Jeremiah – First United Methodist Church Schenectady

“The New Covenant” based on Jeremiah 31:27-34 and Luke…

October 21, 2019February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

Formally, a covenant is an agreement or legal contract,
although the word is used more often in the religious arena. In
fact, in the religious arena, LOTS of agreements get called a
covenant. The “marriage covenant” the “covenant of the
ordained” (which, btw, doesn’t actually exist but the powers that
be in the church like to hold us to one anyway), behavior covenants
at camp or on mission trips. I was a little shocked when John
Dominic Crossan was here a few years ago to learn that covenants
aren’t as morally neutral as I’d thought.

Religious groups use covenant language because our Bible
does, but it turns out that our Bible uses it because that was the
normal means of making agreements in its day. And covenants are
inherently power dominant. The dominant party sets the standards and
tells the less powerful party what the consequences will be if the
less powerful party doesn’t meet the standards of the dominant party.
It isn’t some particularly holy thing – it’s a form of agreement
between unequals, that functions as a means of naming the punishment
if the less powerful party doesn’t hold up to their end of the deal.
(Which they may not have had much choice about getting into anyway.)

The Hebrew Bible is full of covenants, and almost all of
them have condition in them and punishments delineated as well. They
tend to say, “If you do this, then I will be your God and you will
be my people and things are going to be OK. If not, then it follows
that the inverse will happen.” However, today we are talking about
the exceptions. The first exception is in the covenant made with
Abraham, mostly.

The story of Abraham’s covenant appears 3 times in
Genesis, and in 2 of the 3 versions it is unconditional. The the
3^rd, it is conditional on circumcision. The three
versions relate to the three different “voices” in Genesis, and
this story is important enough that all three versions are known and
told. My favorite is the Priestly version in Genesis 15, whereby God
intentionally takes on the roles of both the powerful and the
powerless in covenant making and thereby takes all the responsibility
for the relationship continuing to work.

That covenant is the one most like what we hear in
Jeremiah 31, where we hear of the “new covenant.” Jeremiah is
generally considered a downer prophet, as his role was to say that if
the nation of Israel didn’t change its ways, it was going to be
destroyed.

However, Jeremiah 31 is the middle of three hopeful
chapters whereby the prophet names that after the destruction that
would come, an even better relationship with God would be possible.
The hope is even more potent in the midst of the the rest of the
book, and its threats of dire destruction. The particulars of the
new covenant are worth noting. Let’s hear that part 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.
It 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.
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, says the Lord: 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, says the Lord; for I will forgive
their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

The comparison for the “new covenant” are the
covenants in the Torah. In those covenants God made promises to the
people that were CONTINGENT on the people upholding their promises to
God. In this new covenant God takes all the responsibility on God’s
self. The people don’t have to learn, or memorize, or interpret the
Torah because God will “put it within them” and “write it on
their hearts.” And in this way the people and God will be
inseparable.

The part that is particularly inspiring to me is, “ 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.” God’s self is not entirely knowable within the
human realm, and it is easy to get lost in figuring out God even when
we’re trying our hardest. The idea that everyone could know, and
intuit the goodness and love of God AND act out God’s kindom is
really powerful.

The final line is both really powerful in its original
context, and likely the reason that the Christian Tradition has so
strongly claimed this text. The line is, “for I will forgive their
iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” For those who heard
Jeremiah, and for those who complied his remembered speeches into a
book, the reason for the exile was that the people had been
unfaithful to the covenant with God. They had not followed the Torah
laws, they had allowed the rich and powerful to abuse the poor and
powerless, and they had forgotten God’s will. Whether or not that
was the reason for the exile, it is the reason that is assumed within
the book. To forgive iniquity and sin, then, was a form of
restoration. To continually forgive iniquity and forget sin is to
take away the threat of punishment and create the hope of security.

Now, as the Christian Tradition has strongly claimed
authority over God’s forgiveness of sins, it makes a lot of sense
that it has strongly claimed this “old” (by the standards of
Christianity) idea of the “new” covenant. However, claiming
Jeremiah’s vision of the new covenant is a really radical claim for
Christianity to make! Sure, Christianity also claims that we and God
have made an eternal covenant, God is our God and we are God’s
people. That one is easy. We also claim forgiveness, that fits.
But we aren’t yet in a time, as far as I know, where we are past
having to teach each other of God and God’s goodness. Nor are we
living in a time when all people intuit and live out right action
that allows the kindom to come and continue.

The “new covenant” of Jeremiah in some ways reminds
me of the kindom itself – it is here and now! But it is here and
now IN PART and we are working towards the day when it is here and
now in completion! I love, though, that Christianity is claimed this
deep and profound dream as ours. Of course, I hope we all remember
that the dream is one from our Hebrew Bible and we don’t have a
unilateral claim to it.

