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. No easy peace. No easy welcome.

 Sermon. 2 July 2023. Trinity 4 (Year A)

 

Jeremiah 28:5-9

Matthew 10:40-42

 

Our readings today are easy. They bring us ease. They bring us ease because they are short (that’s part of it). And you are hoping they inspire a short sermon (let us see). The readings give us ease also because their meaning is simple. And they give us ease because their simple meaning is attractive.

 

Our first reading, from Jeremiah, tells us of prophets who speak of peace.

Our gospel reading shows us Jesus, who tells us how important it is to welcome and be welcomed. What is not to like? Here is easy ease.

 

Except, of course (and you were expecting this), it is not quite that simple. Most especially with Jeremiah, it is not that simple. With Jeremiah, the message is very different from how it seems, when put into context.

 

What has happened immediately before our passage is that the prophet called Hananiah has prophesied [Jer 28:1-4]. He is the prophet of peace. His message is that Gd has triumphed over the enemy of the people of the covenant. Gd “has broken the yoke of the King of Babylon”. Gd will bring back the exiles in Babylon, and the people of Judah will live in peace, in their own land. This is a powerful message. Feel the force of it. This is a prophecy about peace coming with victory.

 

Then. Then Jeremiah responds. First, he shares the ardent desire of Hananiah. He says: “Amen! May the LORD do so; may the LORD fulfil the words that you have prophesied.” But, Jeremiah then says: just notice how out of character this prophecy is. He doesn’t dress it up. He says: “The prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms.” And so, he then says, as for “the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes true, then it will be known that [Gd] has truly sent the prophet”.

 

Let me summarise. Jeremiah says:

“Dear Hananiah, the success you speak of would be lovely. It is scarcely what prophets tend to say, though. That doesn’t make it wrong, of course. But the thing is: we’ll believe it when we see it. We are right to be sceptical and say ‘we’ll believe it when we see it’.”

 

Jeremiah’s message is really against the prophet who presumes to speak of peace. And this is because Jeremiah’s message overall is that Gd’s people are going to be and stay in exile – to be in  a narrow place – for a long time to come. They need to bear that. They need to make the most of things. Without triumph . Without victory. Without ease.

 

And so to the Gospel. First let me reassure you. I am not saying that the message of the Gospel is the opposite of what it seems. But I am saying it is more complicated. It is not easy.

 

One part may already be clear. Jesus says it is a good thing to welcome a prophet. We have just reminded ourselves that prophets are typically people who bring bad news. It is a good thing to welcome someone who brings us bad news, who says things we find awkward, who says things that trouble us deeply, who says things which call us to action, action we would rather avoid. Can we welcome this welcome? That, I think, is a real challenge for us. A challenge for us as persons/disciples, as households, as church-in-this-place, and as a national Church.

 

Jesus also says it is a good thing to welcome a righteous person. To welcome a person who gets it right, who lives the good life. This feels like easier territory. Perhaps it is. I’ll add only that Jesus does not tell us to welcome the person who lives well in the ways that we live well, the person who sees things the way we see things. And we know (don’t we?) that there are people who we disagree with on nine things out of ten, who also live lives of goodness and holiness that we can only envy. The person who lives well, who is righteous, may – without even meaning it – shine a light on how we are not living well, are not living the good life. Can we welcome this welcome?

 

Again, Jesus says it is a good thing to welcome the little ones. Who are they? Babies, infants, children? I think they are included. But the term is broader than that. Let me put it this way: the “little ones” are those in need. Or better: the “little ones” are those who cannot hide their need, who come with their needs laid bare. Their needs are in your face. Their needs cry out for your response. For action, more action. Can we welcome this welcome?

 

We know, I think, that we are called to these kinds welcome, in our own place, in our own day.

We are called to welcome those who speak awkward truths.

We are called to welcome those whose lives show us the failings in our own lives.

We are called to welcome those whose needs cry out for help, now.

