4-2-06 Sermon by Pastor Barbara Currie

A NEW WORLD
Scripture: Jer. 31:31-34 and John 12:20-33

Our Jeremiah scripture passage was written after the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE when the Babylonian forces won the war, and Jeremiah was forced to go with a group of Jews to seek exile in Egypt. This Babylonian captivity lasted till 539 BCE when the Persian king Cyrus conquered Babylon and allowed the Hebrew exiles to return home. So we have here the descendants of the remnant of the Jewish people that Moses had originally led out of Egypt, being again exiled there. In the Hebrew Bible there is much said about how these Israelites had not kept the covenant made with God under the leadership of Moses and that they were punished by being conquered and exiled again. At the point of our scripture reading, Jeremiah tells the people of Israel that God is offering them a new covenant. This covenant is not between individuals and God; it is between the whole community and God. The Lord will forgive them and remember their sins no more. This covenant is not going to be written on stone but in the hearts of the people. As with all ancient peoples, the heart was the seat of the emotions, the intellect, and especially, the will and moral life.

In this covenant that Jeremiah talks about, God is promising that God will be their God, and they shall be God’s people. They won’t have to teach each other about God as they will all “Know the Lord”. The laws, the commandments, become synonymous with “knowing God”. Such a covenant would create such a close relationship between God and the people that the people would automatically do the Lord’s will. Part of knowing God is to know what God desires. God has said over and over again that knowing God means that we accept God’s demands “to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.” God’s covenant written in their hearts would transform the community into one of glad obedience. Can you imagine what this world would look like if we would all seek to keep God’s commandments, especially that second greatest commandment, love our neighbor as our self? Throughout the Bible we are told that God wants us to be loving, forgiving, peaceful and just. Jesus reminds us of this covenant when he instituted the Lord’s Supper, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (Lk. 22:20b). Just as the Hebrews or Israelites are the heirs of the first new covenant, Christ has become the bearer of the New Covenant that we celebrate in the Lord’s Supper. Every time we have Communion, we are offered forgiveness and a chance to begin again in our intimate relationship with the Holy One.

This new covenant with God is call for rejoicing yet it is a huge and difficult proposition. The inward markings of the people as God’s people are true in the Jeremiah times as well as in our time. The way that others will know our God is in the way we live our life. This is an awesome responsibility. Others will know God and the Christ because of what they see in us. Much as we say we love God, it’s not easy to submit to God’s will and allow ourselves to be touched by the Divine. We may like the idea of being touched by God; however, there is a cost to that touch. If we truly give ourselves to God it restricts our choices and dictates our preferences. We are already so busy and have so many responsibilities as parents, as students, as workers. We have social and civic responsibilities; we are on town committees, historical societies, and choral groups. Parents tell me that they want their children to know about God, but they just can’t come to church because of the soccer games on Sunday mornings. We have programs and projects to run. We have houses to keep up, to say nothing about all the yard work that needs to be done this Spring. How much time can we allow to the life of our church and the carrying out of Jesus’ teachings? How much money can we give to the work of the church? Did someone say something about tithing? Do you know what that means—10% to God’s work? You’ve got to be kidding. It’s so much easier to take the secular road rather than God’s way. As long as everything is going smoothly in our life, why not move God to the sideline? We’ll say our prayers, maybe even a blessing before meals, come to church once in awhile if nothing else is scheduled! Let’s just put God on hold while we take other calls. How many of us listen to God’s voice first? How many of us will spend lots of money on pleasure but feel we can’t raise our pledges?

In our gospel lesson this morning, Jesus begins to talk about his death. He tells us that his heart is troubled and wonders if he should ask God, his Father, to save him from this horrible upcoming death. He quickly reminds himself that the reason he came to this world and to this time of death was to glorify God. Earlier he has reminded us that the person who loves his life will lose it and if we want to serve him, we must follow him. My sisters and brothers, following Jesus is not an easy thing to do. However, the gospel lesson tells us that Jesus will give eternal life to those who do follow him. He also tells us to walk in the light while we have it; if we walk in the darkness, we will be lost.

The promise of this gospel lesson is that the power of sin is never greater than the power of God within us. The point of our Lenten season of repentance is that we have to be willing to let go of something in order to be filled with the power of God in our hearts. It isn’t those chocolate goodies we give up that will bring us to God. Giving them up can remind us a little bit about how hard it is to sacrifice. The more important sacrifice is to relinquish any “stuff” that we value that stands between us and God, anything that keeps us stuck on the world rather than the path of Jesus. Jesus says we must die in order to live. We have to shed our cocoons and be transformed as our baptism promises, empowered by the strength of our God. It won’t be easy; however, it is possible because Jesus came to live with us and die for us in order to show us the way to live. When Jesus says those who love their life will lose it and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life, it doesn’t mean that we should not have self-esteem, self-love; what it means is that loving one’s life in the world too much, having a preference for worldly things instead of spiritual things can blind us to God’s love and grace. As one of my references put it, “Hatred of one’s life means rejection of the claims of the ‘world’ and willingness to serve and follow Jesus.”

So what does our new world look like? The significance in John’s gospel of the Greek or gentile men seeking out Jesus in Jerusalem and Jesus’ welcoming them, symbolizes that this new world of the Christ is a world that includes all nations and peoples. It is a world where our priority will be on knowing and following God in a community of believers. In this community that I like to call the Beloved Community, taken from Martin Luther King, Jr. we will take the road less traveled, the difficult road of sharing and caring and loving each other and all we come in contact with. We will pray for our enemies and do good to those who persecute us. We will let go of whatever worldly things that keep us from following the teachings of Jesus. As we move through this Lenten season to Holy Week and Easter, let us pray for strength, wisdom, courage to grow in the Spirit, to open our selves to the Divine inscription of the New Covenant written in our hearts. Let us pray always and then get up and walk in love, knowing that Christ walks beside us, remembering God’s promise to be with us always, to the end of the age. Amen