A while ago, one night at Bible Study we came across our
Gospel passage for today, and someone raised a question, “What is
this ‘new covenant’ thing?” The answer referred us to the Jeremiah
passage. For a lot of people present that night, things CLICKED. The
United Methodist communion liturgy refers to the new covenant twice.
The first time it shows up describing the life and ministry of Jesus
where it says:

Holy are you, and blessed is your Son Jesus
Christ.
…
By the baptism of his suffering, death, and
resurrection
you gave birth to your Church,
delivered us from
slavery to sin and death,
and made with us a new covenant
by
water and the Spirit.
When the Lord Jesus ascended,
he promised
to be with us always,
in the power of your Word and Holy Spirit.

The second time is when the communion cup is named and
raised, where it says:

When the supper was over, he took the cup,
gave
thanks to you, gave it to his disciples, and said:
“Drink
from this, all of you;
this is my blood of the new
covenant,
poured out for you and for many
for the
forgiveness of sins.
Do this, as often as you drink it,
in
remembrance of me.”

Those who had grown up hearing those words, over and
over, without context, were excited to know the context of it.

In addition to showing up in our communion liturgy, the
concept of the New Covenant is also found in our language for our
Scriptures. The so-called New Testament which is alternative
language for, yep you got it, “New Covenant.” Our Bible itself
claims that the stories of Jesus and the early church ARE the stories
of the new covenant of Jeremiah being lived out on earth. And, I
think this is claimed because it is believed. And, I think the claim
that our faith tradition is an expression of Jeremiah’s “New
Covenant” is both excessive and hopeful.

Someday, may it fully be so. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“Scary Stuff” based on Jeremiah 18:1-11 and Luke 14:25-33

September 4, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Our texts today are SCARY. Or at least they are to me. There is ONE well-known hymn that reflects the Jeremiah reading today. Also, as far as I am aware, there really is only one hymn that works with our Jeremiah reading today. Sorta like the issue around “We Three Kings” – you know, that the so-called “wise men” weren’t kings and there is no particular reason to think there were three of them – the hymn “Have Thine Own Way Lord” seems to have taken over how people think about this text without accurately reflecting it. It guides their thinking more than the actual text does.

For example, the people who make suggestions of hymns to match the lectionary often do an excellent job. This week they offered variations on a theme: letting God have control over our individual lives. That’s a big problem because they text is COMMUNAL. It is about how a group of people (in this case a nation) are living out their covenant with God. The premise is not that one person’s actions are molded by God, although that is what that darn hymn says. For those blissfully unaware, “Have Thine Own Way” verse one says:

1. Have thine own way, Lord! Have thine own way!
Thou art the potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after thy will,
while I am waiting, yielded and still.

The hymn is about PERSONAL holiness, and yielding one’s power to God. For the time being I’m going to lay aside the questions about if that’s valid at all, to focus on what the text actually says. Jeremiah, it might be useful to remember, was the prophet of the exile. He experienced his call when he was a boy, and many scholars believe that the same prophet spoke warnings of the exile, spoke during the exile, and he spoke of the possibility of restoration. In the beginning of the book of Jeremiah, in the story of his call, it is said, “Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the Lord said to me,
‘Now I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.’” (Jeremiah 1:9-10, NRSV) Jeremiah wasn’t born in an era when it would have worked to be soft and fluffy. It wasn’t the work that was needed at that time. He did manage to speak some of the most profound words of hope in the Bible, but mostly he spoke of death and destruction.

The text today is a challenging one. I don’t think it is challenging to UNDERSTAND, but it raises big scary questions. The prophet goes to a potter’s house and watched a potter for a while. Then he has an insight drawn from the metaphor of making pottery. The metaphor suggests that God is the potter and the people are the clay. It suggests that if God is displeased with the nation, God can knock down the clay and start over again. It further suggests that God is judging the people on communal faithfulness to their covenant.

The text actually says, “At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it,” (18:7) and then it makes it quite clear that God can and will change God’s mind on the basis of the people’s behavior. What does it mean to assume that God steps into human affairs and takes down nations as God sees fit? If the implications of that aren’t scary enough on its own, it makes God a monster when we look at what has happened in recent human affairs. If God can and will step in to stop evil, then why didn’t God stop Germany before the concentration camps, or Russia before Stalin took over, or any society before they moved to genocide???

This perspective, this image of God as potter shaping the fate of nations, fit well in the time of the prophet Jeremiah. It fit his worldview and the worldview of those to whom he was speaking. It made sense of the political environment around them. It doesn’t fit for us anymore. We don’t see that God sweeping in to intervene at random moments fits the arc of history NOR our belief in God who is good. Rather, it appears that God works through individuals and communities who are open to the guidance of the Holy One, and through them seeks to bless the world. Free will exists. We get the leaders we empower.

There is still plenty of goodness in this text though! First of all, there is the direct claim about God being willing and able to change God’s mind in response to human activity. That seems like good news because it reminds us that we are truly important to God and that our RELATIONSHIPS with God and each other have real impact on God’s well-being.

