Hear this sermon preached:
Seven Greenfield Road is a one hour drive from the United Church of Jaffrey.
Depending on how I go, I might be waylaid by only three stop lights. It’s rural driving — not much in the way of traffic which, believe me, after years commuting in New York and Boston, I am thankful for! But what it lacks in traffic, my commute makes up for in curves. It’s not a straight shot by any stretch of the imagination. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. You must keep your wits about you driving in the hills of New Hampshire — especially in the winter when driving off the road would be about as easy as staying on it.
There are times when I imagine myself in an add for a sportscar, zooming down a country road in a luxury automobile that hugs the road as it handles the turns. Those are wonderfully exciting moments, filled with a kind of joyful adrenalin. But unfortunately the opposite is also true – there are occasions – more occasions than I care to admit, when I have felt a little sleepy at the wheel.
This is the worst!
I have nearly met my maker on those roads on more occasions than I’d like to admit.
But before you get too concerned about all of this, I must tell you that, some years ago, I made a discovery that is, for me at least, an almost full-proof solution to the problem of falling asleep at the wheel. You may know this trick already, but I want to share it with you anyway, because I think it might clue us into something important about the nature of our faith.
I hope so, anyway.
I may have already shared with many of you my strategy for staying awake at the wheel. By itself, it’s not that earth shattering an idea – I’m sure you’ve probably used it yourself. But I made a further discovery that may get us somewhere.
My tactic for not losing consciousness while zooming down those curvy stretches on route 119 between Fitzwilliam and Winchester, is simple…
I sing.
I sing ferociously. The more tired I am, the more ferociously I sing.
And it works. As it turns out, it is almost virtually impossible to sing and fall asleep at the same time.
However, since this revelation is not all that groundbreaking, you may be wondering about that further discovery that I mentioned earlier.
Well, it goes like this. When I figured out that it was impossible to sing and fall asleep at the same time, it occurred to me that the best songs to sing are, naturally, the songs that I know by heart.
And when I went through my music, to make a playlist with the songs that I know all the lyrics to, I noticed an interesting correlation.
All the music that ended up on that list was music that I loved when I was twelve years old!
For me this means all the songs on the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, by Elton John. Don McClean’s American Pie record. Jesus Christ Superstar. Back then, I loved The Carpenters and Carole King. The Beatles show up a lot, as do David Bowie, and a smattering of Blood Sweat and Tears. But, it is with some guilty pleasure that I admit to you that by far the most effective way I have yet found to stay awake on the road, is by belting out my own rather hair-raising, Reverend Mark version of… wait for it… Dancing Queen.
Sad but true…
Complete with the necessary vogue-ing this may be the closest I ever come to being a drag queen – and I am comforted to know that only mortal creatures who are likely to witness the compromising performance are the occasional flocks of Wild Turkeys wandering the shoulders of Route 119.
But what, you may well ask, does any of this have to do with our faith lives as Christians?
Good Question!
I hope I can answer it!
**
The passage that Cynthia just read for us from the 31st chapter of Jeremiah is a kind of prophetic proclamation that comes down from God through the mouth of the prophet.
The prophet tells us that God intends to make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
These are hopeful words!
But wait. Before we get too far into the hope that is expressed here, it’s worth asking whether or not we believe that this prophet does indeed speak for God. The way the Bible is written, it is taken for granted that we will go along with this, but I think it important tot remember that it is an open question.
Hear the first words of the passage again:
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
We are hardly aware of Jeremiah at all… as soon as the prophet uses the words “says the Lord” our attention shifts to what is said, rather than who is speaking. This technique is common to all the Hebrew prophets: the prophet says “thus says the Lord” and we are expected to accept that the prophet has become a kind of mouthpiece for the Divine.
But is this a safe assumption?
I’m skeptical. Not of Jeremiah himself, necessarily, but of the assumption. We all know that there is such a thing as a “false prophet” and that such a person is dangerous precisely because we forget to make the distinction between their words, and God’s intentions for us.
I would be inclined to argue the opposite is the better rule:, in almost every case, it is safer to assume that a person does not speak for God. At the very least, it is important to try to discern when a person speaks for God and when a person doesn’t.
All this, then begs the question: can we discern, from Jeremiah’s words, whether or not he speaks for God? Or put another way, Is there something here that can help us to understand the divine?
One thing I notice about this passage is that it is intentionally, and deeply embedded in the history of the Jewish people. In introducing this new covenant, Jeremiah makes reference to a previous covenant that God made with the Jewish people:
The new covenant will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord.
