Year A
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36

May the words of my mouth… O God… speak your Truth…

The prophet Jeremiah was nearly twenty years old when he began to prophesy… and he continued to do so for the rest of his adult life… of forty years or more… the book which bears his name was written over a period of about fifteen years… from 585 – 570 BCE… and his prophecies continued to be realized for a hundred years… but Jeremiah was also known as the lamenting prophet… and it was he who wrote the Book of Lamentations…

And one of my favorite passages from Jeremiah… is the one we just heard… and two of my favorite lines from this passage are… I will put my law within them… and I will write it on their hearts… and I will be their God… and they shall be my people…

Pastor Steve Hollaway writes… what this means is that God’s law moves inside… because it didn’t work for God to give people the law written on tablets of stone… because at that time… their hearts were hearts of stone… so for example… they were like people who obeyed the speed limit… simply and only to avoid getting a ticket… but not like people who instinctively abide by the speed limit… because they understand that it’s the safest thing to do… like wearing a mask… they do it to protect others…

What this means is that we gain direct knowledge of God… so at some point… people will know God for themselves… but what does it mean to know God… we might answer that it comes through knowing the Bible… or through a spiritual experience… or through faith… but what Jeremiah hears God saying… is that to know him is to obey him… to know God is to give justice and help to the poor…

What this means is that we are forgiven… the great psychiatrist Karl Menninger once said that if he could convince the patients in psychiatric hospitals that their sins were forgiven… seventy-five percent of them could walk out the next day… he wrote… I wonder if an internist couldn’t say the same thing about his patients… we carry such a burden because of our failures and our guilt… it has broken our relationship with God… and it threatens to break our bodies and our hearts… but in the new covenant you can be forgiven and your relationship with God can be restored… it what the ELCA says about Always Being Made New…

Jeremiah also wrote in chapter 18… the word of the LORD came to me… and said… go down to the potter’s house… and there I will let you hear my words… so I went down to the potter’s house… and there he was working at his wheel… the vessel of clay that the potter was making was spoiled in his hand… and he reworked it into another vessel as seemed good to him… then the word of the LORD came… can I not do with you… O house of Israel… just as this potter has done… just like the clay in the potter’s hand… so are you in my hand… I am a potter shaping a noise against you… and devising a plan against you… turn now… all of you… from your dark ways… and amend your doings…

The spoiled clay in the potter’s hand was re-formed… as God re-formed the Israelites… the word reformed means… having been changed in such a way as to be improved… but we don’t want to be reformed… it all too often feels like being told what to do…

Jesus said… If you continue in my word… you will know the truth… and the truth will make you free… and those to whom he was speaking replied… we have never been slaves to anyone… what do you mean by saying… you will be made free… but one doesn’t have to be a house slave… or a field slave… to be enslaved… 

Today is Reformation Sunday… and I’d like to think that more than just commemorate… or celebrate the Protestant Reformation… as though it lasted only as long as it took Luther to nail his 95 theses to the church door in 1517… it can remind us that that was just the starting point… that the Reformation continues… that we are human becomings… and that we are still being formed and re-formed…

The Protestant Reformation is not over… the process that’s reforming our state and our country and the world and our very lives… is alive and well… and has been pretty active this year… I dislike it… but God’s plan for all creation isn’t going to wait until I… or any of us are ready to change… we can dig in our heels… and rant and rave… or we can… as the word Islam means… surrender our will… to God’s will… instead of being willful… we can be willing to be clay… but when we look around at the cultural landscape… there seem to be an awful lot of people… refusing to be clay… 

And those descendants of Abraham… who replied to Jesus… must have forgotten about how at least some of their ancestors had been slaves in Egypt… and the deeper truth of the Exodus story is about freedom from anything to which we might be enslaved… to which we are addicted… we think being reformed is a bad thing… because we’re going to lose our agency… our autonomy… our independence… we’re going to have to play by someone else’s rules… have to dance to someone else’s tune… but who of us knows all we need to know… who of us is established in the Mind of Christ… who among us can look around at the systemic racism… and global warming… and the divisive election in which we’re drowning… and not think that we could benefit from some more time in the potter’s hands…

The prophetic words from God that Jeremiah wrote down were rarely good… because the Israelites were reaping the seeds they’d sown… but Jeremiah also offers some of the most beautiful words of hope in the Bible… in 29:11-14 for example… For surely I know the plans I have for you… says the LORD… plans for your welfare and not for harm… to give you a future with hope… then when you call upon me and come and pray to me… I will hear you… when you search for me… you will find me… if you seek me with all your heart… I will let you find me… and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you… and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile… and it’s in this same willingness to seek God with all our hearts… that our hope lies too…