Scripture can be found here…
How could you practice your faith if almost everything about it was suddenly gone?
How could you learn your faith if all the teachers were gone?
How could you read or hear scripture if there were no more copies of the Bible lleft?
How could you go to your house of worship if it no longer existed?
Welcome to the time of the Babylonian Exile. In this morning’s scripture passage, the prophet Jeremiah is speaking to people whose lives and faith are now governed by exactly these realities.
Jerusalem has been ransacked, and the Temple—the place understood, literally, to be God’s home on earth—has been looted and destroyed. Which means, the central practice of the faith—the offering of sacrifices, which can only be done in the Temple—is now impossible.
The leaders are gone. The royal family, descended from the great King David, and everyone even distantly related to them, are dead. All the priests and most of the scribes are dead; a few scribes have been carried off into exile.
The scrolls containing the scriptures are gone—no one knows where. Have they been destroyed? Are they being hidden? Certainly, no one has a bible in the home, so all that remains of God’s word is what has been committed to memory.
As if all this weren’t bad enough—God’s people, too, have been torn from their homes.
Welcome to the exile.
But also: welcome to Jeremiah’s “Book of Consolation.” This portion of the book of Jeremiah is filled God’s words to the exiles, these people whose lives have been turned upside down, whose homes are now far away, whose families may have been torn apart, and whose religious practice has been dramatically changed, possibly forever. Throughout his Book of Consolation, Jeremiah offers God’s words of comfort, of hope, and of promise.
Now, there’s something we should probably get clear before we go any further. All the prophets who wrote during the exile describe it as a punishment. Being conquered by the mighty Babylonian Empire was considered a punishment for unfaithfulness to God. But despite that analysis of the situation, that—God the punisher—is not the face of God we see here.
Here, we see a God whose heart is aching for these lost and broken people.
Here, we see a God who seeks only to comfort and lift up.
Here, we see a God who, apparently, will stop at nothing to help the people to find their way back into relationship with God.
“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals.”
To a people who have lost everything, God once again promises abundant life. Babies will be born—human babies, babies to populate herds and flocks.
“And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord.”
If God’s people have been broken down, God will see to it that, now, they will be built up—literally and metaphorically, physically and spiritually.
“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.”
Now, it bears mentioning at this point, that God is, so far, asking exactly nothing from the people. That doesn’t mean God hasn’t seen their suffering—and may, rightly, think they’ve more than paid for their sins. But—watch what happens next!—when it becomes impossible for God’s people to follow the rules—God changes the rules.
“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.”
God’s original plan for the covenant had been to send them the law through their leader Moses. Now that their leaders are no more, God will give them the law directly, with no intermediary. God will write the law on each and every heart.
“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.”
This is the very definition of grace: God’s love, given freely. Love that can’t be earned. Love that can’t be lost. Love that can only be gratefully received.
Surely, there’s a catch, right? The day is surely coming, lots of us think, when the other shoe will drop, and God will, of course, notice that we are entirely undeserving of God’s love. Right?
Some of us spend our lives trying to be perfect (at the same time we know we can’t possibly be). Martin Luther was such a guy. He was a German monk and professor of theology, ordained in the year 1507. For the first twelve years or so of his religious life he was haunted by a terrible case of the “scruples.” For us, to “have scruples” means to have some sense of doubt as to whether something is right. You might have scruples, for example, about listening in on a private conversation. But the word “scruple” actually comes from a Latin word meaning a “sharp stone,” as in, something that’s stabbing at your conscience. For Martin Luther, scruples were exactly that. He was tortured by his doubt about every single thing he did. He believed himself to be such a hopeless sinner, that he despaired that God could ever forgive him, that God would ever love him. I’ll give you just one example: He believed that omitting a single preposition in the Eucharistic prayer was as horrible a sin as if he’d murdered his parent. Luther tried so hard to be perfect, he recorded in his writings, he came to “hate” this God who, it seemed, would never be pleased with him.
Some of us spend our lives trying to be perfect, doubting that God could possibly love us as we are. But here, Jeremiah’s Book of Consolation, we stumble upon the message that God’s law can be summed up in love, and that God loves us, not because we are good, but because God is good.
I will forgive their iniquity, God says through Jeremiah, and remember their sin no more.
Once Luther got the message—really got it, that God’s love was sheer gift, he became a passionate voice for change in the church. He wanted the church to reflect the law of love and grace he had discovered. And he set about being part of a movement, the Reformation, that changed the church forever.
Once he got out of that bad place full of obsessive self-doubt, Luther’s focus went right where God wants our focus to be: not on ourselves, but on one another.
I will watch over you to build and to plant, says the Lord. You can’t build or plant if all your energy is focused inward. You can’t write music or write a kind note; you can’t build a birdhouse, or build up a child’s confidence; you can’t practice kindness or practice the flute if you are mired in the deep hole of disbelieving in your own worth.
God loves you, and there’s not a thing you can do about it.
When your heart is broken, God’s tears are the first to fall.
When your heart is joyful, God’s joy is even greater.
When you are bent low with the weight of the world, God’s hand immediately reaches to lift the burden from you.
And when there seems to be a barrier between you and God, God wants it removed even more than you do.
Surely the days are coming, says the Lord, when all my children will know, from the least to the greatest, that I am their God, and they are my people.
Surely the days are coming, says the Lord, when all my beloveds will understand that my law is permanently written in their hearts.
Surely the days are coming, says the Lord, when all my people of every age will trust that I am love. Period.
Thanks be to God. Amen.