“Christ among us, the new covenant”
Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 12:20-33 (March 17, 2024)
Throughout this Lenten season we’ve been thinking about covenants: relationship and promise between God and people. We’ve read several covenants mentioned in the Bible: God’s covenant with Noah – never again a flood. God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah – descendants and a promised land. God’s covenant with Moses – keep these commandments, and you will be my people and I will be your God.
The problem is that, for our part, these covenants are not easy to keep. Part of us resists living in loving relationship with God and neighbour. Put simply, we’re not very good partners. We find it hard to be faithful.
We may start out with good intentions. But soon we have second thoughts. Powerful forces pull us in another direction. In this Lenten season we acknowledge that we have not always been, and are not even now, the people God intends us to be. I mean, honestly, I’m not even the person I want to be! Thank goodness that God is merciful and gracious. And that God keeps calling us back, inviting us to make a new beginning.
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Jeremiah is one of the major prophets of the Bible. We sometimes call him the “weeping prophet”. The book that bears his name is full of sorrow and lament.
It was Jeremiah who predicted his nation’s time of exile in Babylon. But he could also see beyond that catastrophic event. He saw a new covenant, a new beginning in our relationship with God.
“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.” (Jeremiah 31:31)
And this covenant will not be like the ones that went before. Not like when God rescued people from slavery in Egypt. Remember all those commandments? Well, ten core commandments, written on tablets of stone and given to Moses in dramatic fashion on the cloud-covered heights of Horeb.
They were such strong and righteous words meant to guide God’s people in the way of life: Life with God, life with others. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, by the time Moses clambered down the mountain with those tablets in hand the people were already in full-fledged rebellion, partying before a golden calf.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Synagoga_Hartmanice_04.jpg" width="226" height="79" />“You know these people are bent on evil,” explained Aaron sheepishly. What did you expect?
It was enough to make Moses smash the tablets in white-hot anger. That was not a very promising beginning, was it?
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God desires right-relationship with God’s people. God desires to give us life. But what about us? We’re hell-bent on our own un-righteous way.
It’s the story of all our lives, not just those ancient Israelites. We have this fierce independent streak that gets us into trouble. We make our own gods and bow before them. The covenant is broken almost before we begin!
But this new covenant, says Jeremiah, is not like that. “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.” (Jer. 31:32)
Listen. “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 …”
So then, not an external law, with stone-hard commandments imposed from somewhere distant up on high. Rather, imagine this: the finger of God gently giving shape to the inner life that guides you. God within, leading you in God’s way. God within the community of God’s people, shaping us all from the inside out!
“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.” (Jer. 31:33) Now that’s relationship! And what a promise!
“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.” Try to take this in: The knowledge of God will be within us. Within all people who bear God’s name.
And “knowledge” here is more than just academics. More than facts and diagrams and human-concocted theories. This is knowledge in the biblical sense of awareness and intimacy. A deep knowledge that comes from “being with”, abiding in the presence.
It's like what two life-long partners are meant to be after years and years together. You know what the other is thinking, without them even saying a word.
Why, how? Well just because you know. There’s a comfortable familiarity. A lovely sharing between two friends. Have you ever known anyone like that? Do you know God like that?
Well God will always be God – beyond our knowledge. But God will also reveal God’s self to us in love.
“I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” The barrier that keeps us apart from God – our rebelliousness and iniquity – this very thing God will overcome! “Forgive us our trespasses,” we pray. But God has promised to do this, even before we ask.
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In the Old Testament way of thinking, the heart is the centre of our will. If the heart is committed to something, it’s bound to happen. So tell me, what is the condition of your heart? 
Is it rock-hard, rebellious, dead-set against God? Or is it God-shaped, God-directed, and brimming with new life?
My mom, in her later years, had congestive heart failure. That organ, so vital for our existence, was not functioning properly, not moving the life-giving blood where it needed to go. She had no energy for anything. I recall visiting her one evening, while she lay on the couch exhausted, barely able to carry on a conversation.
Some time later she had an operation. She barely made it through, so depleted was her condition going in. But over time she healed and regained strength. That change to her heart was life-giving. The doctors had performed a miracle! And those of us in her family were so very grateful.
