What do you see? Acts 1:1-11

Acts 1:1-11
Theophilus, the first scroll I wrote concerned everything Jesus did and taught from the beginning, right up to the day when he was taken up into heaven. Before he was taken up, working in the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus instructed the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he showed them that he was alive with many convincing proofs. He appeared to them over a period of forty days, speaking to them about God’s kingdom. While they were eating together, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for what the Father had promised. He said, “This is what you have heard from me: John baptized you with water, but in only a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

As a result, those who had gathered together asked Jesus, “Lord, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now?”

Jesus replied, “It isn’t for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has set by his own authority. Rather, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

After Jesus said these things, as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going away and as they were staring toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood next to them. They said, “Galileans, why are you standing here, looking toward heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you saw him go into heaven.”

This is the Word of the Lord,
Thanks be to God

Why are you standing here, looking toward heaven? What do you see, Galileans? Are you staring into heaven with the hopes that you’ll be the first to see the future when it arrives? What do you see when you stare into heaven as your Lord is lifted up? What do you see?

Perhaps you see the story of what Jesus did and taught from the beginning. The story of a birth heralded first by the armies of heaven and then by the poor shepherds tending their flocks by night. The story of the boy who sat in the temple amazing his elders with wisdom beyond his years, while his mother worried about him a day’s journey away. What do you see?

Perhaps you see parables, sermons, and wisdom. Perhaps you see deeds of power, the lame leap, the blind see, the deaf hear, and the unclean made whole.

Perhaps you see a journey to Jerusalem, where if the disciples were silent, the stones would shout. Perhaps you see the people around you are proclaiming all the wonders you have seen, and that truly God is here in this place.
Perhaps you see your Master being taken away from you once again, just as he was by the crowds in Jerusalem. True, this time he is not being taken away from you to be killed, this time he is being raised up, as we say in our creed, to sit at the right hand of God, the father almighty, but that doesn’t make him any less gone when you’re used to being able to see him and touch him. Feeling a spiritual presence is very different than having a physical one with which you can interact. He’s been taken up, and it’s not the same anymore.

This Galilean sees the past three years of his life when he travelled throughout the country with Jesus, watching him preach and teach and heal people. Three years, and each of them as transformative as the last! At the end of it, they took him away and executed him. By then, though, he was no longer just a teacher, he was also a dear friend, and they took him away and killed him and this Galilean could not bear to watch, and now he is being lifted up again, and in a new way. So he stands there, staring into heaven, because he has to watch.

What do you see?

Another Galilean sees that after they executed this innocent man, who they knew, they knew had done nothing wrong, they buried him in a tomb, and rolled a stone in front of it to seal it. She sees that when she came to the tomb, it was empty, and two men stood in front of it telling here that her Lord was not among the dead, but was among the living! She sees that he is risen, and that for the past forty days he has been with them again. She sees that he has not survived the cross, but vanquished and reclaimed it, taking the symbol of governmental retribution and transforming it into divine hope. She sees that he has returned from the grave, and now he is being taken away again. We are lost without you, Jesus, why are you going away again? So she stands there staring into heaven, wondering what she will do now that he is gone again.

What do you see?

A third Galilean sees the imminent return of our Lord.

One can almost hear it, it’s as though the great stage has been reset, waiting for another showing of the grand play of our redemption. “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you saw him go into heaven.”

We’re about to see the kingdom be ushered in, right? Isn’t that what these two white-robed men are saying? He went up in a cloud, we just watched it happen, so we’re going to see him come back down in a cloud too. We can plan on that, it’s going to happen. The kingdom of God is at hand! We’re supposed to wait in Jerusalem for this Holy Spirit thing to come to us and then we’ll be able to tell Jerusalem, all of Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth that Jesus is the Lord, and he’s coming back to restore the kingdom!

What do you see while you’re standing there, staring at a cloud that took your Lord, your Teacher, your Friend away from you? Do you see that he is still with you? Do you see that he is absent? What do you see?

