Writing The Law On Our Hearts
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series I, Cycle A
In his wonderful book, Open Secrets, Richard Lischer tells of a retired Lutheran pastor who came to visit him shortly after the elder man's wife had died. Throughout his whole ministry, he had prayed with countless people, providing a bridge between them and God. When it mattered the most though, he couldn't pray. When his wife was dying, he couldn't pray with her, as he had throughout their marriage. He didn't make a conscious decision not to pray with her, he just couldn't do it. He felt as though something had shut down inside of him, almost as though he had died spiritually. In an attempt to understand why his ability to pray had shut down, he went to visit Lischer, hoping that a fresh perspective could help him sort out his pain and his agonizing questions. He told the young pastor that trying to pray was like trying to touch something when your arms and hands are wrapped in gauze. As he said in the conversation, "I couldn't break through to whatever it was that sustained Geneva and me for almost 43 years, and nothing could touch me either."1
The grieving Lutheran pastor couldn't get through to God and couldn't feel God trying to get through to him. A tragedy makes us more aware of it, but God often seems far away, unapproachable, silent. When we are hurting, the distance between God and us seems greater and harder to understand and endure. Even when we are not in a crisis, God can seem distant from us. Many things can be a barrier between God and us.
The way people argue in church can be one of those barriers. Social issues, doctrine, how to spend money, even what color to paint the hallway can lead to bickering. The bickering itself can certainly block our experience of God's closeness. Raging tempers, hurtful words, and popping veins do nothing to bring us into God's presence. Some of the disputes are genuine differences of opinion, by people who are trying to discern what God wants the church to do. The immaturity of some of the arguments puts us off, but even if we disregard the immaturity, and look at the issues, we realize we don't know exactly what God thinks. Both sides in any theological debate are positive God is on their side, but who knows for sure? The fact that honest and sincere church people can claim God's support for opposite sides of a debate only highlights that God's true will can be confusing. If we don't know what God wants, God seems even further away.
Sometimes God seems far away because somewhere in our past our understanding of God got all twisted up. Some purple--faced preacher snarled at us about a punishing God or told us that some horrible thing was God's will, and our view of God got bent out of shape. The way it often happens is that a young child will experience the death of a loved one - a sibling or a parent - and some well--meaning soul will tell the child that the death was God's will. The child then carries that anger at God through a lifetime, never able to reach across the unfairness of that idea to experience God's love. The end result is that the person either never connects with God, or connects with God only after a long healing process.
Maybe, like the Lutheran pastor, some grief or hurt or tragedy has thrust itself into our lives, and we just can't square what we have experienced with our view of a loving and good God. We are angry and confused about life and the God who created this life. Our pain crowds out our attempts to think the problem through and may even keep us from offering joyous worship to God. Our pain blocks our access to God.
We do not even have to be in grief or a tragedy or any particular problem to experience distance from God. Even if our lives are okay, and no grief intrudes or arguments come up, we wonder about God. We are comfortable, not in crisis, but we just don't feel close to God. We believe in God, believe all the right things, but God still seems far off.
Because we experience God as far off, we do what we can to bridge the gap. We read our Bibles, but sometimes that raises as many questions as it answers. We come to church and sometimes a hymn or communion or maybe even a sermon will cut through the fog and help us experience God's presence. Those experiences don't usually last, however, and the feeling of God's distance creeps back in.
Most of the time, we get by with this experience of the distance between God and us. We are busy with jobs, family, or hobbies. We might wish we were closer to God, but we can live with the distance. We might be wistful for God's presence, but it doesn't seem to be our biggest problem. Then something happens and it is a problem. Our world crashes down around us, and we ache for an experience of God's comforting closeness.
Jeremiah tells us that God knows about the distance and separation, too. God also experiences the gap that we ourselves feel. We experience God as far away, sometimes just when we need God the most. God experiences the distance as our sinfulness keeping us apart. God experiences our sinfulness as breaking the relationship. At one point in the book of Jeremiah, God seems genuinely concerned that the people of Israel are incapable of obedience. God wonders if the people are so thoroughly sinful that it goes to the core of their being. God asks through Jeremiah, "Can Ethiopians change their skin, or leopards their spots?" (13:23). God seems to be asking if people, or at least the people of Judah, can be faithful and responsive enough that God can enter into relationship with them.
All of this sounds almost like a soap opera. We want a relationship with God. God wants a relationship with us, but the two sides can never get together. We are confused and isolated from God. God is hurt and grieved by our sins. An impassable gulf separates us.