Jeremiah speaks of an inner renewal. A re-shaping of our hearts. A new lease on life in our relationship with God in which love and justice will flourish. A New Covenant.
Obedience to God will seem the most natural thing on earth. We won’t have to wrestle ourselves toward it. God’s life-giving Spirit will be pulsing through our veins. Seriously, don’t you long for such a day as that? I would jump at such an opportunity! I would snatch it … in a heart-beat!
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Today is St. Patrick’s Day. I wore my green tie in honour of that, even though I’m not Irish. This day is so much more than green beer and fiddle music.
Do you know Patrick’s story? He was born in the fourth century, the son of parents living in Roman Briton. As a teenager he was captured by Irish raiders and taken to Ireland as a slave. They put him to work there in that foreign land, herding sheep.
During his captivity, Patrick turned to God in prayer. One day he managed to escape. He fled to the coast and found some sailors who took him back to Briton, where he was reunited with his family.
Now you’d think he would have had enough of those Irish – after what they’d done to him. The years they’d stolen from his life. If it was me, I’d never want to set foot in that country again!
But Patrick was given a dream in which he heard the people of Ireland calling out to him, “We beg you, holy youth, to come and walk among us once more.”
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Patrick_Catholic_Church_(Junction_City,_Ohio)_-_stained_glass,_Saint_Patrick_-_detail.jpg" width="142" height="152" />Years later, after Patrick became a bishop, he was sent to take the gospel to Ireland. Talk about irony! He spent the rest of his life working there among the very people who had previously captured and enslaved him.
There was something going on in Patrick’s heart that enabled him to do that. Some work of God. Patrick turned his former enemies into friends. His was a ministry of reconciliation.
Did you hear that? Could Patrick have been an early Anabaptist? A peacemaker, a risk-taking disciple of Jesus, willing to give his life for others?
The people called Anabaptists didn’t arrive on the scene for another thousand years! Then again, isn’t peace-making meant to be part of every Christian’s life?
Last year when we had our service at Bethany Manor I got talking to one of the greeters at the door. He mentioned that my name didn’t sound very Mennonite.
I told him my family had come from a little-known colony of Mennonites in a remote corner of the Scottish highlands. He looked at me for a moment, as he considered the possibility. I think he almost believed me! Then we both had a good laugh. I need to say how thankful I am for the Anabaptist witness to the larger church of peacemaking and reconciliation which is so important for our world.
What’s the condition of your heart? Is there transformation going on? Are there any signs of God’s New Covenant being formed within you?
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In our Gospel reading, Jesus compares his life to a grain of wheat that must fall into the earth and die in order to bear much fruit. That was a perfect image for first century Palestinian people living in an agrarian society. It’s a pretty good image for Prairie people too.
We know exactly what Jesus is talking about: Losing life – his life, our lives – in order to gain life. Something within each of us has to die.
What is it? It’s that self-centred, wilful, disobedient, hard-hearted life. That part of ourselves that could care less about our neighbour, let alone our enemies.
Yet as we die to that part of ourselves and turn to God, we find new life beginning to emerge. The “Christ-life” that glorifies God and cares for others. A life that’s moved by sacrificial love. A life that will spend itself for the healing of the world.
It's a life that St. Patrick lived. And on this day, as we remember him, we are invited to live that life as well.
On the night our Lord Jesus was betrayed he took the cup and blessed it and said to his disciples, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” (1 Corinthians 11:25) A new relationship. A new life. Jesus’ death and resurrection will make us new.
Sometimes I wonder, when? How long, Lord? The answer is that every one of us will be made new as we allow God’s holy, life-giving Spirit to move within our hearts. To soften us and change us. Rework us from the inside out …
To plant God’s law within our heart. God’s knowledge deep within. God’s will directing us, moving us in this moment of time.
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All through Lent we’ve been talking about Covenants. And as I look back and reflect on this it seems to me that two truths emerge.
One is the truth of our human story, which is failure to live God’s way.
And the other is the truth of God’s story: God keeps coming to us with mercy and grace, inviting us into right-relationship. Calling us back to the rich soil of Eden.
A New Covenant. A new beginning. Again and again and again! For this great Good News we lift our hearts to God, saying “Thank you!” and “Amen.”
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