What to do with the new covenant?

 

Sermon. 19/10/2025. St Peter’s Merton, St George’s, Saham Toney

Trinity 8, Year C

Jer 31.27-34

Luke 18.1-8

 

Today I am going to push us a little. I don’t mean push, so as to make you fall down (God forbid); I mean push in the sense of giving you a gentle but clear nudge. I am going to offer some teaching which may be challenging. I am – I will say it right away – going to be bringing some insights from the Jewish tradition. You can take it!

 

The first reading today, from the prophecy of Jeremiah, contains a passage Christians tend to find extremely moving. Words on the “new covenant”. A covenant where the Law or Teaching or Guidance of God (the Torah) is written on people’s very hearts. A covenant it is so very natural for Christians to see fulfilled in Jesus. The Law, the Very Teaching of Very God was written on Jesus’ heart (Christians believe), and so, among other things, Christians are freed from the need to practise all the commandments there are in the Written Law (the Torah, as the first five books of the Bible).

 

Now, every word I have just said may be true, and I am not disagreeing with the import of what I have just claimed. But! But Jewish friends are likely to say: Believe what is right for you to believe, but please just not that that is not the plain meaning of the text in Jeremiah. Christians are indeed very comfortable thinking that Jeremiah’s New Covenant is revolutionary, but we miss just how revolutionary it is.

 

We think it means that we (Christians, everybody) can happily leave behind sacrifices, and temples, and rules about “clean” and “unclean”, and indeed almost every rule. For now it is what we feel or contemplate on the inside that counts. But Jeremiah is imagining something that may make all of that seem like so much tinkering

 

Listen again: “No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me…”

 

So this goes way beyond getting rid of finicky rituals. It means there are no laws at all any more.

 

Think about it. If the ways of God are written on people’s hearts, what would the police, or the courts, or the prisons have to do? They would grow mouldy. And, yes, we might need a government to (you know) make sure the streetlamps were lit, but not to deal with crime (there isn’t any), and not to deal with bitter conflicts (there aren’t any). It is a certain kind of anarchy. Jeremiah is picturing a certain kind of anarchy.

 

But that’s the easy bit. Harder is facing up to how in Jeremiah’s vision there is a lot less for synagogues and for churches to do. For surely one whole strand of what churches and synagogues do is… teach. But – we have just heard it - teaching falls away. Another whole strand is encouragement. We come together to encourage each other (to say words which amount to “Know God… know Jesus…”). But – we’ve just heard it - encouragement falls away. We could still meet for worship, but that would be about it.

 

No laws; no teaching. No teaching; no laws. This is actually what Jeremiah describes as the new covenant. One question is: Is this our reality? And of course it is not. But here’s a different question:

Is it even attractive?

 

I’m serious. And I will seriously push/nudge us a little bit further. You see there is one Jewish reading of this new covenant of Jeremiah which sees it as deeply un-attractive.

 

Indeed, some say that what we have here is Jeremiah at his most negative. Jeremiah already is the most gloomy prophet (he curses the day of this birth [Jer 20.14]). Here (so the argument goes) Jeremiah slips further down, into despair. He thinks that God will give up with all the older covenants. In the older covenants (think Noah, Abraham, Moses and Sinai), God wanted to cooperate with human beings. Work with. To persuade, cajole, exhort, train, and bring in. Always alongside human beings, never forcing their hand. Never forcing them. But here Jeremiah imagines that God will just kick the whole game-board over, with all the pieces, and start again. Start again with people not as we understand them, people who obey God automatically, like automata, like robots. They will obey God, because they simply have no choice. They are God’s AI-people. That’s sad, we may feel, and the argument is: It is meant to be sad.

 

I have pushed us. Sometimes it is good to come to a familiar – a beloved – text, and, yes, be nudged to see it in a different way, a challenging way. It isn’t Bible Sunday today (that is next week), but there is no harm in us spending a moment or two rediscovering the Bible as strange. Not estranging. We are not estranged from God. But God is still so different from our expectations that God’s word comes to us as strange.

 

Here endeth the lesson!

 

And now a story. I was a student in Dublin many years ago. I spent a happy afternoon wandering around its main park, Phoenix Park. I knew that Pope (now Saint Pope) John Paul II had celebrated mass there in front of well over a million faithful. (That was before I was there [it was in 1979])! There was, you won’t be surprised to hear, a cross, to mark the very spot where he stood. And a text. A simple text. It said simply:

Be converted every day.

 

Be converted every day. I come back to this, time and time again. Day by day, you might say!

 

So I want to say that whatever the meaning of Jeremiah’s new covenant (and remember that Jeremiah himself might not have known quite what he was saying), one thing we can do is… make it our own, here and now. In this case, we can ask:

 

What would it mean,

if the very law of very God were written on my heart,

today?

What, then, would I do?

How then would I live?  

 

It is something you may have to sit with. It is something worth sitting with. You may not get an instant answer. You may well not, you probably won’t, you almost certainly won’t get an instant answer. But you can be like the persistent widow of today’s gospel, and keep coming back to the point.

 

What would it mean,

if the very law of very God were written on my heart,

today?

What, then, would I do?

How then would I live?  

Amen.

Sermon. Christmas 1 and New Year's Eve. A Prison.

