2024 03 17 Lent 5 B
Jeremiah 31:31-34
• Psalm 51:1-12 or Psalm
119:9-16 • Hebrews 5:5-10 • John
12:20-33
Throughout
this season of Lent we’ve been looking at the covenants that God made with His
people. The Covenant with Noah, then
Abraham, then with the Israelite nation through Moses. In today’s readings, we hear about the
promise of a new covenant and it sounds like, and is, very good news. God’s New Covenant involves us simply,
innately knowing God’s ways. We are told
that He writes His laws in our minds and in our hearts. However, much like giving birth to a
wonderful gift of new life, there is pain and suffering to bring this new
covenant into being.
In each of
the Covenants that God has made, he has revealed more of who He is. It begins with Noah and the flood and is a
simple promise made to all of mankind and all the creatures of the earth. It tells us that God is concerned about
everyone and wants to be in relationship with all. Whether you have accepted the word of God or
not.. Whether you are baptised or not… God has made a covenant of love with
you, and whenever you see a rainbow, you can call this fact to mind. God cares for and loves us all.
The next
Covenant was when God made the promise to Abraham that he would be the father
of many and that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through
him. This was a covenant made to a
specific line of people – the Israelite people, but it also indicates a
blessing for all. Abraham is also
considered the father of all those who believe God in faith, because he
believed God would accomplish what he said he would do.
Next, we had
the Mosaic covenant where God revealed himself to Moses and the people of
Israel through rescuing them out of Egypt and giving them the Commandments – a
blue print, if you like, for a wholesome life where love and goodness can be
known and the community can thrive.
In these
revelations about God, we are doing what those Greek visitors were doing; they
came to see Jesus. In that word “see”,
the implication is that these people want to know and understand Jesus. Seeing is connected to God being revealed.
Today we
read from the prophet Jeremiah about the promise of a New Covenant. In this new covenant, God will write his law
on people’s hearts. It is ultimately about
us knowing God, and about God being revealed to us.
God is so
beyond our understanding, but God wants us to know him. The law that God gave through Moses was not
meant to restrict people, but to show the way for life to flourish. Some pushed the boundaries, while others
worried about breaking the law and being condemned without hope. So God promises a New Covenant. Why?
Because, in His great love, he desires every good thing for us and that
we should be free. He wants us to live
an abundant life, where we enjoy walking with God, free from guilt, worry and
completely uninhibited – and God wants us to properly SEE him and see that He
loves us and is concerned for our good.
In our Gospel reading Jesus tells us; “Now is the
judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth,
will draw all people to myself." ….“Now
is the judgment of this world” - I’ve been told that the word translated as
Judgment, actually is more like defence.
Jesus came to defend us.
God forgives
our Sin and remembers our sin no more.
This is a very foreign concept.
When someone wrongs us, we might forgive, but we rarely forget. The message of the cross of Jesus is to
reassure us that God loves us so much that he has made restitution for us in
the spiritual realm. To modern people in
our contemporary society, much of our faith is baffling, but there are some who
know the weight of and seriousness of their actions, and to those people, the Israelites
and people of Jesus’ time, who were used to a sacrificial system to render them
being in an acceptable position before God, this made perfect sense.
The letter
to the Hebrews tries to explain some of this to us, but much of it is lost on
us, unless we understand a few things. It
says; "You are a priest forever, according to the order of
Melchizedek." Melchizedek, was a
mysterious character who appeared to Abraham.
Melchizedek was the King of Salem.
Salem meant “Peace” and later to become Jerusalem. Melchizedek was also a priest of God most
high. He blessed Abraham and confirmed
God’s covenant and Abraham blessed him and gave him an offering. Melchizedek is a character with no genealogy,
and therefore a priest and king without beginning or end. We are told that Jesus is this order of
priest. The word, Melchizedek, means King of Righteousness. The Levitical priests of the Israelite nation
would offer sacrifices to God on behalf of the people, but the sacrifice that
our priest and king, Jesus, offered was that of himself.
It can not
be said that Jesus doesn’t understand us at our very most weakest, because
Jesus was pushed to that point through his suffering. It can not be said that the cross was easy
for Jesus to bear because he was God…. If anything, the injustice and knowledge
would have made it all the heavier a burden – But also remember that while on
earth Jesus operated as one who was fully human. We know that Jesus cried out to God loudly
and with tears…. The cross was not easy.
Yet Jesus submitted to the will of God the father and he submitted
himself to bearing that cross out of love for the whole world.
This is the
New Covenant. God makes a way for us to
be forgiven and to be united to himself, through the willing sacrifice of Jesus. Now, we are told that as part of this New
Covenant, God writes His law in our minds and in our hearts. If we look around at the world, it is pretty
obvious that this isn’t something magic that happened at that time and now
everyone lives in knowledge of God with peace and harmony.
We enter the
New Covenant with our free will, freely choosing to accept Jesus as our
saviour. We affirm this decision through our baptism. In that Baptism, God imparts all the gifts He
has for us, but we might not be enjoying those gifts if we haven’t opened them.
God respects
our will. All of our lives we are faced
with choices to follow God’s way or go our own – To enter into a Covenant where
we call the God most high, our God, or to act contrary to God’s good ways.
Knowing
God’s law and wisdom intrinsically was something that was experienced by the
early church when the Holy Spirit came. Pentecost
was the festival of the giving of the Law on Mount Sini. When the Holy Spirit came, those frightened
and hiding men and women became emboldened and filled with divine wisdom. The law was imparted into their minds and
hearts divinely, through the Holy Spirit dwelling in them. God gives this same Holy Spirit to you and
I.
The Holy
Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus with us always.
We can study the Bible and go to all manner of colleges, lectures and
conferences, but when it all boils down, ALL can get the ways of God wrong, no
matter how much learning, because God is so far beyond our human minds. Yet God wants to be known and gives us the
gift of the Holy Spirit to teach us and write God’s ways in our hearts. To live this life the way God intended and to
have the strength to make the choices that God would have us make, we need the
very essence of Jesus – His love, compassion, mercy and wisdom - His ability to
say yes to God even in the face of great suffering – and God has given this to
us through His Holy Spirit - through the
New Covenant.
To say YES
to this Covenant, means to die to the past and to die to being our own God – in
charge of our own lives. We lose that “Life”, but we gain life eternal. As baptised people, we have already made this
decision, and we confirm it through communion each week. As you hear the word’s, “body of Christ”,
understand that the decision to say AMEN, is you saying, “YES I accept Christ’s
completed sacrifice and I willingly enter this New Covenant.”
As we
journey to the celebration of the cross and resurrection, let’s be aware of our
choice to enter that New and wonderful Covenant.
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