“A Matter of the Heart”

Jeremiah 31:31-34

April 6, 2003

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

I called a seminary classmate of mine earlier this week when I heard that his father was sick and in the hospital. My friend told me that his father’s illness was not life threatening, but that it was the kind of hospital stay that made him think about his relationship with his dad and what it was like growing up in his parents’ house. We thought together about such memories. We reminisced with these memories of ours. We talked about coming in late and climbing in an open window in hopes of not being caught. We talked about the lecture that we always got when we did get caught. We decided that somewhere, in a parent’s manual, under a variety of categories was this counsel: “In countless situations, this speech is appropriate, ‘If you are going to live under my roof, then you are going to follow my rules.’” We both promised ourselves that we would not use those words with our children, but I know that we will.

After a few minutes of thinking about our teenage years, my friend took us a step farther than that when he asked me this, “Did you ever go to work with your father?” I told him that I did, but that it wasn’t ever exciting. I told him that my dad taught music at a college and directed the choir at our church. There just isn’t a thrill in sitting in a desk in the corner watching my dad teach lessons about some of the classical great pianists. I did tell him that I had a great memory of my dad picking me up at school on Wednesday afternoons. It was the one day a week that I didn’t have to ride the bus home. Dad would come by in his old Dodge Lancer and take me to a nearby convenience store and then to the church for choir practice. When I returned the question, he remembered the time or two that he went with his dad to west Texas fields. His dad’s job was definitely more exciting than my dad’s job! My friend remembered barely being able to see over the dash of his father’s truck. Mostly, he recalled, that there was not much to see. Oh, there was an oil derrick here and there, but mostly it was a flat landscape. Maybe that is why when he saw what he saw, it amazed him. There in the middle of nowhere was a jungle of pipes and tanks and tubes and generators and heaters and pumps and pipes and filters and valves and conduits and switches and circuits. My friend said that he looked out at it, over the dashboard and what it looked like was a giant tinker toy set. He said that he looked up at his dad and with amazement asked what all that was. He dad said, “It is a refinery.” My friend recalled asking, “A whatery?” His dad answered, “A refinery.” His dad told him that all those pipes and tanks and tubes takes whatever comes out of the ground and purifies it so that it is ready to use. My friend had a look on his face. Then he told me that not only did he have that memory, but he also remembered the lesson that his dad gave him that afternoon. His dad was not a preacher. He was in church most Sundays, but he never preached a sermon. But maybe he did when he said, “All those pipes and tanks do for gasoline what your heart is supposed to do for you. It takes out the bad and it uses the good. Before we hung up the phone, we both agreed that the story would make a pretty good start to this week’s scripture lesson from Jeremiah’s prophesy.

You may remember this. You might remember me saying that in this prophet’s day, the heart was not just the place where the blood came in and was pumped out to other parts of the body. In our day, we tend to think of the heart as the seat of emotion. We talk about heartthrobs, heartaches, and broken hearts. But in Jeremiah’s day, the heart was the center of the soul. It was where all emotions and desires and affections got started. But it was also where all of the thoughts and all of the reasoning and all of the purposes and all of the will and all of the faith and where the conscience lived. Maybe that is where we got the idea of people being tender hearted, with their emotions very close to their hearts. If all of this is true, and it is, then the writer of the proverb, “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” said a mouthful. And Paul who said, “For out of the overflow of his heart does a man speak” said important words. Both of these verses say the same thing and hammer home the same point. The point is that the heart is the center of the spiritual life.

It took a while for this prophet to realize that, I think. But he claimed it in a powerful way in our lesson for this morning. You will remember that Jeremiah was a reluctant recruit. He was the one who was afraid to preach the message that God wanted him to preach. Who could blame him? The message that he was to proclaim was to remind the people that God demands goodness and mercy and integrity. We know that from what happened on Mt. Sinai. Coming down from the mountain with tablets in hand was Moses. On them were the Ten Commandments. The word was that you were to obey these commandments and when you did, your life would go well.

The problem was that by Jeremiah’s time, the Ten Commandments had become over seven hundred rules and laws. That was only part of the problem. It was believed, in those days (and Jeremiah believed this) that if you obeyed the laws, then you would prosper, but if you did not follow them, then you would suffer. I know that that line of thinking seems crazy to us today. We do not believe that, but in Jeremiah’s day, he believed and preached that. Which was fine as long as he talked to individuals about this sort of thing. What got him in trouble is when he preached this sermon to kings about their kingdoms. In those days, kings didn’t like to be criticized. They still don’t. But in those days, criticizing a king and his kingdom would land you in jail.