Galileans, do you see Jerusalem? How about Judea and Samaria? Do you see the whole of the earth? Because the Holy Spirit is coming, and then we shall be witnesses to God, having been given all that we need. We don’t have to pretend that we understood everything that Jesus said and did, although more understanding may come with time. We don’t have to know how everything worked in this story in which we are living, we just have to witness to Jerusalem, and to Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth, telling all that we have seen our Lord do for us, and for all that exists. So what do you see, Galilean, when you stand there staring up into heaven?

The eyes of the Galileans could only see a cloud that had taken their Lord away, but they didn’t need their eyes to see what they had known. Neither do we need to have seen with our eyes, because there’s just a cloud now Jesus is no longer in sight, but we know that those who have gone before us, and those who are here now, and those who have not yet even begun to look, we know that they too will witness God’s action in the world. What do you see? What is your witness?

When you see it, how will you proclaim it? What manner of witness have you been called to be?

I see a woman who knows a preacher by his voice alone, who lays her hands upon him and blesses him, giving him a moment of clarity of purpose that is not easily equalled. She’s not the kind of witness that is called to be the dramatic prophetic voice, speaking strong words that shift rulers on their thrones. But she has experienced God in a real way, and refuses to let it pass without sharing it.

I see a child playing in a flower bed, getting new Easter clothes covered in dirt, but the call of the world that is created by God and called good is so strong that she has to be in the midst of it, loving the flowers, and the singing birds, and the feel of soil between her fingers. Never mind the stains, God’s creation is beautiful and needs to be enjoyed, even if it means the clothes we have bought for ourselves are no longer pristine, they become holy through playing in the dirt.

There’s an idea about what a witness is, that somehow it’s the powerful preacher who saves souls wherever she goes, or the kind and gentle soul who brings comfort to those around him in times of strife, and these are certainly some of the witnesses to whom Jesus was talking, but they are not the only molds out of which a witness can emerge. Far too often we hear the call to witness, and we try to fit those forms around the voice God has given us, around the unique thing that we see, and the unique way in which see it.

Because we are called to witness not because we have seen it all and can explain it, but because God wants each particular individual disciple to tell the story the way they experienced it. Why are you standing here staring into heaven, Galilean? What do you see?

When I was in high school, my English teacher, Tim Fossett, passed around a poem by Walt Whitman, it read:

O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself, forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest of me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer:

That you are here - that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

What do you see when you look at the fallenness of the world around us? What do you see when the whole of creation groans with the birth pangs of the age of the Spirit? What do you see when you find your self crying out “What good amid these, O me, O life?”

I see that it would have been easier for Jesus to have just restored the kingdom right then and there. I see it would have been easier for the plodding and sordid crowds around me to be lifted up and made whole again, I see eyes that vainly crave the light, I see myself reproaching myself out of my own sinfulness. I cannot help but question this world that is already redeemed, but not yet fully healed.

And though I am not its source, I see an answer:

Galileans, why are you standing here, looking toward heaven? You are here - because of Jesus’s victory, life exists and identity. This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you saw him go into heaven. The powerful play goes on, and you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses, and you may contribute a verse, because you have received power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you to do so. You, not what you imagine you should be, but your honest voice, witnessing to Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, to all Judea and Samaria, and even to the end of the earth.

What do you see when your opportunity to contribute that verse comes to you? What will your verse say? Though we will witness from as many perspectives as there are Christians and more, though our voices will not always sing the same tune, our hands will not always paint the same picture, our bodies do not always dance the same steps, our words will not always weave the same poetry, we all still belong to the same Lord, this Jesus, who was taken up from us into heaven, and we will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon us, and with it we will be witnesses.

So what do you see?

Crowd-Sourced Exegesis: Acts 1:1-11

Theophilus, the first scroll I wrote concerned everything Jesus did and taught from the beginning,  right up to the day when he was taken up into heaven. Before he was taken up, working in the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus instructed the apostles he had chosen.  After his suffering, he showed them that he was alive with many convincing proofs. He appeared to them over a period of forty days, speaking to them about God’s kingdom.  While they were eating together, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for what the Father had promised. He said, “ This is what you heard from me:  John baptized with water, but in only a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. ”

 As a result, those who had gathered together asked Jesus, “ Lord, are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel now? ”

Jesus replied, “ It isn’t for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has set by his own authority.  Rather, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. ”

After Jesus said these things, as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.  While he was going away and as they were staring toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood next to them.  They said, “ Galileans, why are you standing here, looking toward heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way that you saw him go into heaven. ”

 

Dear North Carolina,

Dear North Carolina,

I expect better of you.

