A Broken Heart Leads to Newness

 Sermon preached at St. Thomas' Church, Bath, NY:  Jeremiah 31:31-24, Psalm 119:9-19. John 12:20-33.

You can listen to this sermon here.

          Of all the biblical prophets, Jeremiah is described universally as “the gloomy” one.  Jeremiah the Gloomy.  There is reason for his gloominess, of course.  Jeremiah’s time was a time of political and spiritual crisis.  The Babylonian Empire to the north and west was in the process of destroying what was left of Israel, the people killed, deported, or left behind in a land bereft of resources. Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple destroyed.  The kingdom of Judah wiped off the map.

           And where was Israel’s God?  Absent?  Vengeful?  Defeated?

Jeremiah finds those questions about God to be a deflection. He constantly brings the people back to the overwhelming problem:  themselves.  You have done this. You have brought this upon yourselves.  For thirty long chapters, Jeremiah has sounded this message, and the word “gloomy” may not be strong enough.  Here he is in chapter 30:

 Thus says the Lord:

Your hurt is incurable, your wound is grievous.

There is no one to uphold your case,

          no medicine for your wound, no healing for you.

All your lovers have forgotten you;

          they care nothing for you.

Why do you cry out over your hurt?

Your pain is incurable.

Because your guilt is great,

          because your sin is so numerous,

          I have done these things to you.

           And then comes the dreaded word “therefore,” which in the prophets means the worst judgment is about to come.

           And then it doesn’t.

 Therefore.

Therefore all who devour you shall be devoured.

Those who plunder you shall be plundered.

For I will restore health to you,

          and your wounds I will heal, says the Lord,

          because they have called you an outcast:

          [they have said]

          “It is Zion; no one cares for her.”

           It is biblical whiplash.

           What has changed?  Certainly not Israel.  No, it is rather Israel’s God who has changed.

           The absent one will now intervene.

          The vengeful one will now be the compassionate one.

          The defeated one will pull his last weapon out of the divine armory:  the covenant.

           And so we hear this morning: 

 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.

           Covenant?  Now there’s a word that quite possibly had not been heard in Israel for a very long time.  Why?  Because you broke it, God says, “even though I was your husband.”  You let go of me, God says, even though I did not—could not—let go of you. But I am going to put that behind me, God says, I am willing to try something new.

          And just what will be new?  New laws?  No, still “my laws,” says God, but given in a new way.  Laws written on the heart.  And perhaps it is critical that the heart of Israel on which the law will be written is Israel’s broken heart.  Remember words from Ash Wednesday, from Psalm 51:

 The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit;

          a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

          I can work with a broken heart, God says.  My heart, too, has been broken.  You broke it.  But our broken hearts, softened with grief, can be a place in which we can start over again.

          This will be a place of equality.  We will start over again from broken religion, where self-appointed experts throw their weight around, saying you do not know the Lord.  I will decide, they have kept telling you, I will tell you when and how you will know the Lord.