Brief synopsis of the readings: The first reading comes from the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. He speaks of a new covenant that God will make with the Houses of Israel and Judah. This will be a new kind of covenant, not like the one that made after the escape from Egypt. That covenant was broken by the people. This new covenant will be written on the hearts of God’s followers; this new covenant will not need to be taught. All will know God and God’s forgiveness will be complete. John’s Gospel begins with some Greeks who approach Phillip asking to see Jesus. Jesus replied to this request by proclaiming that the “hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” He tells them that just as a grain of wheat must die before it can yield a rich harvest, so anyone who “hates his life in this world will keep it for the eternal life.” Jesus goes on to say that his soul is troubled. But he will not ask his Father to save him from this hour because this is why he has come. He ends by stating that when he is lifted up from the earth he will draw all to himself.
I think that while we all grew up in families that exhibited a certain amount of dysfunction (let me know if you’re an exception), we all grew up with a certain understanding of rules, limits, boundaries, and fences. From our earliest memories we were taught what we needed to do, could do, and couldn’t do. Some of these centered on safety and these don’t change: no matter how old we are we’re not supposed to touch a hot stove or cross the street against traffic. But other rules concerned how we treat each other. While we wanted others to share with us, we needed to learn that we have to share with others. We knew we didn’t like it when others were mean but we needed to learn not to be mean to them. We didn’t know it at the time but we were building contracts and covenants with each other. Some of these covenants were constructed out of our own relationships with each other but many more were given to us by parents, teacher, and other adults.
Hopefully as we grew older and understood the mutual need to get along we moved beyond these simple contracts. By adolescence we learned that these contracts with each other didn’t need to be spelled out, that belonging to a group meant we needed to enter into relationship with others with unspoken expectations. And while nearly everyone I knew experienced some form of isolation and exile as a teenager, these rough edges normally wore down.
As adults we learned that breaking these understandings had bad consequences. An officemate who took credit for the work of another would get a reputation and lose the trust of everyone else. A bully would learn that he was only hurting himself by demeaning others. Obviously this isn’t universal as we can all look back on experiences where the “bad guy” appeared to win, but in the long run good behavior is rewarded.
This reading from Jeremiah reminds me of this progression. Two weeks ago we read about the Ten Commandments; these explicit rules came from God to a people who were just beginning to learn how to live with each other. As slaves their only responsibility was to serve the slavemaster but they were entering into new territory and frankly needed some guidance. These commandments were the bedrock of that guidance.
And while I’d like to say that they “graduated” from this simple list of rules, the reality is much more complicated. They certainly had their high points, but Jeremiah writes in one of the lowest. Jeremiah spent a great deal of time warning the people that they were straying from God and would pay a price. They ignored him. Then they were conquered by Babylon, the Temple was destroyed, and their leaders were sent into exile.
Jeremiah, however, does not respond by saying “I told you so” but instead preaching a message of reconciliation and hope. He didn’t say: “You are exiled because you broke the commandments and now you’re going to have to do them over.” Nor did he say that God has abandoned them, as many thought. Instead he appears to take the next step and tell them that they can now enter into a new kind of covenant.
This new kind of covenant appears to take a step forward when the people have taken a step backward. In the midst of their misery God proclaims a new covenant that will not be written on tablet, but on hearts. This new covenant will not be taught, but will instead be hard wired into who we are.
Did God do this because they had been successful? Clearly not. Did God do this as a way of abandoning the old method of teaching to the tablets? Perhaps, but I don’t think so.
Instead I suspect that seeing them in exile, where everything they had was destroyed, and everything they believed was gone, broke God’s heart. Yes, they were in exile because of their sinful ways and yes, they had nobody to blame but themselves. But God responds not with disappointment or anger, but love. God responded as if to say: “When your exile is over you don’t go back to where you started, you go to where I call you.”
Given this I’ve always been a little troubled when we disciples attempt to find newer and more creative ways to make newer and more creative rules. We certainly need to find ways of living with each other and living in the world, but unfettered legalism impedes our ability to embrace this new covenant. This reading doesn’t tell us that there are no consequences to disobeying God, but that God will not abandon us. I’m certain that I speak for many of us when I say that Pope Francis has blown fresh air into some old, stale hallways. His joy and determination to love before he judges tells me that God’s covenant is well written in Francis’ heart.
As it should be with us. When we read passages from the Old Testament in Advent and Lent we often find them foreshadowing Jesus, first his birth and then his passion. I think this is the first faint signal that God sent us Jesus so that God could be closer to us. This new covenant, written on our hearts, is not the letters and words of the tablets, but instead this new covenant is God’s full presence with us.
This theme of God doing more than we expect continues in John. Jesus has come, as I spoke of last week, not just to teach us, to tell us what to do. Jesus came to live our experience, even death, so that his resurrection gives us all eternal life. Here, in John’s Gospel, we have a different type of Jesus than we find in the other Gospels. In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus prays in the Garden and begs God to “let this cup pass him by.” But here Jesus, while admitting that his soul is troubled, refuses to ask to be saved from this hour. He really commands the scene in a way we don’t see elsewhere.
This brings up an interesting question to me: if Jesus needed to die, why have we, throughout history, been angry with those who caused Jesus’ death? I live close to an orthodox synagogue and many of my neighbors are Jewish (they need to live within walking distance of the synagogue since they are prohibited from driving on the Sabbath). I’m aware that many Jews in history have been persecuted for the crime of killing Jesus. As an aside, this has always been a false charge as it was the Roman ruler Pontius Pilate who commanded the execution. But if Jesus needed to die to be risen, and he needed to rise from the death to redeem us, weren’t they all doing God’s will? Weren’t they players in a play that needed to unfold as it did? Perhaps just as Cyrus last week was an unaware player in God’s unfolding salvation history, so too was Pilate and the Roman soldiers.
If there’s anything we can learn about God it’s that God makes choices with little respect for what we would choose. I don’t think Jeremiah’s listeners expected that God would make a new covenant that drew God closer to them, and I don’t think Jesus’ followers expected that Jesus would be crucified to be glorified.
As a matter of fact, I think God’s choice of mercy and redemption in the midst of our attempting to make new rules is one of the best things about discipleship.