Love,
Joseph

For Christ's Sake

For Christ's Sake from Joseph Taber on Vimeo.

Ezekiel 36:22-38

22Say to the House of Israel: Thus said the LORD GOD: Not for your sake will I act, O House of Israel, but for My holy name, which you have caused to be profaned among the nations to which you have come. 23I will sanctify My great name which has been profaned among the nations - among whom you have caused it to be profaned. And the nations shall know that I am the LORD - declares the LORD GOD - when I manifest my holiness before their eyes through you. 24I will take you from among the nations and gather you from all the countries, and I will bring you back to your own land. 25I will sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean: I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your fetishes. 26And I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit into you: I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh; 27and I will put My spirit into you. Thus I will cause you to follow My laws and faithfully to observe My rules. 28Then you shall dwell in the land which I have given to your fathers; and you shall be my people and I will be your God.

29And when I have delivered you from all your uncleanness, I will summon the grain and make it abundant, and I will not bring famine upon you. 30I will make the fruit of your trees and the crops of your fields abundant, so that you shall never again be humiliated before the nations because of famine. 31Then you shall recall your evil ways and your base conduct, and you shall loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abhorrent practices. 32Not for your sake will I act - declares the LORD GOD - take good note! Be ashamed and humiliated because of your ways, O House of Israel!

33Thus said the LORD GOD: When I have cleansed you of all your iniquities, I will people your settlements, and the ruined places shall be rebuilt; 34 and the desolate land, after lying waste in the sight of every passerby, shall again be tilled. 35And men shall say, “That land, once desolate, has become like the garden of Eden; and the cities, once ruined, desolate, and ravaged, are now populated and fortified.” 36And the nations that are left around you shall know that I the LORD have rebuilt the ravaged places and replanted the desolate land. I the LORD have spoken and will act.

37Thus said the Lord God: Moreover, in this I will respond to the House of Israel and act for their sake: I will multiply their people like sheep. 38As Jerusalem is filled with sacrificial sheep during her festivals, so shall the ruined cities be filled with flocks of people. And they shall know that I am the LORD.

This is the Word of The Lord
Thanks Be to God

This text belongs to a people in exile. It belongs to those who have seen their buildings crumble, the crops burned, their people taken captive. This text belongs to those who are scattered and have no home. This text belongs to Lent’s not yet, and yet it has made its way into the already of Easter.

It’s found its way here because even though the women who went to the tomb have already seen the Lord, and even though the travelers on the Emmaus road have already dined with Christ, we are still living in an exile of our own making, waiting for God to establish the Kingdom here on earth. And Ezekiel’s prophesy concerning the restoration of the kingdom has not yet happened, and so it belongs to us.

Here I am, a young preacher. I read this text, and feel called to preach on it, and I want the sermon to be good. I mean, real good. I want to deliver the kind of sermons I’ve read in my literature courses, beautifully composed works of literature that testify to where God is acting in the world. I want to deliver sermons that stick with you for the long term. I’m sure that whatever it is that is important to us is something we want to be good at. We want to look good for our peers.

For me it’s preaching, but for others it may be playing bridge, or chess, or cooking. Or writing, or music, or any number of the other talents with which God has graced us. We want to be good. My struggle is: do I want to do this because I want to bring glory to the God who gave me these gifts, or do I want it for my own sake.

Truth is, my answer changes back and forth depending on the day you ask me. My full name is Joseph William Taber IV, and that name comes with a long and rich heritage, but this text tells me that the focus is not about the greatness of my name, or my Dad’s, or Grandaddy’s, or Pappy’s, or any name I pass on to my eventual son, hypothetical being that he is. But while we are busy trying to build ourselves up, God speaks. “Not for your sake will I act, O House of Israel, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have caused to be profaned among the nations to which you have come.”

