October 17, 2004
By Jack Price

What do you mean when you say the Word of God”?  On my first day of seminary, many years ago, that is the first question the professor asked in Old Testament class.  How you understand Word of God will color everything else you study. 

I think now as I did then, that the Bible was not literally written down by God nor was it dictated by God to a scribe.  What scribe would there have been?  It seems clear that the Bible itself is a human document, formed through a long process of development.  It reflects ancient cultures and contains some duplicate and contradictory material.  The process of shaping the New Testament was often contentious. 

The Bible seems more a library of faith history than the product of a single mind.  Yet, one perceives the primal life force through it words and inhales the Breath of Life. The Spirit of God fills its pages.   The Bible describes a developing understanding of the nature of the eternal through the unlikeliest medium:  the lives and insights of a peculiar people.

I have a new understanding today of what “the Word of the Lord” means to me.  I still believe the Bible is a human document with a Spirit-filled impact.  I still affirm the understanding of how we got Bible, of its human authorship and its divine presence.

            God’s Word means God’s promise.  This is “The Word of the Lord”.  When I say, “I give you my word,” I mean “I promise.”  This is God’s word to us.  The Bible reveals what God promises to us, understood through the veil of human experience in real time.

Part one of this two-part sermon series called “Promises, Promises,” looked at our promise to God according to the prophet Jeremiah.  We promise to grow where we are planted and to trust that God is always “at home” in us.  Today, we are examining God’s promise to us, spoken to the people of Jerusalem in exile, and found in Jeremiah 31: 31-34.  There are actually three promises.  God promises to place the Law within us, to write it on our hearts.  Second, God promises that all people will have experiential knowledge of God.  Third, God promises total and permanent reconciliation, with complete forgiveness of sin.

            Let me say at the outset that, if this really is God’s promise, if God really exists and is trustworthy, if God really promises this, then you and I have vastly underestimated this faith we practice.  We do not place nearly enough importance on this religion we claim and practice.  This is really (really, really) good news!

            Old biblical promises were called covenants.  These covenants were ancient pacts between equals, with both sides agreeing to certain realities.  God entered into a few noteworthy covenants.  There was one with Noah in which God promised there would be no more destroying world by flood.  The rainbow was given as a sign. 

There was the covenant with Abraham in which God promised that his descendents would become a great nation, that old and childless Abraham would have lots of children.  Those children would be blessed in order to bless all the nations of the earth.  Circumcision was the sign of that covenant.

God made a covenant with the Hebrew people through Moses.  They would be a chosen people and God would be their god.  There were many signs of that covenant:  the Exodus from Egypt was a sign.  The wilderness miracles were signs, as was the Promised Land itself.  The Law was tangible sign of this covenant.

The Torah told the story of God’s work and describes mechanisms for the people to relate to God and each other as a sign of the covenant.  These mechanisms included:  the sacrificial system, the purity code, kosher food restrictions, festival observances, and keeping of the Sabbath.  The ten commandments were God’s promise written in stone:  the centerpiece of the people’s identity and their ethical and moral compass.

Let’s fast forward to Jeremiah’s time, around 600BCE.  The sacrificial system has devolved into a corrupt temple cult.  The kingdom of Israel has becomes a vassal state.  Once unified tribes are divided and weak.  The northern kingdom called Israel has been gone more than 200 years.  The southern kingdom called Judah is soon to be gone.  Jerusalem and the temple are soon to be destroyed.  Babylonian exile is inevitable.

This is time for the Jewish people of relinquishment, of letting go and confronting a hard truth.  It is a time of grieving loss and an opportunity to see clearly.  This is a time of reception for them as well.  It is a time for receiving God’s new gift, the blessing that only comes at the cost of everything else.  It is a blessing only available to those who empty their hands in order to receive it.  This is the time of Promises, and this is what Jeremiah gives.

According to the promise, God is making a new covenant with both Judah and Israel, hearkening back to the united kingdom under David.  This is a promise to the whole people, even though they are now divided and their nations destroyed.  You and I are invited to enter into this new covenant as well. 

God’s Law will now be written, not on stone, but within us, written on the human heart.  This is not religious revival nor a passionate return to tradition.  It’s definitely not a new list of rules nor of doctrines and beliefs.  This is a promise of people transformed, new on the inside!

The religion of Israel required lots of instruction from expert teachers.  Now, each person will know God.  There will be no need for religious instruction, not even a need for evangelism, because everyone will know.  Everyone will experience.  There will be no in-groups and out-groups.  There will be no chosen and not-chosen.  Everybody’s in.  All are chosen. 

