Except for a stumble at the end of the sermon, it went pretty well. There were so many ways both the Luke and Jeremiah text could have been preached, but I think the approach I took was fair to the text. I still have a sermon in mind that focuses on "I will remember their sins no more," but that sermon will have to wait until another time.
“What Will You Do with It?” Luke 18: 1-8; Jeremiah 31: 27-34; St. Andrew Presbyterian Church; October 27, 2019; Reformation Sunday
Jeremiah 31: 27-34 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. 28 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. 29 In those days they shall no longer say:
“The parents have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
30 But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.
31 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. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband,[g] says the Lord. 33 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. 34 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.
Introduction:
A second week with the prophet Jeremiah.
Move 1: Jeremiah prophesies a shift in how God’s people will encounter God’s law.
a. Not the first shift to take place.
1. there was a time before there was an established law.
2. God creates humanity and develops a relationship with God’s people when there is no written law.
3. God still loved humanity; God still claimed humanity.
b. Then along came Moses and his trip up and down Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments.
1. the people now had a written law.
2. Mediated by Moses.
3. Led to a tradition of laws and regulations concerning just about every aspect of life.
4. The law also created a need for someone, like Moses, or priests, or later Pharisees, to mediate the written law.
5. Written law is black and white.
6. It also becomes a tool by those in power to keep their power and invited abuses.
7. Not to mention the human tendency to approach written laws with the desire to find ways around the letter of the law.
c. Then Jeremiah announces the new covenant God has in mind.
1. not an external law written on tablets, but a law inscribed on the heart.
2. Notice the intimacy of this law.
3. Notice how it actually demands more than the written law because it is matter of heart.
4. Notice also the radical nature of this law because it suggests that God is equally present among all the Israelites from greatest to least.
5. Remember last week hearing Jeremiah prophesying that God’s people can live out their faith anywhere, even in Babylon.
6. This description of the new covenant builds on that premise: As important as priest, prophet, and king are to Israel, God’s people can survive without the institutions of Jerusalem in Babylon (Garrett Galvin Associate Professor of Sacred Scripture Franciscan School of Theology Berkeley, Calif.; http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1772)
7. the law is part of a personal relationship between each person and God.
8. For me, some of the most powerful, meaningful words in the biblical text are found in this passage when we hear God speak through Jeremiah: “I will be their God and they will be my people.” Such a powerful relationship; such a high calling.
d. On Reformation Sunday, we remember at the core of Reformation was how we connect to God.
1. The Reformers understood that we did not need a priest, or bishop, or pope to mediate with God for us.
2. God’s Word should be made accessible to all people because all people were capable of interpreting God’s Word.
3. Our own governance as Presbyterians grows out of the belief that we do not need a pope, bishop, or priest to dictate to us - members and clergy together as led by the Holy Spirit (that’s why we pray to start meetings) can best discern God’s will.
e. The covenant described by Jeremiah does not need an external law or someone like Moses to mediate it for us.
1. God has written the law on our hearts.
2. Thomas Merton in New Seeds of Contemplation, “in all the situations of life the ‘will of God’ comes to us not merely as an external dictate of impersonal law but above all as an interior invitation of personal love.”
3. Welcome to the new covenant Jeremiah describes.
Move 2: What are you, what are we going to do with it - this new covenant?
a. God has forgiven you; God has forgiven us.
1. The new covenant is marked by an intimacy of the law being written on our hearts.
2. things are good.
3. I suppose one reaction might be to be satisfied and cling to this new covenant with no regard for anyone or anything else.
b. But there’s this story Jesus tells.
1. A story about a widow and a judge.
2. Admittedly, lots of nuances to this story.
3. there is the widow angle - in the biblical text and in particular the Gospel of Luke, widows play important roles. Widows represent the vulnerable class of peole, but also appear as prophetic and fiathful, such as Anna, who announces who Christ is when his parents bring his as a baby to the teimple (go to http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1787; Meda Stamper, for more insights into the roles of widows in the Bible)
4. There is the unbelieving judge caught in an exchange with the believing widow.
5. there is the whole question of just and unjust.
c. But I keep coming back to the widow’s persistence.
1. She will not stop bugging the judge until he changes his mind and gives her justice.
2. “The odds may seem insurmountable as corruption, inhumanity, and impiety characterize the widow’s world. her persistence enables God’s desire for justice to happen”(Garrett Galvin Associate Professor of Sacred Scripture Franciscan School of Theology Berkeley, Calif.; http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1772)
3. The widow is driven by something inside, maybe by the law inscribed on her heart, that will not let her stop until justice is given.
4. When I read about this widow, I am reminded of an older woman I knew in the church I served in KY. In her adult life she had been a widow, then a spouse, then a widow again.
she was not loud and demanding, but she was persistent. Once she had her mind made up about a mission project or a change that needed to happen, she would not let up. Not really demanding, but exhausting. she would not be stopped. People in the church, and the new minister, learned that you might as well give in early, because she would not stop until she wore you out.
d. Persistently living out our discipleship seems an appropriate response to God’s covenant Jeremiah describes.
1. As forgiven people who are claimed as God’s own, we are sent into the world to persistently work for justice.
2. To persistently love others.
3. To persistently turn away from the world’s call to only worry about oneself and instead live for others.
4. How easy it is some days to look at the world and think, “What can I do?” and then retreat into my own world and the assurance that God has forgiven me. Nothing else matters, right?
5. But before us is the witness of the persistent widow who keeps on working it, keeps on pursuing justice, until justice arrives.
6.Such is our call - from the assurance of God’s love and forgiveness, we move out into the world serving the God’s whose law is inscribed on our hearts.
Conclusion: The parable ends with Jesus asking the question: “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
We give our answer as we persistently serve the God whose covenant of love and forgiveness has already claimed us.
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