The Scripture Readings this week are:
- Jeremiah 31:31-34
- John 12:20-26
The Sermon title is Life-Changing Promise
Early Thoughts: What difference does it make that to our lives to have the New Covenant written on our hearts and souls?
Does it lead us to fall into the ground and die so that growth can happen?
Can people who watch how we live and act tell whether or not the words have soaked into the heart they were written on?
With this week's reading from Jeremiah we continue the theme set in the first two weeks of Lent of talking about covenants. We started with the covenant of the rainbow, then we looked at the covenant made with Abraham. Because of our Annual Meeting Sunday we skipped over the covenant marked by the 10 commandments, and now we have Jeremiah and the promised new covenant.
I read an article last month that suggested that each "new" covenant is in fact a divine act of covenant renewal -- arguably stretching back to the first covenant found at the beginning of Genesis. In the beginning God calls Creation good and has a vision for how the world could be. God makes promises and agreements with the first humans. Everything that follows from that point is God's attempt to keep these humans God has created in line with the vision. All these other covenants are times when God is trying again to bring God's beloved children back to the hope, to what they were created to be. In this process God has tried a variety of signs and forms. Now God has a new way.
Maybe the problem is that all the old signs and promises were external. Maybe the heart of humanity needs to be changed. Maybe if the law of love, grace, mercy, and community is written on humanity's heart it will change how they live, how they interact with each other.
Christians have traditionally understood that this new covenant is enacted in the life, ministry, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. As we grow as followers of The Way, as we develop as disciples of Christ, the law that is written on our hearts becomes a part of our DNA, becomes the guiding/shaping/forming principle that moves us forward.
I firmly believe that how we use our time, talent, and treasure, what we do with the life we have been given, shows what is truly written on our hearts. I also believe that allowing the law of love, grace, mercy, and community to soak deep into our very being will change how we use our time, talent, and treasure. A deep reading of what God, through Christ, has written on our hearts and souls will lead us to be good stewards of the lives we have been given.
For all of the existence of the church there has been an understanding that when we give ourselves fully to the new covenant, when we choose to be wholehearted followers of The Way, it is a process of dying so that we may live. In order to live in a new way we have to let (or encourage or even cause?) old ways of thinking and living die. Indeed, one of the reasons that white is a traditional colour for baptismal garments is to mimic the funeral shroud, as in baptism we pass through death and into new life (language often used more for Believer's Baptism than infant baptism and for immersion rather than sprinkling). Jesus himself, in this week's reading from John (and other places in the Gospels) reminds us that sometimes the only way to live and grow is in fact to die.
What needs to die so that the word God has written on your heart can fully impact how you live your life? What needs to die so that we can be great stewards of the lives we have been given?
There is something written on our hearts and souls, something that would, if we let it, sink deep into the very fiber of our being, something that can guide and shape all of our lives. Will we let it? HOw will those words of promise change our lives?
--Gord
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