It sounds as if we are just stuck. God is remote, and we are mired in our sinfulness. Jeremiah shows us the way to get unstuck. God will reach across the distance between us to establish the relationship. God will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and by extension, with us in the church. The difference in this new covenant is that God will enable us to fulfill our part of it. In one of the grandest statements in the Old Testament, Jeremiah has God promise to write the law on our hearts. Instead of writing the law on stone tablets or parchment, God will write the law on our hearts.
The law was God's gift to Israel and to the world. A better word for law might be "teaching." This teaching was more than just the commandments. The people of Israel referred to the narratives of the faith as "teaching," as well as the actual commandments. The stories of Abraham and Sarah, of Moses and the Exodus, and all the rest were part of this teaching. The meaning of those stories, of how they nourish our faith will be written on our hearts. God's teaching shows us who we are, how our faith came to be. The law was intended to teach us how to worship, how to love one another, how to build a community. That will be written on our hearts.
What an act of grace! God will work within us to heal our disobedience and end the alienation between God and us. This verse reminds us of the words of the psalmist, "Put a new and right spirit within me" (Psalm 51:10b). It reminds us of Paul, who said to the Philippians, "I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6). God has begun a good work among us. God will give us the wisdom, the maturity, the loving attitude, the energy to do God's will. We can only assume that God will write the law on our hearts, will work within us in such a way that we are healed, but that our freedom is preserved. God will not force the law on us, but will allow the law to regenerate us.
Pastor Lischer's word to the retired pastor who came to see him because he could not pray with his wife was that God would do what he could not do himself. "It's when you can't do anything to make amends that God does it all. That's the most powerful absolution there is. You say you can't break through to God. What if God is breaking through to you?"2
God is indeed breaking through to us. God is writing the law on our hearts even now. The separation between God and us will not be forever. Knowing that God is working to write the law on our hearts, to end the separation, to forgive our sins, we can rejoice.
If we are confused about God and don't know how to solve the big disputes of the church and the world, we can rejoice, because God is writing the law on our hearts, and we will someday know God more fully.
If we feel lonely and don't experience God close to us, we can rejoice, because God is writing the law on our hearts, and we will someday have a deep and fulfilling relationship with God.
If we struggle to overcome temptation and find ourselves too weak to do what we believe we should, we can rejoice, because God is writing the law on our hearts, and someday we will triumph over our weakness and sinfulness.
If we are battered by the grief and pain of life and wonder if we can keep going, we can rejoice because God is writing the law on our hearts, and someday we can put away our grief.
The days are surely coming when God will draw us close and we will feel God's love. The days are surely coming when we will experience God's forgiveness and feel the weight of guilt fall off our backs. The days are surely coming when God will write the law on our hearts; God will be our God, and we will be God's people.
____________
1. Richard Lischer, Open Secrets: A Spiritual Journey Through A Country Church (New York: Doubleday, 2001), p. 176.
2. Ibid., p. 177.
The grieving Lutheran pastor couldn't get through to God and couldn't feel God trying to get through to him. A tragedy makes us more aware of it, but God often seems far away, unapproachable, silent. When we are hurting, the distance between God and us seems greater and harder to understand and endure. Even when we are not in a crisis, God can seem distant from us. Many things can be a barrier between God and us.
The way people argue in church can be one of those barriers. Social issues, doctrine, how to spend money, even what color to paint the hallway can lead to bickering. The bickering itself can certainly block our experience of God's closeness. Raging tempers, hurtful words, and popping veins do nothing to bring us into God's presence. Some of the disputes are genuine differences of opinion, by people who are trying to discern what God wants the church to do. The immaturity of some of the arguments puts us off, but even if we disregard the immaturity, and look at the issues, we realize we don't know exactly what God thinks. Both sides in any theological debate are positive God is on their side, but who knows for sure? The fact that honest and sincere church people can claim God's support for opposite sides of a debate only highlights that God's true will can be confusing. If we don't know what God wants, God seems even further away.
Sometimes God seems far away because somewhere in our past our understanding of God got all twisted up. Some purple--faced preacher snarled at us about a punishing God or told us that some horrible thing was God's will, and our view of God got bent out of shape. The way it often happens is that a young child will experience the death of a loved one - a sibling or a parent - and some well--meaning soul will tell the child that the death was God's will. The child then carries that anger at God through a lifetime, never able to reach across the unfairness of that idea to experience God's love. The end result is that the person either never connects with God, or connects with God only after a long healing process.
Maybe, like the Lutheran pastor, some grief or hurt or tragedy has thrust itself into our lives, and we just can't square what we have experienced with our view of a loving and good God. We are angry and confused about life and the God who created this life. Our pain crowds out our attempts to think the problem through and may even keep us from offering joyous worship to God. Our pain blocks our access to God.
