“God’s Table Extended” based on Jeremiah 31:31-34 and 1…

March 21, 2021
by Sara Baron

Rabbi
Rafi Spitzer of congregation Agudat Achim in Niskayuna, led an
amazing workshop this week entitled “People of the Library: An
Introduction to Talmudic Literature and the Mythic Transmission of
Jewish Tradition for Clergy of Other Faiths.” Schenectady Clergy
Against Hate is a VERY cool organization, and I learned a lot.

Rabbi
Spitzer talked about the roots of modern Rabbinic Judaism as emerging
in the period after the destruction of the 2^nd
Temple (70-200 CE). This is the same period as the formation of most
of the Christian texts. Jesus lived earlier, of course, but most
scholars date the earliest Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, to 70 CE
because it mentions the destruction of the Temple.

That
is, both Modern Judaism and Christianity-As-We-Know-It (as a separate
faith tradition) emerged after, and in the response to Rome’s
destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. It was in making sense of
this horrific disaster that new expressions of God’s ways in the
world emerged.

This
is particularly interesting to me because the Hebrew Bible was
written down in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem and the
First Temple in 587-586 BCE, when the Jewish leaders and scholars
were sent into exile. The stories, of course, were much older, but
they were written down then, and that means that they were written
down with the question “why did this happen to us?” at the
forefront.

That
is, the Hebrew Bible gets written down and tries to make sense of
death, destruction, and disaster. The majority of the “New
Testament” gets written down and tries to make sense of death,
destruction, and disaster, AND concurrently the Jewish Mishnah gets
written down and tries to make sense of death, destruction, and
disaster.

It
seems to indicate our faith traditions are deeply rooted in trying to
make sense of death, destruction, and disaster, or that God is up to
new things when prior systems are destroyed, or that in trying to
preserve what used to be we end up making new things possible, or
that God can bring good even out of bad, or maybe all of the above.

In
any case, I think it is interesting, and worth continuing to ponder.
Especially now, when we have experienced death, destruction, and
disaster, and are wondering what we and God will be up to next.

Our
Hebrew Bible Lesson today from Jeremiah speaks lovingly of the “new
covenant” between God and the people. This is such a foundational
idea in Christianity that we may not know that this passage is the
ONLY time such an idea emerges in the Hebrew Bible.

“Foundational,”
you say, “why?” Think of the words “old testament” and “new
testament” and remember that testament is a synonymous with
covenant here. This is how some people made sense of the whole
Christian tradition. That said, there are far too many who take
these words to mean that the Hebrew Bible is old, or outdated, or
replaced, and that is problematic. We intentionally use the words
“Hebrew Bible” to recognize our shared biblical tradition.

Anyway,
back to Jeremiah. Jeremiah is a prophet of the exile, and for much
of the book Jeremiah warns of the dangers of the impending exile.
However, once the exile happens, Jeremiah’s tone changes, and he
turns to comfort and hope. This passage is part of that, promising a
return to God’s promises and relationships. The promise is
particularly full, as it speaks to both the northern and southern
kingdoms, the wholeness of Ancient Israel. It is also full in that
the new covenant will not be dependent on the people’s faithfulness.
God will take care of it.

“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.” (Jeremiah 31:33b-34, NRSV)

It
is a lovely vision, in some ways the ultimate comfort: a relationship
with God one can’t mess up.

The
Christian church has claimed this covenant as their own. Take these
words from our communion liturgy, “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.” (UM Hymnal, page 9).

I
have some deeply mixed feelings about this claim. On the one hand,
it fits with my assumption that our status as beloveds of God is
based on the nature of God (grace) and not on our performance. On
the other hand, it seems rather profoundly to miss out on the idea
that God wants us to take care of each other, and that our actions
matter in the building of the kindom.

Or
maybe I’m exaggerating. After all, Jeremiah’s idea isn’t that the
people ignore God’s wishes. Rather it is that they know God and
God’s grace so well that it is inherent in them and they live it out
naturally. (I have mixed feelings about this too – in that it is
lovely, but simply not true of Christians I know.)