I think the way we profane the name is by assuming that we somehow have a claim on God, and this passage refutes that. Our prayers are not opportunities to grab God like a child who won’t listen and lay down what we think the law should be. The image itself is preposterous, but it’s how many of us approach God. The Lion of Judah is not, to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, a tame lion. So God tells us that we are going to be restored from our exile, brought into Jerusalem from the wilderness, but makes a point that we are not being made holy again out of our own deserving. God is doing this because we’re making God look bad.

So God sends us into an exile of our own making, and we respond by trying to dig ourselves out. We maintain the idolatrous idea that if we got ourselves into this mess, we can get ourselves out. So our response is to do the same thing again. We haven’t learned, we only barely remember that this is what got us unto this mess in the first place. So our continued attempt at self-mastery in exile continues to profane God’s holy name, just as it did in Israel. Something’s got to change, and we have proven ourselves unwilling or unable to do it. So God promises a new beginning to us, for his name’s sake.

The language of this text is full of rich imagery of restoration and rebirth. But it is not for our sake that the restoration and rebirth occurs. It is not for our sake that we are given wealth, and talents, or called to this holy task. God is doing these things so that all the world will know that the LORD is God. Because when we seek to make ourselves look good, we have fooled ourselves into thinking that we are our own masters. But we are not our own, we belong to God.

The desire to be our own master is one of the many things we share with Israel, and both we and Israel go into exile on account of it. Israel’s desire to be its own master led it to abandon the instructions given to them by God to set them apart from the rest of the world. Our desire to be our own masters leads us to try and fill this text with what we want it to say, so that we don’t have to read what it actually says. We look at this strange text and have problems with it. We want God to act because God loves us, because we’re special to God. But this text tells us that “Not for your sake will I act, O house of Israel, but for my Holy name.”

That’s the problem, isn’t it. God acts for Godself, not for our sake. Preacher that I am, I asked myself “How do I take God acting for the sake of God’s holy name and use it to preach the Gospel?” To me, the rest of the passage is specifics on how that will be accomplished, and much of the first draft of my sermon was concerned with justifying this highly contextual language into our own place and time.

But the text doesn’t need to be justified, we already confessed that it was the Word of the Lord, and therefore it matters to us, just as God’s reputation matters to God. But we are compelled by this passage to move a little more slowly past our problems. “Be ashamed and humiliated because of your ways, O House of Israel.” Though this passage immediately promises a restoration, the whole of this text is wrapped up in how we once again become holy.

We’ve got to remember that God has to be the focus. When I did all of my exegetical work, all of my theological thinking, it was because I wanted to write a good sermon. I wanted to impress my colleagues, I wanted to impress my friends, I wanted to impress ya’ll here. And even though I had read the text a dozen times, and worked on it for many hours, I had not internalized it, and I hadn’t let it work on me. I wrote brilliant thoughts and beautiful lines all about why we didn’t want to deal with this text. I tried to force what I was thinking into a form that had worked for me before, and no matter how long I worked and thought and puffed on my theologian’s pipe I could not make my thoughts fit inside this text. Because this text was already full of its own meaning, and I was learning that the hard way.

That restoration doesn’t happen because of us. Our actions haven’t changed the way God looks at us, instead we’ve made God look bad. The peoples of the world look at us, hear what we say, see what we do, and we have represented a church full of hypocrites. Seeing how the world responds to God’s action and God’s people, God chooses to act in a new way.

God certainly doesn’t need our approval, God isn’t feeding some ego trip where the peoples of the world validate God’s existence. God is God, and does not depend on us. But the holiness of God matters because God refuses to disengage from creation. God does not make a habit of ignoring what is going on in our lives, even when it is offensive to God’s nature. Instead, because God insists on being in relationship with what God has created, God gathers us out of our exile and brings us back to where we belong. For us, a shift in our own mindset. For our spiritual ancestors, a shift in the political and physical reality.

There’s a shift at the end of the scripture too. After hearing time and time again that it is not for our sake that God will restore us to the kingdom, God says “In this I will respond to the House of Israel and act for their sake. I will multiply their people like sheep.” That shift is what attracted me to this passage in the first place. We start with God acting because it is God’s nature to be both holy and involved in creation, and now God is once again acting on our behalf, comparing us to sacrificial sheep, an animal that was set aside as holy, belonging to God, not to those of this world. That’s where this text enters the Easter tale.

