Some Thoughts on the New Covenant

O God of all that is good, we come to you hungry, burdened, and uncertain.

We come to you alone and together, by plan and by accident, or so it seems.

And then you come to us, when we are alone and when we are together, and there is love.

Let us feel your presence, that we might lay down our burdens and carry those of others,

Let us hear your voice, that we might fill ourselves, and fill others, with your grace and strength.

Let us know that we are blessed, that we may bless others.

We pray this in Christ who was and is and is to come. Amen

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There is wisdom in this, and it’s not so obvious that we don’t need to be reminded of it from time to time. Remarkably, its inverse—if it is broke, fix it—is so obvious that we humans often ignore it altogether, as if it’s somehow contrary to our human nature. Seriously, how common, and how human, is it that we keep doing that thing that feels good but which we know is shortening our lives and diminishing our capacities? How common, and how human, is it that we keep saying that thing which might have made sense once, but now we just say it to keep from thinking through difficult circumstances? How common, and how human, is it that we see others who are not like us and draw conclusions about them that are unwarranted, unkind, and which guarantee that they and we will never have a chance to laugh together, or to help each other, or solve a problem in the neighborhood?

That’s a lot of broke, and it’s not new or unique to our community or our moment in history. The people of Israel came out of Egypt, crossed the Jordan, and settled West of Eden, according to the promise of their god Yahweh, under the leadership of Abraham. It took them awhile, but eventually they made it and thrived in their new country for hundreds of years. For the whole of this time, however, they didn’t hold up their part of the bargain. They didn’t follow the rules, especially the one about having no other God before Yahweh. They had priests and a temple and a calendar, and procedures for sacrifice and daily living and it was all written down in books, and yet Yahweh’s people didn’t trust any part of it. Eventually, perhaps predictably, it all came apart, and they were overrun by the armies of Babylon. The people of Israel were dispersed, and exiled, and enslaved.

Just prior to this last sad business, sometime in the seventh century BC, the Prophet Jeremiah wrote or spoke the words we heard this morning:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel. . . 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 master, 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.

It was broke, and God fixed it. Notice that He didn’t actually fix the Israelites, but God tore up the contract and drew up a new one.  A new covenant that I will be your God and you will be my people. That part, of course, is pretty much the essence of the old covenant, but the new one goes further; it  assures a measure of freedom that His people had not known; God wrote the law on their hearts instead of in books which required the interpretation of elite experts, and he declared that there would be no one favored over any other in his sight, no one, from the least to the greatest. In Jeremiah’s prophecy, God is giving God’s people the chance and the tools to fix themselves, to live freely, as they were created to live.

That’s the New Covenant. ~~New Covenant’ is one of those terms that we use as we name ourselves Christians. We live by the New Covenant of course, not the Old one, we get it, we’re cool; we hear and use the phrase New Covenant as if its meaning were self-evident. I certainly acted and spoke that way for years; Old Testament, New Testament, Old Covenant, New Covenant, Them, Us, you know, makes sense, right?

And this is going to sound very strange, but my understanding began to change when Bill Clinton of all people, repeatedly used the term “New Covenant” in this first campaign for president in 1991; he used it to signify his vision for a government that balanced prosperity with responsibility. The biblical echo in his use of the term was entirely deliberate, perhaps cynical, but not really inauthentic considering his Baptist upbringing. The term didn’t make it into the history books, but it did call my attention to a foundational element of my life as a Christian about which I was clearly ignorant. (This was happening a lot in those years; I was in graduate school and a great many veils were being lifted, those that obscured the nature of language, the mechanics of knowledge, and the rat-race of academia.) And perhaps I digress, but perhaps not—The New Covenant is like the lifting of a veil; it’s an inflection point in history; before it we were blessed and protected but blundered about in a kind of visceral darkness, after it we have a shot, at least, at living in and living for the Kingdom of God.

What gives us this shot is that two essential principles take precedence above all others. The first is the universal moral law that is written, as Jeremiah says, on our hearts. This is a huge subject, but a simple proposition, which is that all of us have within us a moral sense which transcends all culture and all history. We may learn it from our parents and teach it to our children, but a consciousness of right and wrong is not unique to any place or time. The readiest example I can think of was actually printed on the back of the program the first time I came to this church on Palm Sunday of 2015.

The graphic on that program did not say “Golden Rule,” but the transcendent universality of that rule was its point.

Our version: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

In the Mahabharata, the sacred epic of ancient India: Do not to others what you do not wish done to yourself; and wish for others too what you desire and long for for yourself–this is the whole of Dharma; heed it well

In the Tamil tradition: Why does one hurt others knowing what it is to be hurt?

In Ancient Persia: That nature alone is good which refrains from doing to another whatsoever is not good for itself.

In Ancient Rome: Treat your inferior as you would wish your superior to treat you.

There are similar sayings in Ancient Greece and Egypt, and there are dozens of versions in indigenous African languages and among pre-Columbian peoples in North America. One could argue that the practicality and common sense-ness of this Empathy principle is a product of evolution—that it’s such obvious common sense that any social creature would embrace it. I do not find that argument persuasive; if that were true, how is it that we are the only social species that seeks to follow this law even though we fail much of the time? Maybe dolphins get it, I don’t know, but we’re really bad at empathy, actually, as a species, and yet this law is written on our hearts world-wide from as far back as we can discern any cultural value, anywhere. There is something larger involved here, and a relationship—a covenantal relationship—between creator and created seems like a very good candidate to me, and it is just such a relationship that Jeremiah describes as the New Covenant.

The second principle on which the New Covenant rests is that of the fundamental equality of all created beings in living out the law that is written on our hearts.  And it’s important to note that this New Covenant equality is not a New Testament idea. As I mentioned earlier—Jeremiah’s prophecy came at least six hundred years before Jesus. But Christ Jesus was clearly swimming in the same stream when he boiled down all the law and the prophets before him into two Great Commandments: to love God and love your neighbor. [][][] Sovereignty of God and equality among each and all in God’s Kingdom. That’s the New Covenant. And just in case this deal was too big and bewildering, Jesus specified it further: “Love one another just as I have loved you.” This New Commandment actually distills the two principles of the New Covenant into one. Love one another as God has loved you. In your lives, each day upon the next, Know this, and do this.

And so we have both the what, and the how of the New Covenant: There’s God, and there’s all of us, and the working out of this covenant—the real life part—starts and ends with love.  

Amen