Secondly, there is the reminder that comes from applying the pottery metaphor to communities who ARE seeking God’s guidance. Like ancient Israel, many faith communities today seek out the wisdom of the Holy One, and are open to some molding along the way – which likely makes it possible for God to do some molding along the way. Potters rework clay and are able to use the same clay to make a variety of different shapes before anything is fired. It doesn’t actually hurt the clay to be reworked, and the moisture level may need some fine tuning along the way to build a solid pot. The suggestion that we are still plastic, and that God is willing to work with us can be rather positive. In this era of exceptional cultural change, and profoundly different responses to institutionalized religion, this may be REALLY good news for us. Perhaps God is getting ready to knock down the UMC and build it back up as a source of greater justice and love in the world! (May it be so!) The plasticity of the clay allows for the reworking to happen without brokenness or pain – although it does require a certain openness to the guidance of the Spirit. We’re still working on that ;), especially as a denomination.

OK, so, fine, maybe Jeremiah isn’t such scary stuff, but certainly Luke is! This whole cost of discipleship thing is tough. Did you hear the opening threat? “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26) HATE? What????? To keep us on our toes, the Jesus seminar thinks that only this verse is authentic to Jesus, and several scholars point out that this is consistent with the rest of Luke’s message. Apparently, we are to assume that Jesus said it and Luke thought it was thematic.

Family Life Radio – I think maybe you should be particularly scared 😉

It is probably of use to remember that the basic unit of societal structure in the ancient world was family. Power derived from it. The head of household – the patriarch – had unilateral control over the other members of his household (the women, children, descendants, servants, and slaves), and only the patriarch would participate in public life with voice. To upset the family unit was to upset the entire society in which Jesus lived. I actually don’t think that we have a comparable understanding of this in our current family life. The nuclear family, known in our society to be fairly unstable, is not like families were in the time of Jesus.

Jesus was a revolutionary, at least as the writer of the Gospel of Luke understood him. He was interested in upsetting ALL the apple carts, and in order to do so, he started with the most basic. If you disregard the power and authority of the patriarch and the family unit in the time of Jesus, what are you left with? Anarchy and chaos.

Jesus really believed that the kin-dom of God was more important than societal order, and that in order to create a world where all people were cared for and able to thrive required utter devotion to such work. That is, one can’t have two masters: not God and money, not the kin-dom and the society, not Jesus and the family unit. The Jesus seminar does not believe that the rest of the words in the passage are attributed to Jesus, they sound too mundane. It is only the radical, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” that they take to be authentic. They attribute the final line of our text, “So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” to Luke. Other scholars point out that “possessions” isn’t a strong enough translation. It should be something more like “all that you have.”

So, is it possible to follow Jesus while also having loyalty to something else? Can we have bank accounts and be good Jesus followers? Can we value our family and be good Jesus followers? Can we have…. say…. an extensive collection of books and be good Jesus followers? Is there a way to follow Jesus without giving up EVERYTHING – all possessions, all finances, all relationships, and everything that matters to us? It may be Luke who raises the question, but it seems pretty valid to this Jesus-following-stuff.

I’ve been pondering this particular scary question for many years now. Reading the Bible, and in particular reading the Gospels, tends to bring it up. The Gospels are pretty clear that those of us who have two coats should be getting rid of one of them to someone who has none. The Gospels are RADICAL in their calls for us to care for each other and to build a world where all people have enough and can thrive – and they ask us to do it both individually and collectively. They stand against inequality and income differentiation. In some interpretations, ones I tend to believe, they stand against economics and markets themselves, staking a claim that money itself dehumanizes and the only way to live out the beloved community of God is to refute the most basic premises of economics.

I do think that the utter anarchy and chaos that would result from people following Jesus’ words, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple,“ in the 1^st century can be matched by the anarchy and chaos that would emerge in the 21^st century if we refuted the principles of the market! Not just if we refused to charge interest, or to be charged interest, not just if we stopped “investing” in stocks and bonds, or if we functioned primarily through trade and barter and ignored money itself, but moreso if we REFUSED to accept the principle that the well-being of the economy was the basic good of our society. That could mess up EVERYTHING our society is based on.

And that’s what Jesus seems to be getting to in this speech. So, can we be disciples of we have possessions, family, and alternative priorities? I’ll give you the answer that lets me sleep at night. James Fowler, who was Professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University, wrote a seminal book entitled “Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning.” (It is one of my all time favorite books.) In it he outlines faith development in stages. He claims that the highest stage of faith development happens when a person stops experiencing a difference between their well-being and the well-being of the whole – and is therefore willing to give away ANYTHING (including their life) for the sake of the well-being of the whole.

That sounds like what Jesus is asking for, right? Fowler’s ultimate step in faith development – utter selflessness. Our goal as people of faith is to get get there, but it is a journey and we can’t get to the end unless we travel the path. (People do travel at different rates, and not all get to the end goal, and that’s OK.) Our contributions toward communal well-being are meant to fit where our faith is today, and our faith development is meant to lead us forward. We don’t have to pretend to be anywhere we aren’t. Our faith is made up of some scary stuff, but God walks with us on the way, and asks of us what we are able to give WHEN we are able to give it. May we be brave, throughout our faith development. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 4, 2016