Jeremiah 31:31-34
If you’ve been paying attention to the readings and the sermons this Lent, you’ll have noticed that the theme of Covenant has pervaded the past five Sundays. We’ve seen that biblical covenants are mutual agreements between God and his people, usually commemorated by some sort of sign or marker.
On the First Sunday in Lent, the Old Testament reading introduced God’s Covenant with Noah and all his descendants, that is, the entire human race, in which God promised never again to destroy the earth with water. The sign of that covenant was the rainbow.
On the Second Sunday in Lent, we considered God’s Covenant with Abraham and his descendants, whom God promised to make as numerous as the stars in the sky, and to whom he promised the land of Canaan. The sign of that covenant was circumcision.
On the Third Sunday in Lent, we looked at God’s Covenant with Moses and the Israelites, given on Mount Sinai. The sign of that covenant was the two stone tablets bearing the Ten Commandments.
Then last week, on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, the focus changed a bit. The Old Testament reading from Numbers introduced the problem of the people’s disobedience and rebellion in the wilderness. Although they’d promised to obey God’s laws and walk in his ways, they nonetheless grumbled and complained against Moses, so that God sent fiery serpents, which bit them so that many died.
Then, when Moses interceded with God for the people, the remedy was a bronze serpent mounted on a pole; upon which those bitten by the fiery serpents could then look and live. We noted also that, beginning with Chapter 3 of John’s Gospel, the Christian tradition has understood the bronze serpent as an anticipation or type of the cross of Christ, upon which sinners may look and be saved.
The wider point is that there’s a big difference between promising obedience and actually being obedient. Throughout, the Old Testament records that again and again the people of Israel broke their promises to God, and relapsed into idolatry and wickedness.
From the Christian viewpoint, the Old Testament has a certain quality of incompleteness. It clearly reveals God’s holiness, goodness, and mercy; and it tells the stories of many very good and even heroic individuals. But the overall picture it paints of the human response to God is one of infidelity and rebellion. The Old Testament masterfully points out the problem of the human condition, namely sin, but it doesn’t quite give the solution. Last week’s Old Testament reading pointed towards the solution, in the form of the cross, by which God forgives our sins. But even then, forgiveness by itself isn’t quite enough. Something more is needed.
One way of describing the problem is that deep down within ourselves we often experience a conflict between what we know to be right in our minds and what we desire with our hearts and choose with our wills. Faced with this conflict, we can go in one of two directions.
First, we can simply rebel. In today’s world, this rebellion most often expresses itself in the attempt to rewrite God’s laws and redefine wrong as right and right as wrong. Now it’s true that a good deal of re-thinking of traditional morality is taking place in today’s Church. That process is, however, a matter for corporate discernment rather than private judgment. Over time, the Church may or may not reach a new consensus on what counts as right and wrong on any given issue. In the meantime, however, we’re called to remain obedient to the laws, commandments, and precepts that we’ve received. But the sad fact is that our unruly wills and disordered affections all too easily lead us astray.
Second, we can make a strenuous effort to obey God’s laws even though deep down what we really want is precisely what the law forbids. Without the inner renewal of our hearts, this effort leads to legalism: a rigid insistence on keeping the letter of the law that breeds nasty intolerance and hypocrisy.
So, we find ourselves caught on the horns of a dilemma: between rebellion on one hand, and legalism and hypocrisy on the other. We have the assurance that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross obtains the forgiveness of our sins, but still, something more is needed: namely, a thoroughgoing renewal of our inner selves so that what we know in our minds to be right also becomes what we desire most in our hearts.
None of the covenants of the Old Testament were able to accomplish this inner renewal – at least not completely or permanently. Yet in today’s reading from the prophet Jeremiah, God announces a new Covenant: “I will put my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
As Christians, we believe that this new Covenant is none other than that mediated by Jesus Christ. In his Incarnation he lived the perfect human life, overcoming all opposition between law and desire, letter and spirit, outward constraint and inward motivation. By his death upon the cross, he obtained the forgiveness of our sins. By his Resurrection, he overcame the power of sin and death. And by the sending of the Holy Spirit, he incorporates us into his risen life so that the New Covenant prophesied by Jeremiah becomes a living reality in our midst.
The promise of the New Covenant is that by putting our faith in Jesus Christ, and inviting the Holy Spirit to take charge of our lives, we open the door for God to begin working on us and changing us from the inside. Little by little he will reform us and renew us, writing his law not only in our minds but in our hearts and wills as well.
The well-known preacher Fleming Rutledge writes this:
“When God’s law is written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit, we discover that God’s will and our will are one and the same. Not only will we not want to be … angry with our brother … we won’t nurse anger, and we won’t even notice that we don’t do it. That’s freedom! Our wills have blended into God’s will.
“Impossible you say. Precisely. It’s as impossible as unlocking the door from the inside with no key. It has to be done by divine intervention. Something has to work on us from beyond ourselves. That is exactly what God announced through Jeremiah in his new covenant. ‘With men it is impossible but not with God,’ said Jesus, ‘for all things are possible with God.’”
Beginning next Sunday, we shall commemorate the mysteries of our Lord’s suffering, death, and resurrection: the saving actions by which God establishes his New Covenant with us and with all creation. Rather than just piously remembering these events as having happened in the distant past, we do well to seek to enter into them and experience their power in the present. We pray that God will make his new Covenant a living reality in our lives, and that he shall write his law in our hearts.
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