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Creekside
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Sermon of March
29, 2009
"Cardiac
Implant "
Jeremiah
31:31-34
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Rev.
David Bibbee
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Kathleen
Norris is a poet and a Presbyterian, but not a Presbyterian poet.
She is also an oblate at a Benedictine Abbey located on the remote
South Dakota plains. The monks at St. Johns hear the entire New Testament
each year by listening to each book read during morning and evening
prayer. Kathleen spent several weeks at St. John's one fall while
the monks were reading the prophet, Jeremiah. She writes, "Listening
to Jeremiah is a heck of a way to get your blood going in the morning;
it puts caffeine to shame."
Jeremiah was
an intense prophet who alternated between raw anger at Israel and
God, and grief over the people's sin. For example, in chapter 2
he likened Israel to a camel in heat:
"How
dare you tell me, 'I'm not stained by sin.' Look at the tracks you've
left behind in the valley. How do you account for what is written
in the desert dust-tracks of a camel in heat, running this way and
that, tracks of a wild donkey in rut, sniffing the wind for the
slightest scent of sex.
One day, after
reading particularly heavy, depressing verses from Jeremiah, a monk
told Kathleen he was glad they were reading Jeremiah in the morning,
and not at evening prayer, when there are more people likely to
be guests. "The monks can take it," he said, "but
most people have no idea what's in the Bible, and they come unglued."
The monk's comment
triggered a song in my head. It was by a band called, The Guess
Who, and went like this:
She's
come undone
She didn't know
what she was headed for
And when I found
what she was headed for
It was too late
She's
come undone
She found a mountain
that was far too high
And when she found out
she couldn't fly
It was too late
It's
too late
She's gone too far
She's lost the sun
She's come undone.
Coming unglued.
Coming undone. Coming apart at the seams. Falling off your hinges.
These are metaphors of what happened to Israel. Israel turned its
back on God's covenant, but by the time Israel realized what was
coming, it was too late. The invading armies of Babylon breached
the walls of Jerusalem. Their beloved temple was reduced to rubble.
People not killed by in the onslaught were deported to Babylon.
Their sorrowful state was captured in this lament from Psalm 137:
By
the rivers of Babylon --
there we sat down and wept
when we remembered Zion.
On
the willows there
we hung up our harps.
For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion!'
How
could we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land?
Coming undone
describes Israel in 587 B.C., and the United States in 2009 A.D.,
and, by extension, the world. The poisoning of our planet. Economic
collapse. The disappearing middle class. The swelling ranks of the
poor and unemployed. One percent of the population controlling most
of the world's wealth. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and another
war at the border with Mexico where drug cartels kill to corner
the market of America's drug addiction. Today, and every day in
our world, 11,000 children die from preventable causes, while big
banks use billions of taxpayer's bailout dollars for obscene executive
bonuses and a $10 million office renovation for executives at Citibank.
Meanwhile, about 80% of Americans say they believe in God, and considered
themselves "spiritual," but not religious, and what difference
it makes is anybody's guess.
What is going
on? The Bible's most sobering book, Ecclesiastes, tells us, "There
is nothing new under the sun." The problem is old. At worst,
we are unable, or at best, we are unwilling, to abide by the rules
of good and righteous living. The root of the problem is the same
as it ever was -- pride, gluttony, greed, envy, lust, bowing down
to our stupid idols and the failure to honor promises.
In Scripture,
our relationship with God is defined in terms of covenants. God
is so determined to have us, love us and enjoy our love in return
that God established covenants. In ancient Israel as well as in
other cultures of that period, blood sacrifice was the way covenants
with God were expressed.
When negotiating
a purchase, we sometimes hear the expression, "I'll cut
you a deal." This may go back thousands of years to something
called, "cutting a covenant." Sacrificial animals were
cut in two and the covenant-makers walked between the two halves.
The seriousness of the act was attested to by the words spoken after
walking between the severed parts: "May this happen to me
if I violate this covenant." Beginning with Abraham, the
men of Israel cut a covenant with God by circumcision.
As we have moved
through Lent we looked at the rainbow covenant God made to Noah
to never again destroy the earth. God made a covenant through Moses
who delivered the Ten Commandments. But the covenants didn't work.
