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April 2, 2006
John Auer, Pastor
Scripture:
Jeremiah 31:31-34, Psalm 51:1-17,
John 12:20-33
“Holy Heart
Write! Making and Living with Covenants”
Today we begin to prepare for Palm/Passion
Sunday and Holy Week. This becomes our last Sunday to use portions of “Mending
Wall” to begin and end our worship. And our last Sunday to quote Christian
Peacemaker Team members in our Words for Meditation. Please consider the image
Jim Loney gives us today of “a great hand of solidarity” made up of many human
hands and delivering the three remaining CPT hostages from the shadow of death
in Iraq. The same could be said, in light of our scriptures this morning,
of a great heart of solidarity made up of many human hearts.
It is the life-and-death challenge to peoples of all faiths today to learn to
trust a great hand, a great heart of solidarity -- connecting us in a covenant
to discover new ways to be human together, to reflect the many images of the one
God together. Will we continue to let the interests of governments and their
corporate owners and sycophants divide us and conquer us? Or will we fight
for right of all peoples everywhere to gather as equals at table to share the
world’s goodness – as if the lives of all our children, and grandchildren,
depend upon it?
Do we believe that the one God of all writes the
law of God -- the “new covenant” of God to do a new thing in the lives of all
peoples – do we believe God writes personally on the heart of each one of us?
Do we believe that each of us reflects something of God? That each of us sees
and hears something of God? That each of us says and does something of God?
That there are no exceptions to God’s covenant? God’s commitment we heard last
week: to love this world so much as to give of God’s very own flesh and blood
that the world might be saved, not condemned? There can be no exceptions to
this promise -- nor to the promise of this nation, that all persons are created
equal and with certain inalienable rights – no matter that we call them
“terrorists” or “illegal aliens” – as if to exempt ourselves from any common
promise and shared destiny with them.
Remember Jeremiah makes this promise to a
powerless people in exile – without any access at all to the trappings of temple
and state. Jeremiah goes so far as to claim any law written outside of us, such
as God’s commandments written on stone, no longer is binding on us but only the
law God writes on each of our hearts! God’s new covenant refuses to divide us
and conquer us according to who keeps it and who does not -- refuses to allow
for any one practicing dictation and domination over another. Rather, God’s
covenant cannot be separated from the unique and unrepeatable person each one of
us is! It is a covenant come to meet us in the heart of our very own flesh. It
is a covenant God makes freely available, fully accessible to us all – because
it is purely the act of God’s mercy and grace. There is nothing for us to
compete for, nothing to earn or deserve!
Just when everything seems to be going against
any confidence in God, or in themselves as the people of God, Jeremiah finds the
chutzpah to announce: God is starting all over again! With us!! The law God
used to write outside of us, on tablets of stone from Sinai -- with all
variations on that -- and in routine and formal worship of God in the Temple –
God changes all that! God not only sees us all as a whole. God sees each
individual one. The political gets very personal. God sees our very hearts,
and writes on them. God speaks directly to each one of us. Without passing
through the interpretation or the sanction of another! Nobody else can tell us
who we are, what we think, what God thinks of us! We are forgiven! The past is
left behind us! Now God giving us each our own precious responsibility to know
God for ourselves! To become responsible for our own creation, our own
redemption, our own living, ongoing revelation!
So what does this say about God? Is God only
fixed? Static? Once and forever? “From age to age the same?” Unreachable,
untouchable, unmovable, unchangeable? Or is God alive? Alert? Aware? A part
of us? At work in us? Encountering us? Embracing us? Engaging us? Enduring
us, for sure! Once in a while, enjoying us? Does God not say through Jeremiah
how much and how painfully God has learned of us human creations since the first
covenant? The one we could, would not, did not keep but broke repeatedly? Of
course, there is something in the nature of covenants that they are made to be
broken. We enter into covenants with the best of intentions expressed boldly
and gloriously. I do so many weddings now. I say those words of covenant and
hear them said so many times. I cannot help but wonder at our audacity! At the
courage it takes to make such claims! Better and worse! Richer and poorer!
Sickness and health!
The same with baptismal covenants, especially
with infants and children.
We just know there will be brokenness, lostness,
hurtfulness, forgetfulness. As we follow Jesus into Jerusalem and to the cross,
from the palms to the passion, we confront the power of failure when we
undertake such impossible challenges. Fortunately, our failures of our
covenants – whether of marriage, of partnership, of parenthood, of any kind of
relationship – helping, teaching, healing – whatever – Our failures are not the
last word. It’s not like a broken contract: when you miss a payment, they come
and take back your car! Contracts seem premised on fear of what will happen
when either party breaks it. They seem meant to keep us on edge, watching our
backs, walking on eggs, biting our tongues all the time. Which can happen with
law when it comes from outside of ourselves. I prefer covenants – between the
larger United Methodist Church and us, between pastor and congregation, between
and among members of congregation, and between congregation and partners in the
sharing of our building and of our ministry. There’s got to be trust and risk!