At the end of this passage, it is not too far a leap to say that the link between acting for the sake of God’s holy name and our sake is acting for Christ’s sake. Through Christ, we are, as Paul’s letter to the Romans tells us, adopted as God’s children, and are fellow heirs with Christ. God and humanity are united again, brought home from exile among the nations where all we could do was to reflect poorly on the God who claims us.

So now all who see how we are changed will know, as the passage states, that the LORD is God. Because the LORD has spoken and acted. It is for Christ’s sake that in baptism we are sprinkled with clean water and our uncleanness is washed away. It is for Christ’s sake that our iniquities are cleansed and we who had not born fruit are made to produce again. It is for Christ’s sake that our homes and our lives are rebuilt, and that our hollowness is replaced with a fullness of life. It is for Christ’s sake that we are made holy again, set apart as a people of God, to fill God’s kingdom for the celebration to come.

That’s what we celebrate at Easter, and though we have to go through Good Friday to get there, at Easter we are brought back to the kingdom of God, and are set apart as belonging to God so that all the world may know that it is Christ who redeems, and that the LORD is God.

Crowd-Sourced Exegesis: Ezekiel 36:22-38

Say to the House of Israel: This said the LORD GOD: Not for your sake will I act, O House of Israel, but for My holy name, which you have caused to be profaned among the nations to which you have come. I will sanctify My great name which has been profaned among the nations - among whom you have caused it to be profaned. And the nations shall know that I am the LORD declares the LORD GOD - when I manifest My holiness before their eyes through you. I will take you from among the nations and gather you from all the countries, and I will bring you back to your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean: I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your fetishes. And I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit into you: I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh; and I will put My spirit into you. This I will cause you to follow My laws and faithfully to observe My rules. Then you shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers, and you shall be My people and I will be your God.


And when I have delivered you from all your uncleanness, I will summon the grain and make it abundant, and I will not bring famine upon you. I will make the fruit of your trees and the crops of your fields abundant, so that you shall never again be humiliated before the nations because of famine. Then you shall recall your evil ways and your base conduct, and you shall loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abhorrent practices. Not for your sake will I act - declares the LORD GOD - take good note! Be ashamed and humiliated because of your ways, O House of Israel!


Thus said the LORD GOD: When I have cleansed you of all your iniquities, I will people your settlements, and the ruined places shall be rebuilt; and the desolate land, after lying waste in the sight of every passerby, shall again be tilled. And men shall say, "That land, once desolate, has become like the garden of Eden; and the cities, once ruined, desolate, and ravaged, are now populated and fortified." And the nations that are left around you shall know that I the LORD have rebuilt the ravaged places and replanted the desolate land. I the LORD have spoken and will act.


Thus said the LORD GOD: Moreover, in this I will respond to the House of Israel and act for their sake: I will multiply their people like sheep. As Jerusalem is filled with sacrificial sheep during her festivals, so shall the ruined cities be filled with flocks of people. And they shall know that I am the LORD.

Wow, that's a long passage. I'd love to hear what y'all think about it! Comment below if you have reactions, they don't have to be profound or theological, they just have to be honest. Thanks so much!

Engraving

Jeremiah 31:31-37
31The time is coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. 32It won’t be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant with me even though I was their husband, declares the LORD. 33No, this is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the LORD. I will put my instructions within them and engrave them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34They will no longer need to teach each other to say, “Know the LORD!” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD; for I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sins.
35The LORD proclaims:
The one who established the sun
to light up the day
and ordered the moon and stars
to light up the night,
who stirs up the sea
into crashing waves,
whose name is the LORD of heavenly forces:
36If the created order should vanish
from my sight,
declares the LORD,
only then would Israel’s descendants
ever stop being a nation
before me.
37The LORD proclaims:
If the heavens above could be measured
and the foundations of the earth below
could be fathomed,
only then would I reject
Israel’s descendants
for what they have done,
declares the LORD.