Rainbows aren't a great reminder because they don't appear very
often, and when they do we're usually not looking. Ten Commandments
chiseled in stone are a pain to lug around. Could God have overstated
our ability to keep them?
These covenants
weren't working because they were external. We do not do well with
rules and restrictions. The mere presence of rules guarantees their
breakage. Adam and Eve were told they could eat from any tree they
wanted, except the one at the center of the garden. What happened?
Mom tells her kids, "Don't eat those warm chocolate chip cookies
that are cooling in the kitchen." What happens? God wasn't
interested in our obedience. God wanted a relationship with us,
and obedience wouldn't make it happen. Should not, can not, and
must not isn't the language of love. "If you love me,"
Jesus said, "you will keep my commandments." Love compels
us to do right not because we should or must, but because we want
to.
Jeremiah 31
is that high-water mark of the Old Testament. Frustrated by our
sin and our inability to keep God's commandments, God adopted a
new strategy.
The days
are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel and Judah… 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.
Forget rainbows
and statutes in stone. Forget external laws that aren't kept. I
will put my law within them and write it on their hearts. The German
theologian Paul Tillich said there are three forms of law. The first
is HETERONOMY where the law is outside of you. The second is AUTONOMY,
the law of self-rule. "I will decide what I will do, not you!"
The third is THEONOMY -- the law implanted in our hearts that becomes
part of us.
God didn't ask
Ireael if it wanted a new covenant. No one said, "Lord, we're
doing a pitiful job keeping your laws. Lend us a hand."
We hear people
talk about, "letting Jesus into their hearts." We picture
Jesus waiting patiently outside our door, knocking softly and gently.
Since we are autonomous, we decide when we are ready to open
the door and let him in. It doesn't work like this with Jeremiah.
It has nothing to do with being ready or granting God permission
to establish residence in the home of our hearts. We don't sign
consent forms before God performs heart surgery. "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."
Preachers are
under no illusion that their words will change anyone. You won't
become better, obedient, giving people because I tell you to do
it. The best preachers can do is pray that God will use our feeble
sermons to stir what God has already implanted in your heart. It
is reassuring to know that the God we seek is not in some parallel
universe, but resides deep within us.
A woman was
asked, "What do you think of God?" She replied,
"God is not a think. God is a feel." This is heart language.
In Eugene Peterson's book, Christ Plays in a Thousand Places,
is this quote: "As soon as the Gospels were written, speech
without experience began to dabble with the new facts proposed by
the existence of the church." In other words, talk took the
place of relationship. "People tried to think the new life
without being touched by it in some form of call, listening, passion
or change of heart."
When theologians
die, they find themselves standing before two signs pointing in
opposite directions. One says, "The Kingdom of Heaven."
The other says, "Discussions About the Kingdom of Heaven."
Don't confuse "talking about" God, or "offering ideas"
about God with knowing God in a deep, intimate, energizing way.
Christianity gets rendered down to Sunday school discussions that
may be interesting but have no power to change us. Christianity
is not intellectual calisthenics. An intellectualized God stored
in the brain's grey matter won't stir the heart. God isn't a think
-- God is a feel. Christianity isn't a head-trip. It is personal
transformation.
Transformation
at the hands of God is a wonderful thing, but not painless. One
of Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons shows a corral full of Texas
longhorn cattle. Their bulging eyes show terror as they watch a
cowboy heat a branding iron in the fire. The brand about to be burned
into their hindquarters wasn't a simple "Circle K" or
some such brand. They were about to get burned with a brand saying,
"This here cow is the property of Pecos Pete."
The law written
on our hearts brands us as God's property. We're not all the way
there yet. "The days are coming, says the Lord."
The brand shows we don't belong to the world or ourselves any longer.
There is a wonderful verse from a hymn that speaks about what happens
when God takes hold of us. It goes, "Our little systems
have their day. They have their day and cease to be."
Little pieces
of us die, and to our surprise, we live, not out of duty, not by
obeying policies, procedures or external laws, but out of the love
God has written on our hearts. Love makes us do crazy things. The
one we love inhabits our thoughts. We say and do things out of character.
We give things up and don't mind. Our actions reflect what has overcome
our heart. We become changed people who want to be at our lover's
disposal.
We don't pull
it off ourselves. God's grace makes it happen. 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.
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