Jeremiah: Covenant and Relationship
Prayer of Preparation
To you, great God, I lift my heart to celebrate your love. You brought your people out of Egypt with a mighty arm. You pulled your people through wilderness and exile. You sent your Son to die and to rise from the grave in a second exodus. With praise and thanks, I turn to you, O God, and lift my heart to celebrate your love.
Wise God, discerner of all the devices and desires of human hearts, you know the way your people need to walk. You know whose counsel we need to heed. In your mercy you have entrusted us with your holy Word to guide us in good paths by sound counsel. For this solid provision we give you hearty thanks.
We know your words, precepts, commandments, and laws. We know them and then we do what we want. What we so often don't understand is that we need your law in our sinew, and bone, and marrow. We need to be people who not only don't disobey you but who wouldn't disobey you, wouldn't even dream of disobeying you. So, plant your law in our hearts, O God. Plant it deep down so that its growth becomes the measure of our own.
Amen.
Portion of a prayer by Cornelius Plantinga.
Sunday Scriptures from the Narrative Lectionary
It is week two of our six-week series on Jeremiah.
Jeremiah 31 – one of our texts for the final Sunday of the six-week series on Jeremiah – speaks of a new covenant being inscribed on the hearts of God’s people.
But we cannot understand the “new covenant” without understanding the old covenant. Without understanding the old covenant, we do not understand what has happened or why a new covenant is needed. Jeremiah is immensely helpful. Covenant is front and center in the book of Jeremiah. Patrick D. Miller says that “Conversation jumps too quickly to the new without coming to terms with its antecedents" (Miller 671).
Covenant is rich with understanding about relationship. Biblical covenant is grounded in and grows out of God’s priority to be merciful and God’s expectations of those who whom God is merciful. We often think about covenant in terms of what is required for human beings, which makes sense. But we can reduce it to a transaction if we do not fully grasp what is behind it.
Covenant is not just a metaphor for relationship with God, but it is a relationship that was formed out of a very specific experience – God delivered God’s people out of slavery in Egypt and promised to fulfill the what God spoke to their ancestors – to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. It is God’s care, God’s compassion, God’s mercy that makes covenant possible. Covenant becomes the experience of being redeemed for people; and it is what becomes possible in life because of that redemption. But it is “not finally a covenantal relationship until the community takes on its responsibility to the redeeming and promising God" (Miller 671).
God gives the people deliverance. God promises a land filled with milk and honey. But in between these two things, God calls the people to “listen to my voice.” God calls and commands the people saying, “You shall be my people and I will be your God.” The redemption, salvation, and life that God promises is through covenant.
In covenant, God’s people commit themselves to living a life that is shaped by and directed by God’s instruction and God’s ways. Life is tied to obedience. Obedience to God is the way to life, the means of life. God’s way leads to life.
The people, Jeremiah clearly and carefully documents in this book, have broken the covenant. They have pursued other gods, not cared for the vulnerable, amassed wealth unethically, and lived arrogantly. They seek to silence their opposition. They want to hear sermons that affirm them rather than Scriptures' truth. They prioritize accumulating wealth at the expense of others. Our worlds are not so different.
The contrast to such unfaithful living is what Jeremiah describes in chapter 17:7-8.
“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planed by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”
We hear this reflected in the Gospel of John reading in a different way – in language of abiding, of being connected to and growing out of Jesus. Without this connection, the fullness of life and salvation that God promises, that is part of the covenant is not possible.
Jeremiah is a very difficult book – it confronts us boldly. Its confrontation is helpful because it helps us to look at our assumptions about God and our relationship with God and about how that is reflected in our life. Salvation and life are gifts from God, yet, to receive them and disregard relationship with God, as the people in Jeremiah’s time did, tarnishes the gifts. Reflecting on our response to the salvation and life that God offers shows our commitment to our relationship with God, a commitment that calls us to be God’s people not for our own sake, but for the sake of the world.
And if there are aspects of our life that are not in line with God, there is good news. As the potter seeks to reform the clay, so God is always waiting and willing to work with us to be formed as he calls us to be. It is simply a matter of opening ourselves up to that reformation.
As you prepare for worship, consider spending some time in conversation with God about your relationship.
- What do you receive from God?
- How would you rate your abiding?
- How does the way of Jesus influence your day-to-day?
- How might you trust more in God?
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Works Cited:
Patrick D. Miller, “Jeremiah” in The New Interpreters Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume VI. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001.