In
1 Corinthians we read the first historical record of communion. Paul
had planted the church in Corinth but had been away for a few years.
In the first century CE the communion meal was a full common meal
(think potluck) during which the last supper was remembered.
Apparently in the time after Paul left things had gone off kilter a
bit. According to Marcus Borg:

the
wealthy (who didn’t have to work) would gather early for the meal.
By the time the people who worked (most of the community) got to the
meal, the wealthy had already eaten and some were tipsy. They may
also have served the best food and the best wine to themselves before
the others arrived. Such was common among the wealthy of the world.
For Paul this violated the ‘one body’ understanding of the body of
Christ. It meant bringing hierarchical distinctions of ‘this world’
into the body of Christ.¹

Borg
goes on to explain the later threat to those who eat and drink and an
“unworthy manner”. “In this context, eating and drinking the
bread and wine ‘in an unworthy manner’ refers to the behavior of the
wealthy in perpetuating the divisions of ‘this world.’ In Christian
communities, these divisions were abolished.”²

How
quickly the early church struggled with the equality and equity of
God’s kindom! How hard it is to let go of hierarchy and let love for
all be the way decisions are made. How familiar that is. Those of
us who are white have been trained in mostly subconscious ways that
we are at the top of a hierarchy, and when left to our own devices we
will re-create systems that put our needs at the top while telling
ourselves it is OK. Like the wealthy Corinthians might have said,
“We told them it started at 4, but they don’t make it until 5:20.
Why should we have to wait when we TOLD THEM what time it started?”
Or when a white person takes their own shame, guilt, anger, or
aggression as a reason to violate, harm, or kill people of color.
Or even in the tiny little micro-aggressions of every day, related to
who gets heard, who gets believed, who is expected to be soothing,
who is expected to sooth, and whose pain matters.

It
took Paul saying, “don’t violate God’s table like that” for it to
be heard. But I’m guessing that the reason he knew it was happening
was because the impoverished members of the community had been saying
so for quite some time, and finally tried a new way of getting their
needs heard. I am hearing from Asian and Asian American friends and
colleagues that violence against Asians and Asian Americans has been
a regular part of their lives in the United States all along, and has
been FAR worse for the past year +. I am also hearing exhaustion and
horror that a white man used his own shame as motivation for mass
murder, mostly of Asian women.

And
let me say, because it MUST BE SAID, that a person doing sex work
does not IN ANY WAY change their human value, nor make it permissible
to harm that person. Indeed, most people who support themselves with
sex work are people who exist in the most vulnerable positions of our
society, and as such are worthy of the most care and support to
counterbalance the harm they’ve lived.

The
Children and Youth of the Church have been working this Lent to
support a Lenten project to respond to hunger. They have invited us
to collect one canned good or nonperishables a week to donate to the
SICM food pantry. We are invited to bring those gifts this coming
Saturday (March 27 for those watching this NOT on Sunday) at the
flower sale. Those tangible gifts serve as a reminder of other
people’s tangible needs. It is also possible to make a donation to
SICM through our website or by check, knowing that SICM can buy food
at the Regional Food Bank at a very discounted rate.

That
is to say, that as we prepare God’s Communion Table for ourselves
today, given Paul’s admonitions, it might be a good time to be sure
that as we receive God’s gifts of grace, life, and hope, we extend
the table as we are able. Or, perhaps this is time for gifts to
Patty’s place. Patty’s Place is an outreach-based service for women
at-risk, exploited, or involved in sex work. They provide immediate
resources and long-term referrals.

I’m
less than sure we’re embodying Jeremiah’s new covenant, but I am
entirely sure that the part that says that God is with us, in our
hearts, and claiming us as beloveds is true. And I’m sure that we
have wonderful ways to respond to God’s love – with love, even,
ESPECIALLY in the midst of disaster. Let’s do it! Amen

1Marcus
J Borg, 59 Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order
the Books Were Written (United
States of America: HarperOne, 2012), 59.

2Ibid.

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

March 21, 20201

Sermons

“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