03/21/21 - A Heart-to-Heart Talk - Westminster Presbyterian Church Westminster Presbyterian Church | Serving God and others with open mind, hands and heart - 03/21/21

03/21/21 – A Heart-to-Heart Talk

A HEART-TO-HEART TALK

March 21, 2021
5^th Sunday in Lent
Jer. 31:31-34; Ps. 51; Heb.5:5-10; John 12
Rev. Denise Clark-Jones

No one likes criticism. No one wants to hear that their plans are foolish and doomed to failure. That is what makes prophets so very unpopular. Jeremiah was incessant in telling Israel’s movers and shakers their money and power-grabbing schemes, which exploited the most vulnerable in society, violated God’s laws. This prophet told them how God wanted them to act; and, of course, we don’t like being told what to do. Jeremiah reminded the wayward Israelites that God had rescued them from slavery in Egypt. We also don’t like to be reminded that our achievements would not have been possible without help. It’s no wonder the king had Jeremiah thrown down a well.

For 29 chapters, Jeremiah points his finger at the Israelites; and, when they are conquered, and the benefactors of Israel’s unjust economic and political systems are exiled, he lays the blame for their exile at their feet. But, in chapters 30 and 31, we have what is referred to as “Jeremiah’s Little Book of Consolation.” God promises a “new covenant,” which will be “written on their hearts.” Through no effort of their own, God will provide the remedy for their addiction to sin.

Jeremiah had made a clear case of cause and effect – Israel’s sin led to God’s punishment with foreign occupation and exile. Along with other prophets of that period, Jeremiah condemned Israel for the oppression of the poor and worshipping other gods. In chapter 5, Jeremiah warned: “they do not judge with justice the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper, and they do not defend the rights of the needy. Shall I not punish them for these things? Says the LORD? (27b-28)

In chapter 22, Jeremiah criticized King Jehoiakim for employing slave labor to build himself a lavish palace during a time of war and deprivation in Israel. In the ancient world, the primary ways of being made a slave were being captured during the war and becoming indebted. High-interest rates, the biblical sin of usury, created many slaves. Israel had few military victories, so most slaves were their own people who could not pay their debts. In times of economic distress, the number of slaves skyrocketed. This was true in Jesus’ time as well. The term, slave, which we read in both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament, was synonymous with the word, debtor. Freedom was lost due to an unfair economic system. Jeremiah railed against the King: “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbors work for nothing and does not give them their wages…” (22:13)

South American theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the founders of Liberation theology, states that we encounter God in acts of justice and mercy: Where there is justice and righteousness, there is knowledge of Yahweh; when these are lacking, it is absent: “To know Yahweh…is to establish just relationships among persons, it is to recognize the rights of the poor. The God of Biblical revelation is known through interhuman justice. When justice does not exist, God is not known; God is absent.” (1) Jeremiah relayed God’s message of hope to the downtrodden Israelites, promising: “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. By acts of mercy and compassion to an oppressed and distraught people, the people will know God.

Early in their history, God had protected and provided for the Israelites by freeing them from slavery in Egypt, delivering them to the Promised Land, and giving them the Law on Mt. Sinai. With the Ten Commandments, God made a covenant with the people. God basically demanded two things in return: worshiping only God and treating others with the same compassion and mercy with which God had treated them. They were not to be idolatrous, violent, and oppressive like others around them. They were to be, as the Abrahamic covenant stated, a blessing to the nations so that all would be drawn to God by their example.

One of South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s favorite stories came from his teaching a confirmation class on the Mosaic Covenant. He explained the promise God had made to free the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. In return, the people were required to worship God alone and treat one another with the love and mercy God had shown them. He went on to show how this idea was foundational in Jesus’ teachings. At the end of the lesson, he asked the confirmands to summarize what he had just said. One young man got straight to the point: “I saved your butts, so now you go behave.” Grace and gratitude. In one perceptive response, that young man had grasped the underlying theology of much of the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament.

Jeremiah recounted that the consequence Israel suffered for their sins was a return to bondage in Babylonia, which became their new “Egypt.” When we get to chapter 31 and our lectionary passage for today, we find Jeremiah’s words of comfort and hope. Despite their sin, God would give them another chance. ²⁹In those days they shall no longer say: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” This idiom of the day meant that the Israelites would no longer be slaves to their past. God would forgive the people and grant them another opportunity to bring about the world that God intended. God would give them a “new covenant.” This is the only place in the Hebrew Scriptures that the phrase, “new covenant” is found. This new covenant would not be new in terms of substance, the Torah would still be the foundation of the covenant. However, the new covenant would not be imposed on them from the outside but would be implanted within them. Earlier covenants had been broken, but this new covenant would be different because it would not be dependent on external obligations, but on the inner transformation of the heart.

This is what Jesus announced he had come to do. His atoning sacrifice would bond God’s heart to ours. In his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus echoed Jeremiah’s words. “The time is coming and now is when worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” This idea undergirds much of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: You have heard it said to men of old that you shall not kill. Truly, I tell you that you shall not even be angry with your brother.” In antiquity, the heart was believed to be the seat of not just emotion, but wisdom and volition also. Jeremiah and Jesus both preach that it is the heart from which behavior is directed. Christian faith is not subscribing to a particular doctrine or attending church, it is freeing space in our hearts for God to enter. This is the self-emptying love Jesus described using the metaphor of a seed dying: “…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)

Jesus went on to foretell his own crucifixion and resurrection with the cryptic warning: ²⁵Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. From the sacrifice of his life would come the fruit of salvation for the world. Then Jesus adds a call to service for his disciples: “²⁶Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.” (John 12:25-26) This life of service requires a free heart, one that is not bound by the worship of worldly gods but reflects God’s love.

These two scripture passages from Jeremiah and John passages resonate with hope-filled anticipation of new life and new community. We live in a debt-ridden society, both literally and figuratively. As the psalmist pleaded: “Give us a clean heart, O Lord.” In this last week of Lent before we walk with Jesus into Jerusalem, that shining city that killed its prophets, it’s time we had more heart-to-heart talks with God and one another. Don’t you think?

Amen. May it be so!

Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1973). Translation by Caridad Inda and John Eagleston.

My Story

“Throughout the week, there are many worldly things pulling me away from my commitment to God. I come to church on Sunday at Westminster to reconnect and renew my relationship with Him. Part of my worship is to ask him for forgiveness for my lack of faithfulness. I leave, reminded that he loves me, forgives me, and walks beside me every day. What a profound blessing that is!”