 

Brothers and sisters, you will make the links, the church links, the social links, and the political links. The links need to be made but I need not make them for you. My prayer is only that we reflect on our readings today, and find them (forgive me for this) anything but easy.

 

Amen.

On Shouting More, and Shouting Less

Sermon. Sunday 28 October 2018, The Last Sunday after Trinity (Year B)

St Mary's Great Ilford

Jeremiah 31.7-9

Mark 10.46-end

Someone once said that the one true doctrine of the Church of England is “salvation by good taste alone”. They weren’t being wholly serious, but they were still saying something that is true, is the case. If we are Anglican, it is likely that we value what is beautiful, seemly, done according to good order - and good taste. There is great merit in this (I speak as an Anglican myself). But it doesn’t cover all that we need to cover. It won’t do for all of the Christian life.

Today’s gospel is about a person of faith who showed no good taste. Bartimaeus is blind, and is a beggar - but (to be clear) these are ordinary human misfortunes or differences - what is “in bad taste” is the way that, on hearing that Jesus is passing, he comes straight to his need, his urgency, his desperation.

He shouts. When told to pipe down, he shouts louder. When told Jesus is calling, he throws his coat away as a rag, to run to him. He wants his sight. 

• This is a person with nothing to lose. 
• This is a person with no reputation to worry about. 
• This is one who comes to Jesus without any adornment or "piety" whatsoever. 

He simply screams: HELP ME!

And as Anglicans, we may need to remind ourselves, that Bartimaeus, the blind beggar, gets it right. His urgency to the point of desperation, his unwillingness to disguise his need, is right. And is rewarded. He gets what he says he needs, his sight. And he also “gets” the consequence of that. He becomes a follower of Jesus along the way.

Brothers and sisters, if ever we feel compelled by the difficulties we face in life, simply to turn to Gd in Jesus and scream: HELP ME, frankly, we should do it. It can be the right thing to do.

And this also follows: as a Church community, we need to be a place which offers such reliable hospitality, that we are known to be a place where people can be at home, if they in turn need to scream to the Lord: HELP ME!

Gd forbid, that our churches or our patterns of worship are always so “seemly” that we end up shutting out a godly beggar, like blind Bartimaeus. Of course, this does not mean that we as people can actually meet all the needs of those who turn to us in desperation. We cannot. But! But we can be a place where their pleas, shouts and groans are heard, are taken seriously.

Brothers and sisters, we know each other only after a fashion. But may sense is that you know this, and you do it. I say these words, that we might encourage one another.

*

Of course, none of this means that we should seek to be a community which is known for being “shouty”. We do not need to shout - either in desperation, or, for that matter, in praise - to make a point. Gd forbid!

And I want to add: especially in our days: Gd forbid!

I add this point, because it is troubling (is it not?) just how “shouty” so much of our culture is in our days. I don’t say this in the first place because this church is effectively on the road where I live, and so I know what Saturday nights can be like...

No, rather, I am thinking of our common life as a nation, and indeed of international trends, international “shoutiness”. 

There is a debate happening right now – and don't we know it and doesn't it need to happen? – about whether our politics is too noisy and too full of hostility. That instead of people saying, “I disagree with you and here's why”, they now say, “you are my enemy”, or, even worse “you are the enemy of the people, of the nation”.

We might associate this especially with the current regime in the United States of America. Indeed, it would be beyond astonishing if we did not make that connection. 

I wrote those words before learning of the attack on worshippers in the synagogue in Pittsburgh. It looks like this is a horrible illustration of the point. But, in any event, it pains us, and we pray for that community, and: Peace be upon Israel.

In all of this, we may not think that we are free from some of these dangerous trends, here, in the UK.

Now, please be clear that I am passing no comment at all on the rightness or wrongness of all the policies that get called “Brexit”, or how we should relate to the EU. These are not matters for sermons.