Which is exactly where Jeremiah finds himself as we catch up with him this morning. If you want to know the word that landed him there, you will have to turn back to his eleventh chapter. There, Jeremiah has God to say, “ I warned your ancestors. Now listen to my voice. You have broken my covenant. So, behold I am bringing evil upon you that you cannot escape. You can cry out to me, but I will not listen.” You can understand, can’t you, why such a word would land him in jail? Something happened between the eleventh and the thirty-first chapters of this prophesy. What was it? I suspect that it was more than jail time that got Jeremiah thinking a different way. I think that in those twenty-one chapters, the prophet came to understand what a covenant really means. That is why he is able to write the words, “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 one that I made with their fathers. My covenant which they broke, though I was their husband. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” Church, you need to understand that that move is an amazing one. I don’t think that God changed in those chapters. I think that the prophet realized what a covenant with God really means. Maybe before, he thought that a covenant was like a contract. A contract says that if you don’t do what you are supposed to do, if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain, then I can get out of it. “....though they cry to me, I will not listen.” Jeremiah’s revelation was that a covenant is different than that. In fact, he says that a covenant is more like a marriage. Did you hear his word to them? “...my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband...” Jeremiah is saying that he believes that God is wedded to us, just like a marriage covenant. Just like marriages are supposed to be, like we want them to be, like everyone who enters them intends for them to be and hopes that they will be. A covenant, not a contract. Here are the terms, I will be your God and you will be my people. That is it. That is all that is required. It is that simple. There are no conditions. There are no qualifications. There is no small print. There are no penalty clauses. Look at the wedding ritual in your hymnal and you’ll see what the marriage covenant looks like these days. By the way, you will find it next to the ritual for funerals. I don’t know if there is a message in that or not. In weddings, husbands and wives promise to hold each other, from their wedding day forward, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sick days and in healthy ones. And they promise to love and to cherish each other.

A man was standing at the front of the church on his wedding day. His soon to be wife was beside him. The pastor asked him if he would take his wife for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. There was an awkward silence. The man wasn’t answering. His bride looked over at him and finally he said, “I’ll take better, richer, and healthy.” That is not how it works, friends.

I think that what Jeremiah discovered was that when the people turned away from God and broke laws and did things mentioned only in confessional times, God did not stop being our Lord. That is why he offered a new covenant, written not on stones, but on hearts. “I will be their God. They shall be my people.” As Christians we believe that God sent Jesus, in the fullness of time, that is to say, when the time was exactly right. In those days, God’s people were looking for a savior who would enforce the rules and punish those who broke the laws. But instead, God sent someone to change our hearts. Can you read the story of Jesus’ last week of life with dry eyes? This is the story that changes your life. I was thinking about the hymn the other afternoon that we sing at Christmas time. You know that I like to sing from the pulpit. The words of the song are: “What can I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb. If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part; yet what can I give him; give him my heart!”

God knew that he could not change people with laws. Laws are there to keep you in line, not to change you. If you want to change people, you tug on their hearts. When you have a change of heart, you are different. Then, you are a new person. Then you are no longer governed by forces outside of yourselves. Now you are ruled by something inside of you. God sent his son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might have a change of heart.

Which brings us to our second lesson for this morning. The one that I read only one verse of. The lesson is from John’s gospel and it comes at the end of Jesus’ ministry, though there is a lot of gospel left after the twelfth chapter. Jesus had finished his work and had done all that he could do. In the scene before us, Jesus is about to be arrested and so he says, “Now my soul is troubled.” That is as close as John gets to a Garden of Gethsemane prayer. Here in John’s gospel, Jesus says that his soul is troubled, but then he recovers and says, “This is what I was sent for. When I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.” Look at the cross in terms of what God said that He would do. If you understand it, it will speak to your heart. I will be your God, you will be my children. And even though you reject me, and my Son, I will never forsake you, not even on the cross. I believe that Jesus stayed on the cross because he loved us.

I heard of a preacher who had a businessman in his church. The man was no nonsense and the two of them were friends. The man was successful and had no trouble making big decisions. He had great power and did not mind using it. One day the preacher had lunch with his friend’s son, who was home unexpectedly. When his pastor found out why, he listened carefully. The son said that he had been in the army and had done something to be dishonorably discharged. He said that he didn’t want to tell his dad about it, but he knew that he had to. He did not want to disappoint his dad, but the news would disappoint him. So he sent him an e-mail, telling his dad what had happened. Minutes later his dad replied with three lines. These are the three: “I will stand by you no matter what. I will be there tomorrow to be with you. I love you.” That is a covenant. That is the way that it works. Maybe his father’s heart was broken, but the promise never was. I will be your God. You will be my people. Let us pray.