 

·        Isaiah 61:10-63:3

·        Galatians 4:4-7

·        Luke 2:15-21

 

Who remembers Christmas Day? It was only on Monday. As on Christmas Day, I will thank you for being here. I will say again that you do not have to be here. I have to be here. You do not. (And, as I said before, that is unusual in prison.) So, again, thank you for choosing to be here, and choosing to begin your week with worship.

 

I said on Monday that Christmas can be hard in prison. We all know it. I am not telling you anything you do not know. But it is sometimes – often – worth naming these things.

 

Well, today comes with difficulties of its own.

 

First, it is still Christmastide in the Church calendar. Our Gospel reading shows this most clearly. We are back with the story of the birth of Jesus.

Second – and again I am naming what is obvious – we meet on the last day of the year (the “secular” year – the year of our everyday calendars). Today is New Year’s Eve, and tomorrow is New Year’s Day. What, if anything, can we make of that?

 

Yet another obvious point is that many outside of prison will be partying hard this evening, and into the small hours. That’s not an option for you. Don’t get me wrong: we know you can find access to substances. But they won’t give you what they seem to promise. They won’t really provide a party atmosphere. So you may well be feeling a sense of loss, and additional one, on top of other senses of loss. (By the way, I am certainly not going to party; I am here again tomorrow.)

 

But New Year’s Day is about more than partying, or recovering from partying. New Year’s Day can be when people sit down and think about their lives. They may have great hopes for the year ahead. They may have great plans for the year ahead. They may make New Year resolutions. They may feel a real sense of freedom. They may say: “I am free to do what I want in this new, fresh, never-before year. I am going to claim my freedom this year!” And these things are… not impossible in prison, but they are harder to say in prison. So you may be feeling an additional narrowness (constraint) here, along with all the other narrownesses (constraints) you feel here.

 

Or perhaps these days mean nothing to you, and you wonder why I am going on, in this way. That would be perfectly fair. After all, it is not New Year in the Church calendar. New Year’s Day is Advent Sunday, which was back on 3 December, this time around. Tomorrow is the 8^th day of Christmas, where we also mark the naming and circumcision of Jesus. If we want to let this New Year go unmarked, we are perfectly free to do that.

 

There I go again, saying: “we are free”. You may well say: “Be honest, Patrick. You are free, and we are not.” I get that. I do get that. But there are different kinds of freedom. And some freedoms (the freedom to think, the freedom to orient your life as you see fit)… these can be yours too.

 

Let us consider today’s readings. In the first reading from Isaiah, the prophet rejoices in Gd, praises Gd. You are free to do that. Christians believe that we are made to praise Gd – we are worshipping animals – and no person and no system can stop you from praising Gd.

 

One thing that many people of faith find really helpful is to begin each day thanking Gd. I invite you to do this. Begin each day thanking Gd that you are alive, and then find at least three other things to thank Gd for, They will be there, if you look for them. Even when things are really hard, there will be things to give thanks for. The freedom to do this is yours, here and now. Claim it.  

 

In the second reading, from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, Paul gives us some of the most encouraging words in the whole Bible. He says that as Spirit-filled Christians we have what we need to call Almighty Gd, Creator of heaven and earth… call Almighty Gd “Father”, “my Father”. Yes, this is one of the things you can give thanks for. “Thank you Gd, that you are my true Father; you love me with fatherly love; you will always love me with a fatherly love; you long for nothing more than for me to call you Father.” The freedom to say this and mean it is yours, Claim it.

 

And in today’s gospel we can give thanks for Jesus’s birth again, and for faithful Joseph, and the rejoicing shepherds. But let us pay attention especially to Mary. Mary

“treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart”.

Again, here is something for you. You can imitate Mary. You can ponder the words of Gd, and the things of Gd, in your heart. How to? It is not a puzzle. I say start in this way: on your own, sit still. Sit still, on your own. Say to Gd: “Gd, my Father, I am here. Be with me in the way that you want to be with me, and in the ways that are good for me. I am in no hurry.” And see what happens. You are free to do this. Claim it.   

 

And, look, we are also free, free to do something creative with the fact that tomorrow is called New Year’s Day. Some traditions do use New Year as a time to recommit to Gd. They may even speak of “renewing the covenant”. A covenant in the Bible is a binding commitment. And in the Bible Gd makes covenants with Gd’s people. Gd commits himself to us, so that we can commit ourselves to him. That’s quite something, if you think about it. Gd commits himself to us, so that we can commit ourselves to him.

 

I am going now to read the words of recommitment, of the renewal of the covenant. I invite you to say them after me. At the moment, I am inviting you to say them, just to see how they feel in your mouths, to see if they form something you want to say Yes too. Because this is a serious prayer. It’s the opposite of a throwaway: “Gd, please give me what I want”. Listen out for the seriousness. There will be a chance to say them as a prayer, later in the service.

 

I am no longer my own but yours.

Your will, not mine, be done in all things,

wherever you may place me,

in all that I do and in all that I may endure;

when there is work for me and when there is none;

when I am troubled and when I am at peace.

Your will be done

when I am valued and when I am disregarded;

when I find fulfilment and when it is lacking;

when I have all things and when I have nothing.

I willingly offer all that I have and am

to serve you, as and where you choose.

Glorious and blessed God,

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

you are mine and I am yours.

May it be so for ever.

Let this covenant now made on earth

be fulfilled in heaven.

Amen.[1]

 

---

[1] Common Worship: Times and Seasons, p 111. © Archbishops Council 2006