The current phrase is "deal breaker," words or actions that shatter a relationship. Perhaps by mutual agreement, perhaps by a simple "Goodbye," perhaps by a complex or convoluted set of circumstances in which one partner discovers that he or she is no longer able to relate in a meaningful way to the other (the legal term is "irreconcilable differences") - comes the sudden realization that it's all over. For the people of Jerusalem in the early sixth century BCE, the reality hit one morning when they looked over the walls and saw the Babylonian army laying siege to the city. Would not God remember the old covenant relationship and spare his people one more time?
In today's reading, Jeremiah the prophet announces the end of that relationship, but it was neither God nor the Babylonians who were breaking the deal. "A covenant that they broke" declares the text, referring to the ancestors with whom God made the covenant and to their descendants who were breaking it even as the prophet spoke. It was all over: God's people had forgotten to remember and to respond to God's covenant love for them. Now they would go into exile, their most fundamental relationship lost forever.
Or at least that's how I might have written the script: you get what you deserve. But God always has something different, something gracious in mind. God would be with his people, after all, through their exile and beyond. More surprisingly, God was about to do something new: cut a new covenant different from the old. No longer would God's people have to be taught or even reminded; they would all know the Lord from the heart. Now God would be the forgetful one, forgiving their iniquity and remembering their sin no more!
No, it didn't happen right away. But several hundred years later, an itinerant rabbi and healer, about to be executed, was remembering the old covenant through a Passover meal with his friends. In the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus took bread and gave thanks; broke it and gave it to his disciples....Again, after supper, he took the cup, gave thanks and gave it for all to drink, saying: This cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin. Do this for the remembrance of me.
So we continue to celebrate that new covenant meal, not forgetting to remember, and our Lord is truly present, remembering to forgive and forget.
Not that that we've completely arrived, or that the new covenant, as Jeremiah describes it, is completely fulfilled. To the delight of the adult Bible study I lead at St. Peter's whose participants have embraced Book of Faith and the insights it has given them in studying Scripture, and perhaps to the consternation of the confirmation class I teach whose participants are a bit less enthusiastic, God's people still need to teach one another and learn from each other. And while, from Baptism on, the Spirit writes God's word in our hearts, we confess how quickly those organs beat to the tune of different drummers. During this season especially we still need the disciplines of Lent to help us grow in this new relationship. But the good news is the Lord who began the new covenant with us will bring it to his glorious completion. Not even a sealed tomb or a closed grave can break that deal. |