But! But I am saying that there is robust evidence (not just anecdotal) that, alongside all the proper political discussions, there was a peak in hate crimes against people perceived to be foreign, around and after the Brexit referendum.[1] Further, it can be argued that ever since then, racists have felt emboldened. As a nation, we should surely worry that this is a real headline from Friday: “Woman 'punched in face for speaking Spanish' in 'racist attack' on Overground train”.[2]

As a Church, we must shout out against racism and hatred in all its forms. But there is more we must do. 

We must draw upon the reconciling love of Gd. Gd, remember, is able to reconcile us to Gdself, to our neighbour, and even (if we can believe it) to ourselves. And, as churches, we must be communities which model and celebrate reconciliation. Which are on the journey towards reconciliation. Which show some better ways to have the conversations we need to have among ourselves, and show courtesy and careful mutual attention, even in - precisely in - the disagreements we are bound to have.

What I am saying is: let us not neglect our first reading, from the Hebrew Scriptures. The vision of Jeremiah (Jeremiah, who knew a thing or two about being at the receiving end of hostility himself). Jeremiah longs for - he trusts in - a time when Gd will gather all together, “from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labour, together; a great company, they shall return. With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back, I will let them walk by brooks of water, in a straight path in which they shall not stumble; for I have become [their] Father”.

Notice Jeremiah doesn’t actually say that people who are blind will receive their sight. He just says, in this within this in-gathering, they will play a full and right part within the community. As will - quite simply - everybody. 

• Those with good taste; those with bad taste. 
• Those who shout; those who whisper. 
• Jews; gentiles. 
• You; me. 
• The people we love; and the people we can’t stand. 

Gd will gather us in. For Gd wills it. Amen.

---

[1] http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/03/19/hate-crime-did-spike-after-the-referendum-even-allowing-for-other-factors/

[2] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/woman-punched-in-face-for-speaking-spanish-in-suspected-racist-attack-on-overground-train-a3972386.html

Sermon. As sheep scattered.

Sermon. 19 July 2015. St Alban's Great Ilford

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jeremiah 23.1-6

Psalm 22/23

Mark 6.30-34

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the last year - the ending - of the Second Vatican Council. This Roman Catholic Council ran from 11 October 1962 – 8 December 1965. It was the most authoritative gathering in Roman Catholic thinking. It is much more important than the pope speaking alone. It was called by the then Pope, Pope, now Saint John XXIII. John XXIII was known in his lifetime as 'the good pope'. 'Good' here perhaps does not mean 'morally good' (we hope that most popes are that) so much as 'good-natured'. It means he was funny.

Among his witticisms perhaps the best known was his response to the question 'How many people work in the Vatican?' He said... 'About half of them'. Again, visiting a boy in hospital, he asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He replied: 'either a policeman, or a pope'. John XXIII: 'I should go into the police if I were you. Anyone can be pope; look at me!' And when told it would be quite impossible to have everything in place to open the Second Vatican Council in 1963, he said: 'Fine. Then we'll start it in 1962'... And they did.

But.. why am I saying this now? Well, two reasons. Firstly, I am trying my best to obey Fr Stuart's rubric for the homily, namely: 'Make them laugh!' (and thank you for implying I've not wholly failed in that). But secondly, and even more importantly, because I think that the work and significance of the Second Vatican Council are still with us. Indeed, they are things that we need. All of us who identify as 'Catholic', but really all Christians.

Let me mention just two documents from towards the end of the Council, that are 50 years old this year. There is the Decree on non-Christian religions (Nostra Aetate). This revolutionised Catholic attitudes to Judaism in particular, and to other faiths more generally. It made clear that it is wrong to say that the Jews killed Christ, or that their own covenant with Gd is over. And again, it said that the Church rejects nothing that is holy in other faiths, seeing much that is good.

And there is the document on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes). This says that the Church shares the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of all people. That Christ is, in one way or another, united to all people. And that all people of goodwill, even self-professed atheists, can be in a life-giving relationship with Christ.