Certainly, a historical perspective is a valuable thing to recognize in a prophet. If one claims to speak truth that concerns the fate and the well being of a people, it seems to me that having a firm grasp of the dynamics of history is required.
In this case, Jeremiah is not just talking about history – he is talking about the history of God’s relationship with the children of Israel. Jeremiah is just one of the chorus of voices collected in the Bible that fumbles about in its attempt to describe this relationship. When I say this you understand that I mean no disrespect to Jeremiah. I am just making use of the right that God has given me, to discern what (and who) I choose to believe.
No doubt the best way to judge a prophet’s connection to God is to consider what he is actually saying. So when Jeremiah says that the
The days are surely coming when the Lord, will make a new covenant…
What will that covenant look like?
This covenant, Jeremiah says, will be different from the previous covenant that God made with the house of Israel, because this time:
I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest…
“I will put my law within them.”
“I will write it on their hearts.”
These are strange words that are both troubling and comforting to me. On the one hand it seems like this covenant depends on a deeper relationship with God – a relationship that is mysteriously internal, physical. This new relationship with God will be more profound, more woven into our being – written on our hearts.
I like this, but I am also wary of the way that this new covenant seems to take away our free will.
If we will all follow the ways of God automatically, and not need to be taught, because we will already know… what has happened to the right that God has given us, to discern what (and who) we choose to believe?
It’s a tricky question.
Jeremiah (or God) gives with one hand, and takes away with the other.
**
Identify a song that you loved when you were twelve years, and listen to it, and you will make a remarkable discovery. You will be able to open your mouth and the song will come out entirely without the involvement of your brain. You do not need to “recall” anything. Those lyrics are hard wired into your soul. They do not come from outside of you… they are part of you.
You can’t fall asleep when you are singing along with music that is part of the fiber of your existence. You are not so much a singer as you are an instrument that is being played by the circumstances of your youth.
Now as it happened, at the time when I made this discovery — this strategy for staying awake while driving by singing songs from my adolescence… I was the father of two adolescent boys.
This very physical demonstration of the significance of that developmental period made it clear to me that it was critically important that I give some real thought to what my boys were up to.
If what they were doing NOW, would be hard wired into their brains for the rest of their lives — I better make sure they aren’t spending their days playing shoot’em up video games! It would behoove me — and more to the point, them, for me to start tossing some things into their path — things that they might stumble on and maybe grow to love. This struck me as being very urgent indeed.
This discovery… that there are things within all of us that are so intricately woven into the fabric of my being that they have the power to guide me almost without my knowledge – this sounds to me a little like what Jeremiah saie, when he spoke of God writing a new covenant on our hearts.
But let’s keep our eyes open here. When we talk about the music I listened to when I was twelve, this “writing on the heart” idea seems rather benign.
But 12 year olds live in this cruel world too. We could just as easily be talking about the child subjected to physical or sexual abuse. That could be written on her heart.
We could be talking about the children who are in Gaza right now… Can you imagine what is written on their hearts?
We could be talking about Black teenagers who cannot see flashing lights in their rear view mirror, without being sent into a panic – legitimately fearing for their lives.
Children abandoned and more often than not, orphaned by the opioid epidemic.
Trans kids, bullied to the point of suicide by their peers.
Millions of teens, all over the world, caught like flies in the insidious web of alienation that is social media.
When the joy and discovery of youth is eclipsed by violence and trauma that gets stitched into the fabric of being, the reflexes that, unbidden, guide a life are the reflexes of fear.
How does God’s new covenant respond to all this?
The answer to this question comes at the end of today’s passage.
Jeremiah has told us that, in this new covenant, we will all know God in a new way – a deeper knowledge that will be written in our hearts.
At the conclusion of the passage, Jeremiah reveals what this knowledge will be.
No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for 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.
for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.
This new covenant is a covenant of Grace. It is a covenant that is based on forgiveness.
This new covenant is not an if/then proposition.
It is freely given.
This I like!
I accept that this be “written on my heart.”
If indeed, this ability to forgive was part of the fabric of my being, in the same way that those old songs from the early 1970’s are part of the texture of my being… my life… and, indeed, our world would be a much better place.
Racism.
Abuse.
Mass incarceration.
Mass shootings.
Ukraine.
Gaza.
In this new covenant, there would be no place in our hearts for such deep wounds.
Let us pray:
Bring about this new covenant God.
Write forgiveness onto our hearts.
Let us forgive ourselves,
and each other, and grow in Love,
so that the pain of this world might cease
And your beautiful melody
can arise, as praise, to the heavens.
Amen