This is the World of the Lord
Thanks be to God

The season of Lent is walking in the wilderness, mirroring Jesus forty days of temptation, and the ancient Israelites forty years before reaching the Promised Land. The Lenten wilderness is a spiritual wasteland that has no end in sight. But the prophet Jeremiah can see farther, and points us in the direction that the LORD is taking us.

There’s a reason we read this passage in the wilderness of Lent. There’s a reason Jeremiah speaks to us as we wander through the world, in search of our savior. There’s a reason we need to hear this word in every age, in every time and place. There’s a reason we need to remember the future that has been promised.

The reason is, we’re still a people who need God grace. The reason is we don’t have it together and we can’t do it on our own. The reason is our faith is shaken from time to time, and we still need to hear the promise, because the time is coming, declares the LORD.

“The time is coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah.” Judah, the people who are suffering under the heel of the armies of Babylon, Judah, who are hiding in the hills watching as their homes are destroyed, as the kingdom that was promised to them burns and is systematically ripped apart. Our Judah has been conquered and it seems like the battle is over and we’re on the side of the losers. Our neighbors have been carried off into exile. The Babylonians that are knocking at our own doors are not here to make a social call. The symbol of the promise of God has been taken away from us.

When you’re in the Judah referenced in this passage, you’re watching everything you’ve built crumble before you. Living in Jeremiah’s Judah makes the stories you used to order your life around feel like a betrayal. Because those stories no longer apply, and we’re not equipped to deal with their loss.

My generation was told that if you get a college degree, you’ll get a job, and have a secure future. My parents generation was told that if you work hard, you’ll be able to retire comfortably. My grandparents generation was told that if you provide, you’ll be provided for. And then we all watched as those stories were suddenly not true for everyone anymore. The man who built great things during his long career sees that his retirement benefits are drying up. So now he has to sell what was to be his children’s inheritance to provide for himself and his wife. The woman who worked her whole life at the furniture factory is told that the business is moving overseas and she won’t get the pension she had planned for. The summa cum laude graduate hears that she’s the next great up-and-comer in her field time and again. But those who tell her that she has potential aren’t hiring. She worries that she can’t pay off the mortgage she took out on her future with student loans. And all of them groan together for a new promise, a new covenant.

It won’t be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. It won’t be like the covenant that required more than the people have been able to live up to. It won’t be like the covenant that instructed them “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength.” It won’t be like the covenant that was to be tied on our hands, that should be written on our foreheads as a symbol. It won’t be like the covenant that our spiritual ancestors wrote on their houses’ door frames and on their cities’ gates. That covenant is broken, and we, individually and collectively, are the ones who broke it.

Broken promises to God. We live in a world glutted with broken promises to God. It seeps into every fiber of our culture, every word of our communication, and it’s all so very broken. The brokenness of our promises to God defines us, sinful from our origin. The broken covenant separates us from God. We cannot undo the break because we cannot keep the covenant. With Babylon beating on our doors to take us away, God misses us terribly, and refuses to let our break be the final word.

Jeremiah reminds us throughout this whole book that we have done this to ourselves, and we have done it to ourselves consistently. We cannot say that what has happened to us is not fair, because it’s not a matter of bad things happening to good people, it’s a matter of bad things happening to people who deserve what they get, because they have rejected God. God who wanted an intimate partnership with the people, a partnership compared in this passage to a husband. The comparison is weak, because God goes farther than any human metaphor of marriage could. When we reject and run away from God, God follows us. Our break will not be the word that defines our reality, God misses us too much for that to be all we are. So God changes the shape of reality in order to be with us.

We see how far we have fallen, we see what we have done to the world and to one another, pushing each other and ourselves away with the hope that by shoving them deeper into the muck we’ll somehow feel cleaner. So when we are about to get what we deserve for rejecting God, God speaks.

No.

No, that’s not the kind of God I am. That’s not the kind of people you will be. That’s not the kind of world I created. No that’s not the way it’s going to be. No, I will not allow you to be destroyed as a result of your own choices.

No, this is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel.