There will be total and permanent reconciliation with God.  Forgiveness no longer follows confession.  Confession will follow forgiveness and it is forgiveness that enables true confession.  Confession will be truth seeking and truth telling.  Forgiveness will not result from professing one’s faith, but it will be forgiveness that enables profession of faith.  Forgiveness will come, not after we say or do the right things and not after we believe the right things, but it will be forgiveness that enables us to say and do right things.  Forgiveness will free us and God will remember sin no more!

The extent of this promise is that nothing is the same for us.  We need not earn God’s love.  We cannot earn God’s love.  It is already promised and already given.  This, indeed, is the Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God!

You and I are people of the New Covenant – New Testament people.  We see Jeremiah’s vision fulfilled in Jesus, God’s promise embodied and God’s Word in a human life.  In Jesus, we know God’s grace and can experience newness of life.

Jesus’ vision, God’s vision seen in Jesus, waits to be embodied in us.  It is, in truth, embodied in us.  God’s promise takes flesh in the lives of people like us.  It is embodied in our bodies, transforming us inside and changing who we think we are.  It changes who we’ve been told we are by stripping away false self, stripping away borrowed self, and revealing who God created us to be.

God’s promise places the means of grace within us to immediately reconnect us with God.  It makes us whole through the promise of reconciliation with all creation – God’s shalo.  This is it – the good news of the gospel.  But is it really good news?

What does the new covenant mean for you and me?  First, it requires full commitment of who we are, how we live, and what we trust.  Once you commit, there’s really no turning back from the path of seeking truth, living truth, and speaking truth.

The first pastor for whom I worked as a young minister provided several opportunities for me to learn and shape my own thoughts about ministry.  I learned from negatives and positives alike.  He             used to say, about his call to pastoral ministry, that if you could do anything else, do it.  I think this was intended to emphasize the importance of call and the challenge of the job.  It always seemed to sound “self-important” and falsely humble at the same time. 

Now, it kind of makes sense when applied to discipleship generally.  It is a challenging path that requires a lot.  It is a prophetic path of seeking truth, of trying to see clearly even when the vision is difficult, even when the truth we see is challenging to ourselves, to our comfortable views, or to familiar ways of being.

What else does the new covenant mean for us?  It means living the truth we perceive, and even the truth we don’t perceive.  It is life led from the inside by the challenge of conscience.  It is living open to new life choices.                  

The new covenant means that we endeavor to speak the truth always in love.  This means always listening and always open to change by what we hear.  The true knowledge of God is not factual information, nor is it theological doctrine.  Knowing God is deep trust.  It is being open to new understandings and to different choices, and embracing the tension that often results.

Tension leads to anxiety.  Anxiety moves quickly to accusation and blame.  This is a time of challenge for our world, our society, and our community.  There is a great deal of polarization.  It is not a time for simplistic answers.  It is definitely not a time for solutions that let us stay where we are.  It is an opportunity for transformation, to be changed inside.  The worst case scenario for our world now is that we will avoid the transforming power of the gospel. 

We can trust in God’s promise.  We can trust in God in times of anxiety.  The problems we face are not ones to be fixed.  It is a gift to be received and a reality to be lived, as it was for Jeremiah’s people.

            There is good news to be shared.  We share the gift of God’s grace by how we live.  We can lower the anxiety around us by how we live and by how we listen and speak:  by not being judgmental, by really listening, and by living in grace.

God promises to write the Law on our hearts and remember our sin no more.  This is for the purpose of knowing God more clearly, of gaining the mind of Christ in ours, and of becoming co-creators with God.  If you receive this good news, and share it in your living and in your speaking, I promise (for what that’s worth) that your life, and the lives of those you touch -- our life as church and the lives of those we touch – will never again be the same. 

Elizabeth O’Conner (Cry Pain, Cry Hope) writes --

When we honor call in our lives, we honor it in the lives of others and of our institutions for institutions – like people --journey by stages.  They, too, must die to the old in order to be born to the new.  The failure of an institution to follow its commitment to creativity causes it to wither and die.  A structure intended for the healing of the common life changes into a vehicle of oppression.  Perhaps, when vocation – [seeking truth in all our living] – becomes a more conscious consideration in our individual lives, it will become a more conscious consideration in our corporate life as the people of God called to freedom and creativity.

Invitation to silent reflection

1.         What is the truth you know for your life?

2.         How is your life reflecting it?

3.         What may be keeping you from living it?

4.         What 1^st or next steps can take?

5.         What is the truth you know for our congregation’s life?

6.         How is our life reflecting it?

7.         What may be keeping us from living it?

8.         What 1^st or next step can we take?

Prayer (Janet Morley, All Desires Known)

                        O God, for whom we long

                        as a woman in labor

longs for her delivery;

                        give us courage to wait,

                        strength enough to push,

                        and discernment to know the right time;

that we may each bring into the world

the child you have given us to bear,

through Jesus Christ.  Amen