Jeremiah
31: 31-34
Hebrews 5: 5-10
When the
Babylonians razed the temple in Jerusalem and dragged King Zedekiah off in
chains, they destroyed the twin symbols of God’s covenantal faithfulness. The
people of Judah faced a crisis! Not only had they lost power and prestige,
freedom and security; they had also lost God – or at least the assurance of God’s
faithfulness which perhaps is the same thing.
Because an
unfaithful god is no better than no god, and maybe even worse!
These were
the consequences of Israel’s disobedience to the law of God. The consequences
of their wickedness were the overthrow of their nation, the leveling of the
walls of Jerusalem that kept everyone feeling safe, and the destruction of the
temple the very place where God rested, and to top it off they were then
banished to Babylon! Their situation was extremely bleak and the prophet
Jeremiah laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of the suffering people.
Sometime
in our lives, we will know suffering. Some of us will suffer greatly and others
of us will suffer less. In our bleakest of days, the worst knowledge we have is
that sometimes we cause our own suffering. There are times when we have done
nothing wrong and have followed all of the rules and yet we are punished for imagined
sins. But the worst moments of our life is seeing the ruined rubble of that
life falling down around us and knowing that we caused this destruction all by
our self.
This is
what the Israelites were experiencing. Jeremiah was not letting them off the
hook. YOU caused this. YOU knew better for I have been preaching to you for
years that this was going to happen and YOU ignored me!
Just when
Jeremiah is really about to get on his high horse and flog everyone with his “I
told you so’s”, God’s voice steps in and changes the whole tone of what
happened to the Israelites. Yes, they are suffering because of what they have
done, but, God promises that the day will come when God will make a new
covenant with the people and it will be completely different from the past
covenants! God promises that his covenant will change the way every one of us
interacts with each other.
God
promises to write the law not on stone tablets that can be written down and
ignored, but on everyone’s heart. He promises that once again he will be their
God and they will be His people. Even better, God promises that no longer will
people talk about knowing God, but instead every person from the least to the
greatest will know God intimately in a relationship unseen by one before this
time! God promises to forgive them their every sin and promises to never
remember those sins the people have committed.
What we
read here is a prophecy that will come true hundreds of years later in the form
of Jesus Christ. Jeremiah is predicting Jesus to the Israelites who have just
had their freedom and rights taken away, and in this promise he tells them they
will have a freedom and relationship with God unlike any they could have
imagined. Jeremiah is bringing hope back to the people in the most unlikely of
times.
He is
reminding us that even the darkest moments of our lives have transformative
moments if we give them to God. If we trust and believe in Jesus Christ, even
the moments of suffering we bring upon ourselves can become a way for the
greatest of miracles to begin. That is what happened here. In Israel’s darkest
and most hellish of historical moments, there was birthed the seed of hope that
would become our Messiah, the one we call our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who
would offer us more than we could ever deserve.
In Jesus
Christ, we are given the ability to know God deeply and truly. In Jesus Christ,
we are given not just a second chance but a million second chances to make
mistakes and learn and grow, and be forgiven for bumbling around like fools in
the dark that have forgotten a light switch is right above us waiting to
illuminate our path. In Jesus Christ, we are given the greatest inheritance, we
are not just God’s creation anymore, but we are God’s children. We have the
same rights and privileges that Jesus Christ has because we have been adopted
into that relationship and through the Holy Spirit we are always and forever
connected to God.
Take a
moment to let that sink in. You are forever connected to God. Nothing you do
wrong will ever take away that connection. Nothing anyone else does to you may
take away the connection you have to the Lord. Through trials and tribulation,
through your joys and exultations, through your moments of boredom and routine
God’s heart and your heart are forever linked by the power of the Holy Spirit
through the faithful sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
The world
may think you are a petty and an insignificant ant of a person without power or
prestige, but to the Lord you are worth dying for. The world may think you have
nothing to offer, but Jesus sees someone worth loving forever. The world may
not have time for your heartaches and pain, but the Lord Jesus cries with you
and shares in your suffering.
Lent is
about a timeout in life, whatever may be going on in it, and assessing our
relationship with Jesus Christ. It is about reminding ourselves of our purpose
and destiny. Lent is about hearing that although we are in darkness now, the
light of Christ reaches out to us and will save us from ourselves. We may fall
and we may struggle and we may lose the battle now and then, but Jesus is by
our side through it all and will bring renewal and hope back into our life when
we need it most.
The beauty
of our Savior God is that our hope never dies because it rests in Jesus and
Jesus defeated death. Since we share Jesus’ inheritance that means we will
defeat whatever would try to keep us away from the Lord and the peace we have
in knowing we belong to God. Whatever burdens you carry; whatever heartaches
keep you down; whatever stresses and anxiety keep you up at night may seem
powerful and impossible to win. But this is the surety we have – Jesus Christ
is by our side and that means these stresses and burdens are not carried alone.
We are
called to give them to God and walk free of the burdens the world would place
upon us. We are called to remember the words of Jeremiah that remind us that
even the darkest and bleakest of moments give birth to hope when Jesus is by
our side and in our hearts.
Amen.
