Readings: Jeremiah 31: 27-34; John 12:20-33


Barack Obama said in 2004: ‘There is not a black America and a white America and a Latino America. There’s a United States of America.’ It was a signature statement. He had his name written on it. His autobiography of 2006 reveals for me a man who takes a new look at American history, society and politics. Often he seems uncluttered by old agendas and divisive party politics. Even before his presidency and this deep recession he was looking for new ways and new possibilities for handling old problems. And of course we might have been surprised and amazed this week at his satellite TV broadcast direct to the Iranian people in an attempt to build bridges. Perhaps we need a new broom!

There is a saying, ‘Time makes ancient good uncouth.’

With creeping age I rather fancy the notion of ‘ancient good’. Coping with generational changes is not always appealing, whether in technology or how our grand-children are growing up. Changes to daylight hours or a new style of music in the church, don’t always come easy.

So in our world, what new wisdom will Obama, Rudd and the G20 bring that might help us take a right-angle shift in how we see the world and live in it? In our church what new wisdom will help us, or will ancient good prevail? These difficult times are making some old patterns in human society and even the church, look very uncouth. Should we go back to old formulae or look for new possibilities?

Jeremiah, like other prophets, always tried to see the life of Israel through the eyes of God. What was God saying to the people? With very different circumstances for the nation of Israel, were the age-old patterns working? Was God saying something different from previous messages? Will God’s way change with the circumstances?

For wise old Jeremiah it was a question of ‘Is the old covenant between God and the people, still God’s way with the world?’ This is what chapter 31 is about. So, what was the background?

The time for Israel’s return from exile was at hand. Fifty or more years before there had been turmoil. Israel’s leaders had faced a rampant enemy in what is now Iraq. They had made doubtful political alliances, often ignoring God’s call and the words of wise counsel. They had been too big for their boots, failing to take account of the consequences of their unwise military escapades. So they found themselves licking their wounds in Baghdad . . . I think that should read Babylon!

The old covenant of Moses had read, ‘You shall have no other gods before me . . . any sort of gods! I am a jealous God punishing the children for the sins of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me.’ Now it was happening in Babylon two or three generations after the exile. Punishment and retribution had set in and the cost was high and the people knew it!

Jeremiah’s insight was that the old covenant had failed. It had been based not only on God’s law, but also on Israel’s capacity for obedience. Time and again disobedience had weakened the covenant to the point where it no longer defined the relationship between God and the people. But here in Jeremiah 31 we don’t find God saying to captives in Babylon, ‘You’ve got what you deserved! I told you so! What more do you expect!’

On the contrary, the God Jeremiah saw, was the God who said, ‘I have loved them with an everlasting love . . Again I will build you. . . I am going to bring them from the land of the north. . .With weeping they shall come home. . . for I have become a father to Israel and to Ephraim his first-born. . .He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd keeps a flock. . . and their life shall become like a watered garden. . . For in the north is heard bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children who are no more. . . But there is hope and a future. . . for Ephraim is my dear son in whom I delight . . . I still remember him and am deeply moved. Surely I will have mercy on him’.

The folly of Israel would not break or cancel God’s love and mercy. So in God’s word to Jeremiah there was to be a new covenant, a new deal! Now there were to be promises of a new way ‘beyond the old patterns of blessing and curse; beyond the law of deed and consequences, reward and punishment.’ (Bruggemann). New promises would go beyond the old Mosaic ‘if’ – ‘if you keep my commandments’ etc. That had failed. God’s deep compassion as Father to Ephraim was bigger than all the nation’s sins. No longer would God’s covenant rise or fall on the circumstances of the times – the political skirmishes, a nation’s failures, history’s folly, social injustices of former days. God would be God, full of mercy and compassion, weeping for her children, refusing to remember former days.

‘Time makes ancient good uncouth.’

There was an old saying in Israel, ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ No doubt it meant ‘the children would pay for the misdeeds of the parents’. How often do we hear it: ‘He’s got his father’s genes!’ or, ‘I had such a deprived up-bringing no wonder I’m screwed up!’ or, ‘you only reap what you sow.’ These are all part truths. And of course so much of our social thinking binds the future to the past, like a sail-boat dragging a great anchor. Sometimes I think in Australia we have a very breast-beating view of the world and our history! Cause and effect shape our thinking! Deed and consequence! Folly and blame! Sin and retribution! These often dictate our world-view! Of course there is some truth in those things but must they take up the centre-ground both of who God is or how we are together?

But wise old Jeremiah said that with God, ‘It shall no longer be said, “The parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”’The old pattern has not worked. The old covenant that generated that thinking will be superseded. Law and retribution will no longer be the key. Justice and punishment no will longer express the heart of God. The time will come when covenant will be based fundamentally on who God is and not on how people respond. This will be a new day. It was epoch-changing stuff!

