Readings for Sunday March 29, 2009
These few verses from Jeremiah sure are the occasion for lots of discussion among the scholars! There’s all kinds of discussion about what exactly Jeremiah meant by a “new covenant” – how it differs from the old one; whether it means the old one is replaced (or broken beyond repair). There’s much discussion about whether this anticipates Jesus; whether Jesus had it in mind at the Last Supper (“this wine is the new covenant in my blood”); and whether or not Christians can rightly appropriate to themselves the notion that God has fulfilled this prophecy in and through Jesus and/or the church.
An awful lot of the discussion – even in the most recent papers I read – makes me uncomfortable. I’m in the process of preparing for a Forum on antisemitism, and the ways that these Christians talk about “new covenant” often set off alarm bells for me and anyone else who’s concerned with Christian antisemitism. In the name of Christian superiority we have claimed that God no longer has covenant with the Jews; that Jeremiah’s prophecy was predicting the birth of Christianity; that if Jews want to be in covenant with God now they need to become Christian; that our “covenant” with God is superior to theirs not only because they “broke” theirs (and, presumably we didn’t break ours), but also because theirs needed to be written in books whereas ours doesn’t.
Most of that smacks of self-serving Christian back-patting, and we’ve got to avoid this!
Jeremiah himself was speaking to Israelites shortly after Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians. For decades he had been warning them that they had broken God’s covenant and that dire things would happen as a result. Other prophets of that pre-Exilic time had encouraged people to trust that God’s promises to David meant that Jerusalem would never fall; Jeremiah denounced this view and warned that the only way that God would spare Jerusalem would be for the people to radically change their behaviour. They didn’t; Jerusalem fell; and only then does Jeremiah begin to change his tune. The thrust of this passage is that in spite of everything that has happened – in spite of the faithlessness of Israel and the natural (or Divine) consequences of their faithless behaviour – God has not given up on them. The covenant will be renewed and the relationship with God restored.
It’s stretching things dreadfully to argue that this covenant renewal happens through Jesus; that’s far beyond the scope of Jeremiah’s vision and defamatory of present-day Judaism. But it’s not stretching things at all, I think, to argue that this is yet one more example of how God responds to disaster. There is good news for both Jews and Christians in the notion that God’s response is, yet again, to reach out to human beings and seek ever deeper and more life-giving relationship. That’s a hope that both our faiths can celebrate.
Furthermore, the hope looks to a time when the barriers between us and God will be broken down. We won’t need words in a book; we won’t need to study our traditions; the relationship will be direct and whole. This is akin to the vision of a world where swords are beaten into ploughshares and enemies sit down at table to eat together; it’s an end-time vision rather than a description of post-exilic Judaism and/or “life in Christ.” But as such it’s important for us – if that’s where the world is heading how do we live in “the already” as well as in the “not yet?”
Having decided that this passage is really an “end-times” passage, I have some important clues about the kinds of interpretative questions to ask. We talk about “end-times” in order to shed light on how to live now; how to live in the light of what’s ultimately most important. It helps shift our life priorities and may encourage us to make different choices in the day-to-day decisions we need to make. For example, if we believe that the world will end with a massive banquet where all enemies will sit down and break bread with each other, then we shouldn’t be doing anything now that will make that banquet more difficult to stomach! There’s a pretty strong mandate to behave honourably with our enemies, and to work towards reconciliation as much as is humanly possible, trusting that God will do the rest in God’s time. We don’t want to be at cross-purposes for what God intends.
In the Jeremiah vision of the end-times we are given unprecedented and barrier-free access to the divine. We won’t need to wrestle with Scripture or tradition; we won’t need to weigh the words of wise teachers who disagree, and try to discern the voice of the Spirit in the positions of each. We won’t be like the pre-exilic Israelites, trying to decide whether Jeremiah or his opponents are more correct about God’s concerns and intentions. We’ll know directly. And we’ll be able to ask God all the ultimate questions that seem to have no satisfying answers in this life … and actually understand whatever answer God offers! Who wouldn’t want that!
But in the meantime two things are clear – God continues to reach out to humanity in spite of our failure to respond; and we need to keep trying to get it right, if only so that our lives and life-decisions will be seen to have contributed to the mending of the world. For Jeremiah’s people, it was startlingly good news to hear that God was still with them and not defeated by the gods of the Babylonians who had sacked Jerusalem. For us it’s good news to proclaim that God has not been defeated by the forces of consumerism, scientism, modernism, or nihilism. It’s good news to point out that human generosity, hope, passion, love, courage and sacrifice can be understood to be grounded in something deeper and bigger than any human being, and that what we call triumphs of the human spirit may indeed be glimpses of the Divine continuing to reach through the barriers of our frailty to inspire, nurture, and call forth new life. It reminds me of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians – “now we see in a glass darkly, but then face-to-face; now we know in part, then we shall understand fully, even as we have been fully understood.” The covenant promise Jeremiah proclaims is a promise that runs both directions – we shall understand fully, and we shall be fully known.
For me, that means I will continue to wrestle with Scripture and tradition – striving to catch glimpses of the Divine in the midst of very human and sometimes flawed insight. I will be humble in my assertions, and non-judgmental as I strive to take seriously what others who disagree with me have to say. I will trust that there are good reasons for other’s behaviour (or God’s) even when I can’t now understand what those might be. And I will live as though the Divine Mystery cares – about me, about my family and friends, about the town I live in and the people who see things so differently than me, and ultimately about all of Creation.
All appearances to the contrary, God has not given up on the world – and the glimpse that Jeremiah received reassured him (and can reassure us) that God continues to reach out to us, to call us into covenant, to know and be known, to love and be loved. For exiles trying to pull the threads of life together after the collapse of all they held sacred this was good news in the extreme. To us, who are watching the collapse of the church as we have known it, it can also be an important proclamation.