By Michael Sherer, director of graduate and continuing studies
Scripture: Jeremiah 31:31-34 (NRSV)
One of my guilty pleasures is reading old articles that attempt to predict the future. They typically range from being wrong to hysterically wrong, so today’s passage from Jeremiah, where the prophet is channeling God to predict a new and different future, piqued my interest. What did Jeremiah get right? Wrong? Somewhere in between?
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant…” From our post-resurrection vantage point, Jeremiah is predicting the coming of Jesus and the new covenant, so score one for the prophet! “… with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.” In Jesus and through Paul, the people of Israel and Judah got extended to the Gentiles, so on this one, the prophet is better than right. The new covenant is extended potentially to the whole world! At this point Christians tend to declare victory and move on. Jeremiah nailed it. End of story. But the prophet goes on to talk about the nature of the new covenant and here’s where I want to spend a little more time.
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” Again, from our post-resurrection vantage point, Jeremiah is talking about the law fulfilled in Jesus and that somehow, through our belief and love and discipleship, he becomes a part of our hearts and mind—putting on the mind of Christ. I think of this as the Christian conscience. Jeremiah talks about this reality with a degree of inevitability. “They will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” And this is where I feel the least convinced of the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy. It’s not so much a question of numbers, but rather that this notion of a Christian conscience that we all share seems pretty far removed from our daily reality. Turn on the TV, open Facebook, read your church periodical and you are confronted by a broad range of hot button issues where Christians can’t find agreement—Trump, guns, abortion, immigration, LGBTQ issues, racism, the environment, poverty, social justice, you name it. There is no monolithic shared Christian view on these issues. Just Christian voices in disagreement.
Hans Denck, 16th century anabaptist theologian, once said “No one may truly know Christ except one who follows Him in life.” I suspect this lack of a common Christian conscience grows out of our collective inability or even unwillingness to follow Jesus in life. Jeremiah doesn’t speak to what breaking the new covenant might look like, but if it is through following Christ–putting on the mind of Christ–that we develop our Christian conscience, then breaking the new covenant very likely grows out of Christians following people, ideas and isms that are NOT Christ.
“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” In this Lenten season, let us remember that the path to forgiveness in the new covenant and keeping the new covenant lies in following Christ daily. We earnestly pray for the strength and passion and will to do so. Amen.
Scripture: Jeremiah 31:31-34 (NRSV)
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. 32It 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. 33But 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. 34No 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.