And this is what was said. Read Jer. 31:31-34

This is from our God. Here was a right-angle turn in Israel’s understanding of God. God will not be determined by circumstances but will claim a future and a hope for Israel and for the world, based on everlasting love and mercy. So Jeremiah urged Israel and us all, to refuse to be bogged down by circumstances, even when those circumstances are the product of human failure. God’s new covenant breaks that bind of the future with the past.

But of course it took another 500 years for this new age to start to take shape in the person of Jesus Christ. So we come to the New Covenant of Testament.

I picture the Apostle John, an old man on the Greek island of Patmos, writing his gospel with strong recollections of heady days with Jesus, sixty or more years before. He did so with vivid imagination and many encounters with enquiring minds of his day and of his local church. He wove the story together as week after week he still rose with creaking bones to help the Jesus story shape the lives of those around him. No doubt many times people couldn’t see what he was driving at in his sermons. For which I feel greatly comforted!

One day he told the story recorded in our gospel reading. I think the story behind it may have happened a little differently, since John was aware of the strict privacy laws of his day.

Actually John had been in the market-place on the Wednesday, enjoying a cappuccino, when two local philosophers came and sat down, Greek sages whom he had often seen round town. As John knew, these men were steeped in Greek thought from Socrates and Aristotle of 400 years earlier. Wisdom and logic were their tools of trade. We might say they were forerunners of the age of reason of Descartes and Newton, cause and effect and all that stuff.

‘We want to see Jesus!’ they said, ‘For what he really is! What is his importance to modern Greek thought?’

In those times and places you always had to answer a question with a question so John said, ‘What have you heard?’

‘Well we spoke to a couple of your folk, Philip and Andrew, who told us that Jesus raised someone from the dead after he had been in the grave three days! Lazarus by name I believe! That sounds a bit odd!’

And the other man added, ‘Then there was a story about how he paraded through the streets of Jerusalem long ago; and how he created havoc in the temple upsetting local laws and traditions. And there was some saying about, “Destroy this temple and I will raise it in three days!” Who is this man?’

‘What do you make of all this?’ questioned John once more.

‘Well . . . he wasn’t just a new law-maker with a grand new code for the nation! That wouldn’t work and he seemed to be a bit anti-law! And he wasn’t just an ascetic from the desert, a sort of mystic in camel’s skins and eating wild honey! And he wasn’t just a placard-waving justice guru, for otherwise he would have been ranting against the injustices of the Roman rule of his day. And he wasn’t just a holy social reformer with a heart for the poor and lepers; the outcasts and nobodies of the town. Those sorts of people do good things but are really a long time dead!’ ‘Who is he? We can’t make logic of him! And what makes you still come here sixty years later telling this story?’ What’s the key to it all?

So John said, ‘You’re right! He was not about being a law-maker or ascetic; a bringer of justice or social reform among the outcasts. Nor was he just about bringing a wise and rational understanding to life as though we can work it all out! He was a bit of all these.’

‘But this is the key my friends,’ said John. ‘As Jesus said, “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die it remains alone a single grain; but if it falls into the earth and dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”’

They left shaking their heads.

John finished his sermon that day with the words of Jesus, ‘While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of the light.’ But over the cup of tea after the service, he told them that many had failed to believe when told all the story.

It’s important to catch the light.

Time makes ancient good uncouth!

Jesus brought new light and truth. Here was the insignia of the new covenant, the new order found in this Jesus, God in person. It picked up the truth from Jeremiah and ran at right angles to all other understandings about life.

For the abundance of God to come, something has to die. It’s about relinquishment or surrender. I call it a signature truth. It has God’s name written all over it! Many things were laid to rest when Jesus died, not the least being the whole order established in Moses and the first covenant. This was God’s doing, once and for all! This is the doing of the God who loves us with an everlasting love; who is deeply moved for us all; who makes our life like a watered garden and turns our mourning into dancing; who forgives our iniquity and remembers our sin no more.’ It does not depend on anything we do. Yet if God is to live in our world, this death-to-life motif asks that we make that same signature truth the mark of our lives – losing life means we find it.

But more - letting go of the most treasured things in life is God’s recipe for untold abundance in the most surprising directions. This is more than self-sacrifice for the sake of a cause. This a purposeful pathway to the fullness of life – letting go brings untold blessing. We will each find the meaning of that truth, but only by the practice of it. This is the signature truth of Jesus Christ. He has his name written all over it.

REFERENCES AND NOTES:
Walter Bruggemann ‘Theology of the Old Testament’, is a comprehensive theology by a noted scholar with very insightful commentary on the world condition and events.
Barnabas Lindars ‘The Gospel of John’ is a comprehensive commentary on John.
Barack Obama ‘The Audacity of Hope’ – Thoughts on reclaiming the American dream.
Raymond Helmick et al ‘Forgiveness and Reconciliation’ – Religion, Public Policy and Conflict Transformation