COVENANTS OF THE HEART
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday March 29, 2009
Text: Jeremiah 31:31-34
Heart felt; hearts on fire; hearts of stone; hearty; heart sick; heart of gold; heart light; heartless; heart of the matter...these are all terms from common speech that allude to the significance of heart talk in our daily communication. What does it all mean? In a book entitled, Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings, Gail Godwin surveys the subject broadly and notes that “In our contemporary bottom line society, heart-knowledge - based on feeling values, relationship, personal courage, intimations of the ineffable, a passion for transcendence - tends to be mistrusted as impractical, profitless, or nonexistent. Where is ‘the heart,’ anyway scoffs the bird-of-prey executive, trudging joylessly on his treadmill, except under your breastbone?...We work these literal hearts hard, the only hearts we have left. We stay so well defended that we hesitate to pursue things passionately enough to risk a broken heart” (Gail Godwin, Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings, p. 18.)
Indeed, we inhabit social settings in which affairs of the heart are often reduced to soap opera sentimentality or to a literal obsession with a heart healthy diet, settings in which promises are easily made and more easily abandoned, in which community welfare is sacrificed to the bottom line, and violence, both secular and sacred, is the solution to every conflict of personality and culture. So today’s ancient word may come to us as a quaint anachronism from a primitive past. Covenants of the heart? A lovely image but hardly a living word for our contemporary condition.
The history of covenants made and covenants broken is in some sense the story of the Judaeo- Christian tradition. Among the lectionary’s Lenten lessons, many deal with these ancient covenants - how they were formed, how they played out, how they fizzled, were abrogated or abandoned. In the beginning, we have the covenant of Creation, in which God makes the heavens and earth and humankind in God’s own image. God calls it all good, desiring only that God and this creation live together in sweet communion. “Love me and I will love you. Live with me and I will live with you. Just do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life,” says God. “Trust me and all will be well in paradise.” The failure to trust, the exercise of free will in selfishness, the eating of the forbidden fruit, changes all the relationships, breaks the sacred covenant, and becomes the symbol of the fall of humankind from eternal bliss to eternal struggle and suffering.
Subsequent self serving human wickedness culminates in the tale of Noah and the flood in which God “saw that the wickedness of humankind was great on earth, that every inclination of their hearts was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5.) People had totally turned away from God, the covenant of creation seemed meaningless, and the text says that God “was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth...” (Genesis 6:6.) The ancient covenant was so corrupted that God decided to destroy humankind. That was God’s intention, until God remembered Noah and realized that there was one faithful family left. So the plan is revised to allow for the salvation of Noah, Noah’s family and an ark full of other creatures.
The story says that God is not only angry, God also looks out at the mess humans are making of creation and “...it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:6.) From the beginning, we have testimony to God as having, and using, heart knowledge. Walter Brueggemann says of the Noah story that “...with amazing boldness the narrative invites the listening community to penetrate into the heart of God (vv. 6-7.) What we find there is not an angry tyrant but a troubled parent who grieves over the alienation” (Brueggemann, Genesis, p. 77.) Amy Richter suggests that when “[t]he rain started...it [was] as if the tears of our broken-hearted God flowed down from heaven, tears of sadness, tears of disappointment and anger flowed from the very heart of God and filled the earth” (Amy Richter, “Sermons that Work, April 2, 2006.”) Hardly the behavior of a “bird-of-prey executive.”
In the end, the God of rainbows looks out over the destruction and says, “Never again.” Here God reframes the covenant, recognizing that his love for creation would never allow him to give up hope for its fulfillment, would never permit him to destroy it utterly. He would keep wooing creation into communion through faithfulness, even when the people are faithless, through grace, even when people are undeserving, through love, even when his children are selfish and cruel and violent. Richter again tells us that “...the covenant God makes with Noah is an unconditional covenant, a covenant of love in which God promises to remember us, even if we forget God.”
God extends this covenant to Abraham and Sarah. God promises to make them the parents of a great people whose numbers will be vast as the stars of the sky and the sands of the sea. Even though they are exceedingly old by common reproductive standards, God keeps the promise in the face of their skepticism and sends them Isaac. But, predictably, the children of Abraham and Sarah soon forget the covenant. They are caught up in various dramatic episodes that carry them farther and farther from the intimate relationship with God enjoyed by their parents, who walked with God and took great risks, in faith, to follow God’s leading, who trusted God’s promise to provide for them.
