Unlike Before
Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 12:20-331

April 6, 2003

Alas, the world does change, sort of. Some time in the murky decades of the late 500’s B.C., the Hebrew prophet and agitator Jeremiah ben Hilkiah was sitting on the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq, the old veteran of more sorrow than he wanted to remember. He was a stranger in a strange land, no longer a citizen of a sovereign nation. Lots of his compatriots around Baghdad, all equally unfree as he.

It had happened before: Jeremiah was so full of something God had put into his brain and heart that he had to get it out. Yet, given the geopolitical situation oppressing the Israelites at the moment, this was a strange something, wild and naive. A new covenant God is going to make with us, unlike all those other covenants made before. Is this going to mean a new religion, a different way of being faithful?

Jeremiah didn’t know it, but the answer was yes: a new covenant meant an entirely different way of doing faith. There had been other attempts at covenants with God by the Israelites. The one written into stone tablets on Mount Sinai eventually dissolved, not so much into dust, but into harder and more rigid words and commandments that people kept ignoring. In the first years of Jeremiah’s career a new reform had taken hold in Israel, centred around the rediscovery of the book of Deuteronomy. A lot of well-meaning energy was spent, but this reform ended up again with nothing more but another book of good, sound commandments.

What got into Jeremiah’s head this time was that back in the beginning of all this covenant making, God had never intended to be a publisher of weighty tomes, but a molder of weighty lives. The new covenant would not be another book, but would be inscribed onto each person’s heart. Our instincts would be altered and we would do things right without having to think about it.

A new covenant it was called, and a later group of reformers picked up the term and called their message the same thing, though in most translations it came out as the New Testament.

This will be a different covenant and for most of us the days are still coming. Jeremiah’s vision in a way anticipates the day when all of God’s children will romp once again in the Garden of Eden. Education will no longer be necessary, at least Christian education, because everyone will instinctively know God, and the slate will be wiped clean. God will remember their sin no more.

Jeremiah reports God’s ideas in the best words he can, but they are still short of details. What kind of covenant? “I will be their God and they shall be my people.” Great lines to put up on a poster for inspiration, but in a way, isn’t that kind of obvious?

It is the New Covenant, so it makes sense to hear Jesus fill in the details. Following the Palm Sunday procession into Jerusalem during the Passover festival, all sorts of people swarmed over Jesus. Several Gentiles recognized Philip and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

I was being given the tour of the staid old Congregational church. All I remember is that at the base of the pulpit lectern there was an engraved plate with the words, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” No matter how traditional and sedate a church may be, our task remains the same as those Gentiles every Sunday.

Jesus winked in Jeremiah’s direction: the day has come, the hour in fact when the Son of Man is to be glorified. He starts talking about Easter, or rather Good Friday and the crucifixion and the resurrection issuing from it, but we are the only ones who know what he is talking about. Veiled words, but it’s a new covenant, unlike all the covenants before. No longer words, but the angle from which you live.

Nothing is going to grow unless it dies. Sure, Jesus used the imagery of a seed going dead into the soil and then producing much fruit, but he really meant your life. Success and victory are not the purpose of religious faith - often they are obstacles - but attempting to be at one with the pain of this world and from that pain help produce new life and energy and joy. The New Covenant, the New Testament, is no longer embedded in stone or parchment or even 20 bond paper; it is embedded in the flesh and blood and spirit of a human being. Unlike before, in order to really understand God’s covenant, we need to see Jesus.

The more you love the life of this world and its rewards for bigger and best, the more you’ll end up with less. If this world’s goals don’t matter to you, you will gain a quality of life that will never be disturbed. A little variation on a theme; in order to know what kind of life this means, we need to see Jesus.

“Whoever serves me must follow me, and wherever I am, there will my servant be also.” It is not remarkable to hear people in the church say they want to serve Christ; it is remarkable to see them follow in Jesus’ footsteps and live according to this new covenant. Jesus had a habit of showing up in the downtown, amidst the people who were down and out, who were not polite sinners, but had done the worst things. Jesus talked with them, ate with them, touched them with a healing touch. None of that was approved then, and few approve of it now.

The Italian infectious disease specialist Dr. Carlo Urbani who identified and reported SARS, and then succumbed to the disease, was a person who did not take himself seriously. “His death was the most coherent epilogue to his life,” said the director of the Italian branch of Doctors Without Borders. How else in living flesh and blood do you paint the outlines of the New Covenant?

Unlike before, we aren’t looking for carefully worded commandments. Unlike before, we aren’t looking for a kingdom full of success and victory. Unlike before, we aren’t demanding a proof-text from the Bible, we are looking to see Jesus and see how the Word has been made flesh and dwells among us.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan