October 17, 2010 - Proper 24, Year C (RCL)
It was the first time
I’d been to New York,
1991
and I was coming in
on a Greyhound bus
from Boston.
It’s not the best of approaches at the best of times - actually, most of the roads that lead into the city are lined with industry and cheap housing - and this was not the best of times.
There had been a gas leak somewhere in the south Bronx.
95 had been shut down,
and our bus had been detoured off into the surface roads.
And what we saw from the windows of the bus
was a wasteland.
Boarded up houses,
burnt out cars,
an empty lot covered in trash.
It was not a lot different than the picture in the New York Times from later that year,
of a little girl in a princess costume,
standing on the steps to her apartment,
and in the background, cracked sidewalks, graffiti,
empty lots and a flattened car.
Most of us who are old enough
remember what it looked like.
It looked like a war zone.
And that
is what the city of Jerusalem looked like
somewhere around the year
586 BCE.
The land had been invaded by the Babylonians.
It had been ten years of warfare,
ten years
since they had seized all the leaders, the priests, the business owners, the educated
and taken them to exile in Babylon,
leaving only those
who were judged to be
unimportant.
In the years in between
they struggled on, an occupied country
with a puppet
government.
But then the armies came back,
and this time, it was clear
that the planned to destroy the holy city of Jerusalem,
everything
and everyone
inside its walls.
They surrounded it and held it hostage
for a year and a half.
A year and a half
of no way in or out,
a year and a half
of dwindling supplies,
of not enough food
and trash piling up in the streets
and bodies
unable to be buried.
And the certain knowledge
that the ending
would not be good.
Add the Bronx at its worst
to New Orleans after Katrina
and you have an idea
of what it was like.
A war zone.
And worst of all,
worst of all,
the temple itself,
the heart of Israel’s worship,
the heart of their life,
the heart of their identity,
was certain
to be destroyed.
The temple
was the place where they knew God;
without it, it was clear
that God
would be gone too.
It was hopeless.
And when the prophet Jeremiah
began to speak,
they knew what he was going to say.
Another declaration
of judgement.
Another message from God
about the failings of the people.
Another reminder
that this was all their own fault.
Except
that’s not
what Jeremiah said.
It’s not what God said.
What God said
through the prophet Jeremiah
was that soon,
very soon,
God would begin over.
God would replant, God would rebuild,
God would reinstitute the covenant
that had been at the heart
of his relationship with the people
since the time of Abraham.
And it would all start
with a limit
to their liability.
The way it worked, the way God had set things up,
back in the time of Moses,
back when God gave the people the law,
was that when people were obedient
the benefits, the blessings from God, would reach beyond them
to their children
and their grandchildren.
But on the other hand,
if they were disobedient,
the consequences would also reach
to their children
and their grandchildren.
God was betting on that gut instinct of parents
to want the best for their children.
But it hadn’t worked.
Parents’ gut instincts
just weren’t strong enough
to override
their tendency
to do what they wanted to do on the short term
irrespective
of the consequences.
Until finally the worst had happened.
The people
and their descendants
had almost
been destroyed.
So God, through Jeremiah,
decided to start over.
From now on
everyone
would be responsible
for their own actions.
No more inherited blessings,
but no more
inherited punishments.
Be obedient to God
and you would live;
be disobedient
and you would die.
And remember
this was being said
to people
in a city
under siege.
They were expecting
to die,
expecting to die,
just another generation inheriting
and living out
failure.
But what God was saying
what God was saying
was that they might not die.
They were not doomed
to failure.
They were not trapped in a fate
that had been determined
generations before.
They had hope.
Pay attention to God,
pay attention to God’s commands
and they might, just might,
survive this siege,
might, just might,
live.
Because what point would Jeremiah's words be,
what point would God’s words be,
if the army was going to break though the walls
and kill them all?
Either Jeremiah was really stupid, and God with him,
making promises that were already doomed to fail,
or maybe, maybe
they could hope.
And the promises continued.
God was going to begin over.
Yes, the temple would likely be destroyed,
and with it
the ark of the covenant
that contained the two stone tablets of the ten commandments,
the visible sign of the covenant that God had made.
All of that would be gone.
But God would replace the tablets,
replace them with a covenant where the key provisions
would be written not on stone
but on people’s hearts.
Before,
if you wanted to check in with God
you had to travel to Jerusalem
and then go to the temple,
and then, if the priests let you, maybe you would be allowed to get close
to the stones that marked the presence of God.
Too bad
if you couldn’t travel,
or you were one of those people who were ritually unclean
and weren’t allowed close,
or
if as seemed likely
the stones themselves were destroyed.
You missed out.
Now, God was saying,
now there would be no more traveling,
no more priests as gatekeepers.
Those words carved in stone
would be transferred
to people’s hearts.
They themselves
would become the sign of the covenant,
the sign of God’s presence,
Anywhere they were,
God would be.
In the end
it took a while
for the promises that God made through Jeremiah
to be fulfilled.
They were great
while the people were under siege;
it gave them hope.
And then, when they were taken to join the other Israelites in exile
they found that they could indeed worship God
in a strange land,
far from the temple
and the visible signs of the covenant.
But
they still liked the old ways of doing things.
In exile, they continued to lament
that it was their forebears sins
that they were suffering from,
and a couple of generations later when they returned,
that it was their own actions that had resulted in blessing.
And as soon as they returned from exile
they went about rebuilding the temple,
and went back to acting
as if God could only be found there.
It took another six hundred years,
until Christ came
for that shift to finally occur.
It took until Christ came
for God’s people to begin to get
that the covenant really was written within them,
and that they had access to God
direct.
No temple needed.
No priests.
Just God
and the covenant written in their hearts
and sealed with Christ's blood.
And maybe
part of what they needed
was that visible enactment of the covenant that we do each week
following the commandment of Jesus,
bread and wine, body and blood,
taking into ourselves
the very presence of Christ.
The very same Christ
who on the cross
declared once and for all
that or all that they were responsible for their own actions, and the consequences, for good or ill,
God could relieve them of that burden
by forgiving them.
Twenty six hundred years later
and the words of Jeremiah
still ring true of our our experience of God.
Especially at those times
when we’re feeling despair.
When we can’t see a clear way forward.
When we don’t know what the future will hold,
and what we can see of it, looks bleak.
We need that reminder,
that there is hope.
That God will not doom us
to the failures of previous generations.
That God will not doom us
to a life without hope.
We need that reminder
that God has plans for us, God has plans,
and though they might not be quite what we expect,
God is in the business
of rebuilding lives,
and at the very center of it all
God has placed the covenant on our hearts,
and God has declared that we are God’s people and God is our God.
And as beautiful as this church is, and places like it,
we can talk with God
any time
any place.
And know that God will hear us,
and forgive us,
and love us,
and lead us
into new life.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2010