In the next covenantal episode, we find God trying to deal with his recalcitrant people, wandering in the wilderness. First, God’s people had wandered off into captivity in Egypt. God hears their cries and desires to liberate them, to bring them back to the land promised to Abraham, Sarah and their descendants. In hopes of solidifying his relationship to his wayward people, God gives them a set of laws to shape and guide the relationship, but before Moses can even deliver those laws, so carefully carved on the tablets of stone, the people fall down in worship to a golden calf of their own creation. Throughout their wilderness wandering, we encounter story after story of the people’s waywardness and God trying to get their attention. It often looks like the struggle between a frustrated parent and a rebellious child. There is a pattern of punishment and reward, of failure and forgiveness.
Eventually, the people are re-established in the Promised Land and grow prosperous and satisfied...to a point. They suddenly decide that they should have a king like other people do and, since they are God’s chosen people, they should also become a mighty nation. In spite of significant reluctance, and at risk of violating the first commandment in which it is ordained that no other god, man or beast should come before God, God allows them their king. There is significant growth in wealth and power and territory through the reigns of Saul and David and Solomon. Important covenants are made between God and the house of David that secure the power and prosperity of God’s people for years to come. Of course, it is not that long before these covenants, too, are broken; squabbling among heirs and inept leadership leads to the fragmentation of the kingdom and it becomes vulnerable to conquest by surrounding powers.
By the time Jeremiah comes along, David’s kingdom has been split in two, north and south. The northern kingdom has fallen prey to the Assyrians. Jeremiah, a prophet in the southern kingdom of Judah, tells the king and the people that they should not resist the Babylonians. He is called a traitor and threatened with imprisonment. Their sacred city of Jerusalem and their temple, which is the very seat of God on earth, are invincible they insist. It is only after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and the carrying of the people into Babylonian exile that Jeremiah utters the prophetic words that are today’s text.
This is prophecy uttered from the “bottom of the barrel”. Jeremiah stands in the ruins and tries to bring a word of hope to a people in anguish and despair. From his own tear-filled eyes and broken heart, he discerns something he had not noticed before. God needs neither sacred city nor holy temple in which to be at home with her people. Perhaps, the children of earth, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, those wilderness-wandering chosen people had never really understood the role of God in their lives and their journeys. Jeremiah sees a new covenant being offered, or perhaps for the first time, he sees the old covenant with new eyes, eyes of the heart.
When God made creation for communion, when God created humankind in God’s own image, when God said, “I will be your God and you will be my people,” God meant it. In fact God’s love for creation, including her stubborn, willful children, is eternal and therefore deeper than we can ever fathom. Those old covenants are perhaps manifestations of one basic covenant through which God attempts to sustain communion with her people. They were like a marriage contract with God. Later, Jesus shifts the image to God as patient, loving parent, daddy to his people.
Lutheran pastor, Walter Wangerin, tells a story of a covenant of the heart, how it is broken and how it is healed. He writes about trying to teach his young son, Matthew, not to steal comic books. The first time, the boy is caught stealing from the library and is made to return his stash with an apology. The good pastor conspires with the librarian to chastise the boy, which she does with her best steely-eyed librarian’s authority. It does not take. The boy is caught again. Dad decides to use the “fear of God,” quoting all the commandments, stressing “Thou shalt not steal” and, for added emphasis, burning the whole collection of comics. After the third incident, the thoroughly frustrated father resorted to corporal punishment, rationalizing that there was no other option left. The good pastor says, “…as soon as I was done, I left the room. I went out...in the hall, and I burst into tears…I cried at the thing I had done…” But here is the surprising moral to his tale, “A number of months later, while the family was driving in the car: out of nowhere, Matthew says to me, ‘Dad, do you know why I stopped stealing comic books?’ (And he had stopped!) I said, ‘Yea, I finally spanked you.’ He said, ‘What!’ And he looked at me. He said, ‘No.... It's because you cried...’” (Walter Wangerin, Jr., The Manger Is Empty, pp. 116-132.)
“I will make a new covenant with Israel and Judah,” says God, drawing the split kingdoms of the north and south back into one. The covenant will no longer be dependent on external forms - rainbows, fiery pillar, tablets of stone, the Ark of the Covenant, the temple, the throne of David, the strong hand of authority. The covenant will be established in a way that is unmistakable and unavoidable. It will be written on every heart. And how will we know this? God will forgive us and forget our sins. We will see, and feel, the compassionate, forgiving tears of God and be healed, transformed. We will know the depth and breadth of God’s love and compassion for us and we shall be transformed. We shall have heart knowledge and it will make us whole.