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Christ Church Uniting
Disciples and Presbyterians
1300 Kailua Rd.
Kailua, HI 96734
262-6911
Today, in reflecting upon The Heart Covenant, we come to the fifth and final of our Lenten reflections upon the theme of Covenant in Hebrew Scripture.
Covenant, you now know, is a relationship established by God with humankind for the sake of all Creation. Thus far, we have considered covenants established through Noah, Abraham and Moses. The covenant’s basic term is “I will be your God.” This is Good News and it always has moral implications.
The expression “heart covenant” is my short hand for Jeremiah’s declaration that God will write Torah (the Law) upon our hearts. Without having to be taught, cajoled, scolded, or punished we will be able to be faithful to God (not only in cultic reverence but in social righteousness).
“Heart covenant” also refers to the prophet Ezekiel’s compact proclamation which is, I think, a restatement of Jeremiah. In Ezekiel, Chapter 11, at verses 19-20, God says,
“I will give them a new heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them.”
So this then is the “heart covenant.” Rather than upon stone tablets, God will write Torah upon human hearts. And hearts which have become stone, God will replace with hearts of flesh able to know God and do God’s will in community
The heart covenant comes to us from nearly contemporaneous prophets of the late sixth century BCE. Many hundreds of years later, Christian teachers and preachers would point to the heart covenant as anticipating the New Covenant, established through Jesus. Christian reflection upon the heart covenant metaphor informed their thinking about the significance of God’s gift of Jesus.
The fact that human beings and their societies neither uniformly nor consistently behave as if they have in fact received “a new heart” is one of the factors that make it difficult for Jewish theologians to concede that God’s promises have been fulfilled or that the Messiah has come.
Let’s not then so fast jump to Jesus.
As I have been doing in this series, I want to ground this covenant in the life experience of the Hebrew people. That requires looking at the Hebrew experience of Exile. Before I do that, I need to remind you of the role of a prophet in ancient Israel.
The role of prophet arose during the time of Israel’s Kings. It began with the prophet Nathan who challenged King David’s behavior in 1,000 BCE. Prophets continued to be “called by God” to speak truth to power for 400 years right up through the demise of Israel and Judah and into the period of the Exile.
When Jeremiah began his prophetic ministry, the people felt smug and safe, indifferent to Yahweh and the social needs of one another. Through Jeremiah, God expressed disappointment with Israel. Their wickedness lay not just in deeds but in the evil stubbornness of their hearts. “My people have forgotten me. The leaders serve themselves at the expense of my people.” For voicing God’s distress, God’s warnings and threats to the King and the establishment, Jeremiah was branded a traitor. He came to loathe his vocation. “God, you have set me up, and it sucks.”
At the beginning of the sixth century, Jerusalem was overrun by Babylonian invaders. Leaders from all walks of society were removed from Jerusalem and exiled to Babylon. This was a devastating blow to their identity and their faith. Beside the waters of Babylon they wept, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” Short of the Holocaust, this was the Hebrew people’s darkest hour.
In this environment of despair, Jeremiah and Ezekiel were called to deliver “the heart covenant”, a new message for the people “When calamity arrived,” says Walter Brueggemann, “the prophet’s call was to instill hope, to comfort, to console.”
In the face of the people’s most discouraging circumstances the prophets were led to voice God’s most incredible promises: new heart, restoration, rehabilitation, home coming.
When the Hebrews were smug and confident that Jerusalem was safe against all adversaries, the covenant promise of a new heart was not to be spoken, nor could it have been heard. When the leadership (Kings, High Priests, the high and mighty) were drunk with power and wealth, the heart covenant was not offered.
Only when the walls had been breached, only when the temple had been destroyed, only when the wealth had been plundered, only when leaders were forcibly carried into Exile, sequestered in an alien environment, filled with despair and longing---only then would, only then could the prophet voice God’s most remarkable covenant promise---
Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord.
But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and his brother saying, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
So, apart from pointing to Jesus who would not be on the scene for another six hundred year, and, apart from being a promise which seems mostly not to have been fulfilled, what is the take-home message for us today?
This may not be a covenant promise for us today. It is not a promise for a nation at the height of it powers. It is not a promise for a people who think that incentives and tax breaks for the wealthiest five percent of its people are more important than immediate prenatal care for all pregnant women and guaranteed health care including medications for all persons. It may not be a covenant that this nation needs, or is able or willing, to hear today.
I talked to my friend Bill three days ago. Bill and Melba celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary with us three years ago. He was about to go into the hospital for an aneurysm repair. He was heart broken and wanted to talk a long time. But not about his surgery. He is a brave man.
He was on Omaha beach on D-Day. He wanted to talk about his heartbreak, sorrow, and despair over our country going to war against Iraq. He felt he had learned so much since those days so long ago. He traveled to the Soviet Union during the Cold War with a delegation from the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program. He worked for justice in US relations to the El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. He is still active today: body, mind and spirit. He is heartbroken for all the combatants and their families, heartbroken for Iraqi non-combatants, heartbroken for the soul of our nation.
I could only offer Bill, what I offer to you who can hear it, you who might welcome it----God’s promise of a new heart: a heart of flesh in place of one of stone, an intimate and animating knowing by heart of God’s love desire for creation, for it wholeness and healing. And Bill being a man of compassion and a man of deep longing he got it. He got it.
The heart covenant. It’s on offer. Can you get it?
Fabian M. “Buddy” Summers,
Pastor
Christ Church Uniting Disciples and Presbyterians
Kailua, HI
(3/30/2003)
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