We do not even have to be in grief or a tragedy or any particular problem to experience distance from God. Even if our lives are okay, and no grief intrudes or arguments come up, we wonder about God. We are comfortable, not in crisis, but we just don't feel close to God. We believe in God, believe all the right things, but God still seems far off.
Because we experience God as far off, we do what we can to bridge the gap. We read our Bibles, but sometimes that raises as many questions as it answers. We come to church and sometimes a hymn or communion or maybe even a sermon will cut through the fog and help us experience God's presence. Those experiences don't usually last, however, and the feeling of God's distance creeps back in.
Most of the time, we get by with this experience of the distance between God and us. We are busy with jobs, family, or hobbies. We might wish we were closer to God, but we can live with the distance. We might be wistful for God's presence, but it doesn't seem to be our biggest problem. Then something happens and it is a problem. Our world crashes down around us, and we ache for an experience of God's comforting closeness.
Jeremiah tells us that God knows about the distance and separation, too. God also experiences the gap that we ourselves feel. We experience God as far away, sometimes just when we need God the most. God experiences the distance as our sinfulness keeping us apart. God experiences our sinfulness as breaking the relationship. At one point in the book of Jeremiah, God seems genuinely concerned that the people of Israel are incapable of obedience. God wonders if the people are so thoroughly sinful that it goes to the core of their being. God asks through Jeremiah, "Can Ethiopians change their skin, or leopards their spots?" (13:23). God seems to be asking if people, or at least the people of Judah, can be faithful and responsive enough that God can enter into relationship with them.
All of this sounds almost like a soap opera. We want a relationship with God. God wants a relationship with us, but the two sides can never get together. We are confused and isolated from God. God is hurt and grieved by our sins. An impassable gulf separates us.
It sounds as if we are just stuck. God is remote, and we are mired in our sinfulness. Jeremiah shows us the way to get unstuck. God will reach across the distance between us to establish the relationship. God will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and by extension, with us in the church. The difference in this new covenant is that God will enable us to fulfill our part of it. In one of the grandest statements in the Old Testament, Jeremiah has God promise to write the law on our hearts. Instead of writing the law on stone tablets or parchment, God will write the law on our hearts.
The law was God's gift to Israel and to the world. A better word for law might be "teaching." This teaching was more than just the commandments. The people of Israel referred to the narratives of the faith as "teaching," as well as the actual commandments. The stories of Abraham and Sarah, of Moses and the Exodus, and all the rest were part of this teaching. The meaning of those stories, of how they nourish our faith will be written on our hearts. God's teaching shows us who we are, how our faith came to be. The law was intended to teach us how to worship, how to love one another, how to build a community. That will be written on our hearts.
What an act of grace! God will work within us to heal our disobedience and end the alienation between God and us. This verse reminds us of the words of the psalmist, "Put a new and right spirit within me" (Psalm 51:10b). It reminds us of Paul, who said to the Philippians, "I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6). God has begun a good work among us. God will give us the wisdom, the maturity, the loving attitude, the energy to do God's will. We can only assume that God will write the law on our hearts, will work within us in such a way that we are healed, but that our freedom is preserved. God will not force the law on us, but will allow the law to regenerate us.
Pastor Lischer's word to the retired pastor who came to see him because he could not pray with his wife was that God would do what he could not do himself. "It's when you can't do anything to make amends that God does it all. That's the most powerful absolution there is. You say you can't break through to God. What if God is breaking through to you?"2
God is indeed breaking through to us. God is writing the law on our hearts even now. The separation between God and us will not be forever. Knowing that God is working to write the law on our hearts, to end the separation, to forgive our sins, we can rejoice.
If we are confused about God and don't know how to solve the big disputes of the church and the world, we can rejoice, because God is writing the law on our hearts, and we will someday know God more fully.
If we feel lonely and don't experience God close to us, we can rejoice, because God is writing the law on our hearts, and we will someday have a deep and fulfilling relationship with God.
If we struggle to overcome temptation and find ourselves too weak to do what we believe we should, we can rejoice, because God is writing the law on our hearts, and someday we will triumph over our weakness and sinfulness.
If we are battered by the grief and pain of life and wonder if we can keep going, we can rejoice because God is writing the law on our hearts, and someday we can put away our grief.
The days are surely coming when God will draw us close and we will feel God's love. The days are surely coming when we will experience God's forgiveness and feel the weight of guilt fall off our backs. The days are surely coming when God will write the law on our hearts; God will be our God, and we will be God's people.
____________
1. Richard Lischer, Open Secrets: A Spiritual Journey Through A Country Church (New York: Doubleday, 2001), p. 176.
2. Ibid., p. 177.
