Jeremiah 31: 27-34
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals.
And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord.
In those days they shall no longer say: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.
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.
My husband and I recently moved to Maryland's Eastern Short from Georgia, where we were both born and had lived for over half of our married years, including our four years in seminary. We are both ordained pastors in the PCUSA, but about ten years ago, after several years of us trying to balance vocational ministry in two separate congregations with our then three teenage sons, I felt a tug to take a break from “traditional” ministry and to listen for how God might be calling me in more creative, less traditional way to be a “minister.”
At the time, our oldest was entering college and I was primary caregiver for my dad. I wanted and needed fulfilling work that would utilize my gifts and skills, but would allow me the freedom and flexibility to be the mother and daughter that I needed to be at that time.
So I returned back to my original calling, that of a math teacher and tutor. For over thirty years now, I have taught and tutored math from 6th grade up to PreCalculus.
No, I’m not here to give you a surprise math lesson or a pop quiz, and no, I didn’t learn about teaching math in seminary. But I did learn a lot about hope. I didn’t learn about much about teenagers in seminary, but I did learn a lot about grace.
Jeremiah’s words to the Israelites that we read this morning are all about grace and hope. And let me tell you, when you are dealing with teenagers who don’t enjoy math and struggle to “get it,” and with parents who are at wit’s end with CoVid learning, virtual lessons, and plummeting grades, and teachers who are pressed to cover the material at a certain pace in order to meet state standards, there is plenty of room for grace. Plenty. And it is from this grace that hope can arise.
So when people ask me what ministry I’m in now, I usually reply that I’m in math ministry. Because truthfully, the work I do, the things I see, it’s not so different from the stories we find in scripture. Both include cycles of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation. Both involve stories of comfort, then discomfort, then the promise of hope and the arrival of renewal.
Darkness and Despair
Many students are feeling the depths of despair these days. And as a society, we are trying to figure out how to keep our students and our teachers healthy and safe as the world wrestles with a pandemic. Students are coming off of a year of virtual learning with little to no supervision. Many live in households that are not conducive to concentration, some even lacking reliable internet access.
I suspect a lot of the students did whatever they could to pass and didn’t really learn the material they should have. I try to show them grace, but it’s frustrating. Anxiety is high, and we are all stressed.
“I have a 52, and I don’t remember any Algebra! How am I going to pass PreCalculus?”
“My son was quarantined for ten days and is now totally lost. He is so far behind in all of his classes. Can you recommend a tutor?
“Is it too late to change her schedule?”
Just as students, teachers, and parents find themselves in spiral of frustration that seems to have no end, in today’s passage, God has been beyond frustrated with the Israelites for years, and for a variety of reasons.
In Jeremiah 1, we find out that they have made offerings to other Gods (Jeremiah 1:16), and they have worshipped the work of their own hands (1:16)
In chapter 2, they have defiled God’s land (2:7) and made God’s heritage an abomination (2:7)
It’s like it is midterm and the Israelites have found themselves failing miserably. Life has been difficult for them for a while, and they have not quite lived up to their potential. God is not pleased, and Jeremiah is the one in the middle of it all.
They have been ripped from their homeland, utterly displaced. They no longer have access to the temple, the place where they literally believed God lived. It sits miles away from them, in ruins. They are quite sure they had been abandoned. They are living the dark night of the soul.
Enter Jeremiah, with these words of grace in the midst of despair, with words of assurance that hope that is on the horizon for God’s chosen people Israel.
Promise and Hope
The only ones more in need of grace and hope than the Israelites might just today’s teenagers. So I sit with students before or after school and I say something like this: “Let’s forget everything that’s happened from March of 2020 until now, and let’s just look forward.”I say this because I’ve learned that with many of these kids, it’s a psychological game. When you have a 54 average and the last 18 months have been like nothing any of us have ever experienced, the pit can feel so deep that finding a way out seems next to, if not impossible.
It’s not over yet, I tell them. There’s still room for hope.
They come for extra help after school, they watch endless videos online and retake assessments. We talk about renewed effort, about moving forward and not looking back. We talk about new agreements and a new mentality. As teachers, we practice grace and embody hope, and the students begin to hold their heads up and move forward, taking one step at a time, day by day, grade by grade.
Hope lives.
Just like my students, the Israelites are so mired in their troubles and their failure that they are sure God has forgotten them. It is to these people that Jeremiah brings words of hope and promise. “The day is coming,” the prophet writes, “when God will again sow and build and plant.”