When you write something on your hand, it will wipe off. When you paint it above your doorpost, you can always paint over it. The old covenant trusted in human ability to keep it, and the human freedom to break the covenant won out instead. But this new covenant is not something we write, and it’s not something we can wash off or cover up. The new covenant is dependent solely on God’s intervention.

“I will put my Instructions within them and engrave them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

I had the opportunity a few years ago to work with a stonecutter. Up until the moment when you begin the engraving process, you’re just looking at a rock. There’s nothing special about it, it’s like so many others. It’s a collection of minerals cut from a quarry. But once it’s engraved, it’s different. A blank wall becomes a monument. An empty slab becomes a gravestone. A floor tile becomes a centerpiece at a wedding banquet. The engraving takes a humble rock and provides it with a new purpose. Engraving a stone can transform the basest mineral deposits into beautiful art.

What the rock carver does to the stone, God’s covenant does to us. The instruction is internalized and engraved on our hearts. A new purpose is provided and we are no longer bound by our own brokenness but free to be restored to our relationship with God. The next verses tell us that we will no longer have to even teach each other what to say, because we’ll just know. We no longer have to remind ourselves what has been said, as with the ancient covenant, because it’s not an issue of knowing about, it’s about being who God has created us to be. God’s engraving on our hearts gives us a purpose and an identity and turns what is essentially a bag of meat and mostly water into a human being, created in the image of God.

And that time is coming, declares the LORD. Because we’re not there yet, we’re still wandering in the desolate wasteland of Lent, expecting to find a Babylonian army ready to carry us deeper into this exile of our own making. But being trapped in the desert doesn’t stop God from claiming us as God’s own. Because the second half of the passage is a creation story. God takes a moment to remind us of exactly who we’re dealing with here. We’re not dealing with some idol made of wood or brass. We’re being dealt with by “The one who established the sun to light up the day and ordered the moon and the starts to light up the night.” We are not claimed by a nationality, or a race, or a club, or a fraternity or a denomination. We are claimed by the one “who stirs up the sea into crashing waves, whose name is the LORD of heavenly forces.” This same one claims us as God’s own people.

When we run away and abandon God, and we will, God will engrave her instructions upon our hearts, giving us a purpose and an identity. Our discarded chunks of granite are engraved with and transformed into testimonies to God’s faithfulness. Because our rebellion shows God’s refusal to give up on us. God will have a relationship with us, even when we are broken and imperfect.

My mother has a saying, “God uses imperfect people because he made so few of the other kind.” We are the imperfect people whom God has choses to use. We are the body of Christ eagerly awaiting the return of our Lord. We are not our own, we belong to God, and God has missed us in our exile, and will bring us back. When we proved that we could not come back to God, God came to earth, taking the form of a slave, and was crucified for us so that we will know that God will be with us no matter what. Let us know that God has engraved our hearts with that powerful message of love. There’s a reason we read this text in the wilderness of Lent, so that when we are confronted with our sinfulness, we will be reminded that God will be with us no matter what.

Lord of heaven and earth, we feel alone and broken, and we cannot reach out to you. Comfort us with the knowledge that even though we can never reach you, you not only reach us, but refuse to let us go. Amen.

Changes

Hey folks, time to update your bookmarks. I've changed both the title and address of my blog. The "Russel(l) eats poo" moniker has served me well, but as I approach the realm of ordered ministry, I decided to frame the blog more theologically, to reflect what is increasingly becoming my reality. The new title, as you can see, is "One Short Sleep Past" and the new web address is http://wewakeeternally.blogspot.com/

The REP name was a reference to my Freshman dorm room, which had been "decorated" with a permanent marker by a previous occupant. Of the things that could have been added to a door in a Freshman Dorm, "Russel eats poo" was on the tame side. It became a kind of a battle cry for me and my roommate. However, a couple of folks have indicated that the name might be a barrier to those who might otherwise enjoy my contributions.

This is not a sanitation, but a reframing. I still enjoy slightly off-color humor and that will still pop up on this site from time to time. The new title and website are taken from John Donne's Holy Sonnet X, which I've added below.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For, those whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and souls delivery.
Thou are slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppie, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke, why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

This is a short post, but I'm preaching this weekend on Jeremiah 31:31-37, so a new sermon is forthcoming.