There’s got to be living relationship!
And God writes the book on such relationships of
trust and risk! Jesus embodies God’s trust and risk. Jesus becomes the “new
covenant” for us, the writing of God on our hearts. And we cannot see Jesus
only with eyes or hear Jesus only with ears. Jesus relates and speaks to us
heart to heart! Hope to hope! Covenants are not premised on fear but on
hope! Our failures are not the last word, because God will not let them be.
Jesus carries God’s hope to the end. For that reason God is able to use the
obvious failure of Jesus’ life on a cross between revolutionaries on a garbage
dump at the edge of town. God is able to turn Jesus’ failure into the most
remarkable recovery the world has ever known! Looking at us, I would not
necessarily call it success. But recovery still in process! Result still being
revealed! However far we fall, God can catch us.
Failure, frustration, doubt, defeat, despair,
depression – get used to them! These are natural, normal, healthy, human
reactions to what’s going on! Honestly, if we are not depressed at what’s going
on around us as well as within us, among us as well as between us, then there is
something wrong with us! What’s not to be depressed about? Kathryn Johnson,
national director, Methodist Federation for Social Action, calls her newsletter
reflections this month, “Time to Get Up.” She keeps a plaque by her bathroom
mirror that reads “Not a Morning Person.” She says in the last months it is
harder and harder for her to get up – to face the news of casualties in a war
where we do not belong, of budget cuts crushing the poor, of surveillance
without court order. But she says she does get up! “In so doing this month I
have learned the lesson once again that one must stick one’s head out from under
the covers in order to see signs of God’s goodness in the world, to see the
signs of hope, to open one’s hands to receive the gift of God grace.”
I would just say to those considering whether to
join this congregation, if you are looking for the perfect church (much less the
perfect world!), or the perfect time for you to join, or to get yourself right
before you join, maybe you’d best keep looking. There’s nobody here but us
sinners! But if you’re looking to join the struggle to find what is written of
God on the heart of every last person – beginning right where we are, with our
own hearts and the hearts of our families and our relationships, the hearts of
our congregation and our community, the hearts of our strangers and our enemies
– If you are looking to join the endless struggle – for life and for love, for
justice and for joy, for plenty and for peace – the struggle to get ourselves
together enough that we might just bear some witness, some service, some action
upon this world we know how much God loves – Then come on in! The covenant’s
fine! The waters of baptism are fine! The bread and wine of communion are
fine! Even death on a cross is fine! How else does the seed bring forth life
-- except to fall into the ground and die? How does Jesus draw all of us to him
– except to be nailed up where all can see him?
The word on our hearts this morning is, our God is not dead! Our God is
not dumb! Our God is not distant! Our God is alive! Our God is at
hand! Our God is fully conscious and fully concerned! God sees!
God hears! God listens! God learns! God touches! God
feels! God changes! God grows! Thank God for a God who is
living – even if in a dying kind of a way! God who never runs out of
options! Never runs out of hope! Of possibility and permeability!
Of receptiveness and responsiveness! God who raises Jesus from
brutal death never gives up on us yet! God in whose very changeable,
changing image each and every last one is made! God who writes on every
last one of our hearts.
That we may know our lives and our life together
– in every last one of our covenants – We are infinitely creatable!
Changeable! Knowable! Growable! Nameable! Negotiable!
Forgivable! Renewable! That is the nature of covenant – why we do not
have to fear, watch our backs, walk on eggs, bite our tongues.
Why we are free and empowered to trust and risk
– everyone and everything! I’m going to close with an outburst of rage – OK?
There was a conference held this week in Washington, DC, called “War on
Christians.” Indicted majority leader of the House of Representatives, Tom
DeLay, was presented to that conference as one whose indictment for corruption
shows that he is being persecuted for following Christ. Following Christ! When
campaign and political action committees and even a children’s charity created
in his name allegedly paid over one million dollars for hotels, restaurants,
golf resorts and corporate jets used by DeLay. Following Christ? When DeLay
made at least 48 visits to golf clubs and resorts, 100 flights aboard corporate
jets arranged by lobbyists, 500 meals at fancy restaurants (up to $200 for
dinner for two!). Following Christ?
When DeLay spoke to the conference and departed
(eventually for trial!) the host tried to reassure him, “God does his best work
right after a crucifixion.” Following Christ? Corruption as crucifixion? . . .
So what is my rage? Precisely that we churches are not under attack. We are
not being persecuted. Are we doing anything worth attacking? Worth
persecuting? If we were indicted and charged with following Christ, would there
be evidence to convict us? When’s the last time this congregation ticked anyone
off? God ourselves in any trouble? When’s the last time I did? How about we
open Church Council on Monday of Holy Week by making a list of ten ways to get
ourselves persecuted? Let’s give Tom DeLay a run for his martyred money!
Following Christ.
Amen.
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