Destruction, despair, failure—these do not get the last word.
Jeremiah assures them, assures us, that the way forward is paved by God, but it looks different than we might expect. It’s a new way, a new covenant, unlike the old. “You see, as much as I love you,” God says, “you just can’t do it. You’re not capable. This will not be a covenant that you can break, nor will it be a life that you can choose to live. This new covenant, this new law, will be written on your hearts. It will be a part of you just as the color of your eyes or the texture of your skin.
God promises a new future, and the Israelites grasp it, holding on for dear life, grateful for the grace, leaning into the promise, and keeping their focus on the hope of the future.
Looking forward, forgiving and forgetting
As my students approach me after that first failed test, I begin to gently urge them out of the pit. We sit down with their grade sheet and make a plan for the next week, the next unit, and maybe even the rest of the quarter. The future is clean and fresh, empty of F’s and 0’s. Sure, we know the old ones are still there, but there’s something about those empty squares that make the hope more believable, more real.
The empty squares don’t remind them of the past, but rather point toward the promise that lies in the future. It’s a new day, and they are confident they can do this. They look forward, focusing on the horizon.
Just students who come through my door with their heads down and their hearts aching, the Israelites also know they are in a mess. They are quite sure God has abandoned them.
But Jeremiah shows them another way, promising them that God is faithful despite their unfaithfulness. It’s not over yet, Jeremiah tells Israel. There’s still hope. God is a God of justice, of faithfulness. The God who created and loves this world has a new covenant in mind. A clean slate. A new plan.
Unlike the old covenant, which is an external, law-based yoke, this new covenant has walked among us and been written on our hearts. This new covenant is not rigid or forced or legalistic, but rather it is “embodied willingly in those committed to it in their behaviors.”
Just like students find hope in the empty squares of a forward-looking grade sheet, so too we can find hope in God’s promised new covenant—one that focuses more on conversation and less on commandments, more on relationship and less on rules.
For the House of Israel, indeed for us with each new day, God is turning the page in the grade book, wiping each column, each row, clean. “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more,” says the Lord.
As one theologian puts it “God’s strategy is to practice divine amnesia, an amnesia rooted in forgiveness and forgetting, for in (these) God gives optimistic opportunity.”
Today’s voice of hope from Jeremiah suggests that there is light no matter how deep the darkness may seem. Grace abounds, God’s promise is sure, and hope is on the horizon. “The days are surely coming, says the Lord…”
What is the horizon which you seek? What are the days for which you wait?
Are you waiting for the pain of grief to subside, to no longer feel the weight of it with each breath, with each step?
Are you waiting for the day when your loved ones can find a job, return to work, and make enough to keep the mortgage paid, to have food on the table, and maybe even a little left over for a movie and some popcorn at the end of the week?
Are you waiting for the one you love to finally realize that she is worth loving, or to realize that God loves her despite her failures and her rocky past?
Are you waiting for the longtime friend or family member to take his last breath, declaring victory over the evils of cancer or aging or Alzheimer’s?
Are you waiting for the day when the cloud lifts from your soul, when the overwhelming sadness that you feel, but that no one else can see, is finally overcome by a desire to keep living?
Are you waiting for the day when you feel again the unconditional love of a mother or a father, long gone, or maybe not so long-gone, who loved you more than life itself?
What are the days for which you wait?
Whatever they are, know that there is hope—a light shining in the darkness.
Wherever you are, know that there is forgiveness—from God and from those who love you.
Whatever you’ve done, know that God remembers no more—you’ve been washed clean.
Whoever you are, know that God loves you enough to have written that love within you, on your very heart.
Know that you are God’s, that God’s got you. Despite the darkness that you might feel pressing in all around, God’s got you.
And this God has not abandoned us, will not abandon, despite our failures and our disobedience. Nothing we have done puts us out of redemption’s reach. Nothing.
May you be renewed, refreshed, and rejuvenated this day by the promise of hope and the reality of grace.
May you find hope in the empty squares of a grade sheet, knowing that with each new day, you are given the chance to start over. Again and again and again.
May you find comfort in knowing that despite what you think your grade sheet says at the end of a week, or a semester, or a year, or a lifetime, God’s promises are for YOU, for us. And God has got us all.
Benediction
Go from this place today sure of God’s faithfulness and of God’s promise.
Go form this place believing that hope lives.
Go from this place knowing that God’s got you.
And not only does God have you, but God’s got the one you’re most worried about.
Indeed, God’s got us all.
Thanks be to God.
