A New Covenant (Lake Harriet Bandshell)

Jeremiah 31:31-34

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

John 3:16-17

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’

Thank you to Monroe Crossing for providing special music during this outdoor worship service at Lake Harriet Bandshell.

I want to tell you a story. It’s a story so old, it’s new; so familiar that in the telling you might feel its breath tickling the hairs on the back of your neck, its resonance seeping into your bones. 

It’s a “deep time” story, the kind that opens like a trap door, pulling you down into wisdom that remembers your place within the cosmic order of things, not only in human chronology but within rhythms that are timeless, the low hum of what is really, really true. 

Once upon a time, thousands of years ago, there lived a people in the land of Judah, a portion of what was left of the Kingdoms of Israel. They were rooted in stories about the good old days, rituals to honor the years of prosperity and the suffering of their ancestors. 

They wrote down the things they wanted to remember the way they wanted to remember them and taught their children what it means to be exceptional, chosen and set apart from the rest—not because God’s blessing would end with them, but because it would flow through them, a new beginning for all of creation. 

Sometimes their patterns for faith and life brought them closer to God, to the truth about who they were and whose they were… and sometimes the world got loud. The whims of kings changed the script, empires would rise and fall, and the only thing the people could hear was breaking news and their own blood pressure going up. 

You know this story because it is so many stories.

The history books mark it with singular dates—they would have you believe that Jerusalem crumbled in the blink of an eye, that Babylon moved in overnight and everything changed by dawn—that this land was discovered in 1492 or that the Civil Rights movement was one speech about a dream. But loss and gain, death and resurrection—coming undone and becoming anew—have never been so simple or separate.

If you took a detour around road construction to get here; then you know. It’s a mess.

if you compost in your kitchen or yard; if you raise children or care for aging parents; if you live with mental illness or are starting a small business; if you organize for justice in your community; if you mark time with the liturgical calendar; then you know. It’s a mess. 

Falling apart—losing liberty—is a slow creep. It happens in fits and starts, interrupted by good news and bouts of laughter and human connection and acts of kindness and signs of healing and the fresh perspective of generations turning over.

Back to the story.

The people Israel knew that nothing lasts forever, but there were so many things they thought would last longer and hold stronger. Things unraveled both too quickly and too slowly so that when they tried to make sense of what was happening, their metrics didn’t compute. It was impossible to measure the unknowable in between. 

(It is impossible to measure the unknowable in between.)

The Babylonian occupation was both pressure and pain, a pressing down on their chests that made it harder to breathe, harder to rebel, harder to get organized, harder to make it make sense, harder to cry out for help, harder to recognize their neighbors with love. 

When the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, the people had to wonder, “Is God dead in the rubble, or gone somewhere else? Where else can God live if not in this holy house? Does God still see and hear us, still care that we cannot breathe, that our bodies are in bondage, that we are fighting for freedom and losing?”

The oppressor knew that its strongest weapon would be to tear the people apart, to divide them from each other and add distance to their grief. The little logistics and micro challenges of being separated would keep them too distracted to remember the truest thing of all: that their bodies were living temples, their breath was from heaven, they belonged to each other—no matter what. 

Some from Judah were scattered, transported into exile, moved off their lands, away from their neighbors and norms. They looked for God in the wild places, searching for signs that the worst thing was not the last thing, finding signs that God is everywhere.

And some remained, stayed because they had to, because they couldn’t imagine being anywhere else or because the rubble was their rubble. They persisted in Jerusalem, waiting and hoping that someday the others would return.

The Remnant and the Exiles. It felt like a lifetime apart because it was. Seventy years of grief and trauma, wanting to go back to the way things used to be, dreams contained and compromised, with one goal in mind: survival.

Seventy years of one foot in front of the next, the rhythms of falling apart interrupted by the good news of gardens and grandchildren, so that glimmers of hope break in and they remember: dying and rising are not so simple or separate. It’s a mess.

Prophetic words of judgment meet them in these pressed down and scattered years: 

Actions have consequences. Reconciliation does not come before repentance and reparations. Cheap peace is just tension and status quo. God is at work in the deconstruction of things that pass away, of things that keep creation from real liberation and life. 

And then prophetic words of hope come, too. Into the unknowable in between, God breathes news of bigger dreams and unbreakable promises, a future free of 

occupation and scarcity and fear and rankings and division.

The people cannot imagine it. Their muscles for dreaming big have atrophied a bit.

A new and unconditional covenant? One that does not need stone tablets or temple, but stirs in the bodies and breath of every person, written on their hearts so that it pumps and moves and lives so that everyone is sacred and everyone is this story?

The people cannot imagine it. We cannot imagine it. 

But we believe in a God who does. 

We believe in a God who abides in rubble and in wilderness, with the Remnant and the Exiles, with judgment and hope, in the dying and the rising of nations and systems and people.

Friends, if this story sounds familiar, it’s because it is our story, too. We are people divided from one another, feeling left behind or cast out, who know what it’s like when change is both too fast and too slow, who wonder how we’ll ever find a way back to one another. 

If you are discouraged by these weary unknowable in-between years, you are not alone. The Spirit has gathered this semblance of Remnant and Exile this morning to speak and sing a word of hope into our discouragement so it does not become despair. 

You are not lost, Beloveds. We are not beyond redemption and this distance does not get the last word. 

Because we are claimed by the God who makes and keeps promises, who decided long ago to write them on our hearts, to breathe them into our lungs, to make heaven’s delight for us so abundantly clear that the grief and suffering of this world cannot blot it out completely. It keeps breaking into our messy unbecoming with music and poetry and jokes and hugs and donuts and dancing and protest and the sounds of creation, still wild and trying. 

This love is stubborn and honest, tender and whole. It does not run out and there is always enough for everyone to be satisfied. 

There are days when I cannot imagine it—a God who never gives up on us, who proclaims lopsided promises, who schemes for good way in advance, who stays rooted in a keen interest in all living things…

But it’s okay when I cannot imagine it. I believe in a God who can. Who does. 

Who said “the days are surely coming” and so it must be true. He has—and is actively—saving the whole world so that we are free to love it and to be alive in it.

Friends, you are the Body of Christ, a temple of the living God. This is THE story. This is YOUR story. To tell, to embody, to breathe, to inspire hope for the captive, the displaced, and the forgotten.

May your hope spring from God’s deep and unfailing delight for you and the whole creation. May your rubble and wild be of good use for the next generation for how they are finding a way back to one another. And may the blessings of God flow to and from your heart, where love is written in forgiveness that lasts forever.