So perhaps we can get some sense of how the Second Vatican Council was a gathering which preached, taught and sought goodwill, the common good... reconciliation. And it sought reconciliation based on the highest regard of what human beings are capable of. You see, because it was confident about Gd as our Creator and sustainer, it could be confident about human potentiality, for we are creatures in the divine image. If we are to make the most of our Catholic heritage, we sorely need to hold on to this two-fold confidence, both in Gd and in human potentiality. We need this confidence, for the times are hard.

*

In today's readings too we hear of hard times. Today, as every Sunday, the First Reading and the Gospel mirror, echo and illumine each other, in one way if not more. It is not hard to see the theme they have in common. The prophet Jeremiah speaks of shepherds who let the flock be scattered and uncared-for. He does so, knowing that his hearers and readers will understand that 'shepherd' here means not people who have to do with livestock, but the leaders, both political and religious,- kings and priests. This, then, is what Jesus picks up, when he sees the crowds in his own day, who are hungry, no, starving for his healing and his teaching. He sees them as shepherd-less sheep. Their leaders had failed in just the ways Jeremiah had warned about.

And... how are we, brothers and sisters? Is it not the case that the human family today is not so much a gathered flock, but like sheep who have scattered, who are lost? If so, the answer is not to look to some human being, or some group of human beings, who can lead us, telling us what to do, and punishing the disobedient. That way disaster lies. Notice that even Jesus – even Jesus! - when he sees the people as so many scattered sheep does not say: 'But now I am here to lead you!' No. He doesn't say that in the passage we have heard this morning. And he doesn't go on to say it. Rather, what Jesus goes on to do (but do come back next week to check this out)... is feed, really to feed the people, in the Feeding of the 5000.

Jesus heals; he teaches; he feeds. In such down-to-earth, unfussy, unglamorous and even unnoticed ways, he gets on with the practical matter of shepherding the sheep. And this is surely our vocation too. We are called to play some part in healing, teaching and feeding. And typically for us, too, it will be down-to-earth, unfussy, unglamorous and unnoticed.

What this means is that we need not be anxious if, as a society, we are sheep without authentic, reliable shepherds, leaders. We need not be seduced by any who claim they are great shepherds, leaders and saviours themselves. But, equally, and perhaps more pertinently for our time, we need not fear that the human family is without any shepherding at all. For if we do fear we are without any shepherding, we may be tempted to indulge the fear that we are pretty much at the mercy of those weird and never properly defined creatures, 'the terrorists' and 'the extremists'. 'Terrorists' and 'extremists' (whoever they are) are not in charge. And will not be. No, the Lord is and remains our shepherd, and Jesus Christ remains the Good Shepherd, whether we can see that in the news we hear and see, or not.

And above all, we need not be anxious here, as we gather around word and sacrament. Jesus feeds us too. And it cannot be said to often that the message of the sacraments is precisely this: no one in the history of history has ever been closer to Gd in Jesus Christ than we are, here. We can receive him, we receive him into our selves, and he can meet us at our point of need, as he did the crowds back then.

This may not solve all our problems. I will be blunt: it won't solve all our problems. But, then, in Jesus' earthly ministry, some he healed would have fallen sick again, some he taught would forget, some he fed would go hungry again. And yet! And yet, that encounter with Gd in Jesus at the point of our need, can make all the difference. It can turn all the chaos, pain and grief of our lives into an adventure, and a pilgrimage towards Gd and our own joy.

We need Gd in Jesus. And we need faith in ourselves as human beings in the divine image, as the Second Vatican Council stressed with force. But that faith in ourselves always springs not from pride in some supposed 'innate' gifts of ours, but from humility about what Gd chooses to go on giving us. I've already suggested that Saint John XXIII is a good model of such humility. So I finish with another anecdote. 

He was visiting another sick person in another hospital, run by the convent of the Holy Spirit. He was greeted at the door thus: 'I am the Mother Superior of the Holy Spirit'. His reply: 'Lucky you! What a job! I'm just the servant of the servants of Gd'. May we learn. Amen.