it means eternal separation from God. God will always be there on the other side. Israel will no longer need to worry about whether God will abandon them in unfaithfulness. Israel will be free to live the law in a new way, no longer as a way to restore themselves to the covenant, but as a way to embody the covenant. The law will become an expression of their chosenness, rather than a way to preserve it.
And the truth is that this is very very good news, all on its own.
This new covenant means the difference between “God might forgive” and “God will forgive.”
It means the difference between “I hope God forgives me” and “I know God forgives me.”
It means the difference between “God might bring our world back from exile and destruction” and “God will bring our world back from exile and destruction.”
The new covenant in Jeremiah, the new covenant to which Jesus will align himself when he holds up the cup at the last supper, is a covenant of God’s faithfulness in all things and through all things; the promise that every seed that is buried will bring forth a new shoot; the promise that no life is lived apart from God’s care; the assurance that our forgiveness does not depend upon our deserving, but upon God’s mercy - and that God’s mercy is sure and everlasting.
This amazing knowledge - that God’s love is everlasting! - is what will been written on our hearts, Jeremiah says. It will no longer be the law of Moses but the law of love that is written on our hearts.
And next week, on Maundy Thursday, we will hear Jesus reinterpret for us exactly how we are to live according to this new covenant, this law of love. At the last supper, Jesus will wash his disciples’ feet, and after the last supper, he will be led to his death.
Jesus will tell us that the new covenant written on our hearts, the law of love that God has put in us, finds its expression in a new commandment: that we love one another as Christ has loved us.
If we believe that God’s mercy and love are for everlasting; if the law of love is written on our hearts; then we will live accordingly. And Jesus makes it clear that to love is to serve, in the same way that he served the disciples by washing their feet. Jesus makes it clear that to love is to give your life, the way that he would rather die than go back on spreading God’s word of healing, love, and forgiveness with the world.
There are those who would say, “we wish to see Jesus,” and the only way that people can see Jesus is you.
So the question before each of us today is this:
Are we living in such a way that Jesus can be seen, that the law of love can be known? Are we living in such a way that God’s new covenant of mercy can be brought to birth in the hearts of all people, until all people will know God, from the greatest to the least?
In the words of St. Teresa of Avila:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.
Amen.
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