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…

Today’s passage from Jeremiah is one of my favorites… it talks about how God will make a new covenant with the House of Israel… the former one… made with their ancestors… those whom God brought out of Egypt… had been broken… and part of why it had been broken was because it was not fully a part of them… they did not own it… it was coming from the outside in… and that can be hard to do… in this new covenant God would put God’s law within them… would write it on their hearts… would make it course through their bodies like their own breath and their own blood…

They say the eyes are the doorway to the soul… but in the ancient world… the heart was its seat… it was the place where the soul and the body connected… and although a soul is not a material object… it is still capable of being formed by the revealed word of God… by our experiences… and by the Holy Spirit… so God’s law being within us… being written on our hearts… so to say… is like Holy DNA that forms our souls… it comes from being connected with our Creator and Source… and while our human DNA may determine things like hair and eye color… this Holy DNA informs the guidelines which determine our relationships with each other…

The Book of Ezekiel describes something that’s steeped in relationship… and which informed what Martin Luther did in 1517… in the ancient world… each city had its own city-god… and Yahweh was considered the city-god of Jerusalem… and when cities fought… their gods also fought… so the city which won… . had the god which won…

In 2 Chronicles 7:15… God said about the Temple that Solomon had just built… For now I have chosen and consecrated this house so that my name may be there forever; my eyes and my heart will be there for all time…

But then Ezekiel described something astounding that happened during the Babylonian Captivity… in Ezekiel there’s a passage that begins with God in the Holy of Holies… and the cherubim move from their resting place to receive the LORD… God passes over the threshold and leaves the Holy of Holies… and is carried by the cherubim to Babylon… and in that moment YHWH was transformed from a locally based and geographically limited city-god… to a God of the people… who so wanted to be in relationship with them… that the rigidity of “place” expressed in 2 Chronicles… could lovingly yield to share the exiles’ fate in Babylon… and by choosing mobility… YHWH established omnipresence… and could then simultaneously be with those who the Babylonians did not take…

When I was growing up, some of our friends across the street were Roman Catholic… and I had this vague awareness about people going to confession… but also of the priest being the only doorway through which they could gain access to God… but even as a young Jew… I knew this was not our understanding… that the Rabbi held no similar power to limit our access to God…

And I think that in the same way that YHWH left the Holy of Holies to become omnipresent… to be with God’s people in exile… Martin Luther realized that the Roman church couldn’t… and shouldn’t… try to hold God captive either… locked behind cathedral doors to which they held the keys… and dole God out… or open the Godspigot and let more of God out for those who paid indulgences or shut it down for those whose who did not…

Martin Luther realized the inherent abuse of power which humans could invoke… but he also realized that God was a God of all the people who spilled out beyond church doors… and that the Holy Spirit spilled out beyond papal authority… and was omnipresent in the ways that Ezekiel understood… and that the Holy Spirit could help and guide us…

On Pentecost… the day we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit… the color of the day is red… when someone is ordained as a pastor or priest and makes voews to be led by the Holy Spirit… the color of the day is… yes… red… and we wear red today because we believe that the reforms started in 1517… and which continue to this day… were led by the Holy Spirit too…

Luther believed that at its core… the Bible is a story about a God who stubbornly refuses to give up on us… and that we are saved not because of anything we do or are… but because of who God is… ] we won’t ever get everything right… we are simultaneously saint and sinner… but because we are made in the image of God… we have worth and dignity… and we slosh through grace in the waters of baptism…

Luther took God’s work out of places like the monastery and gave it to those in their daily life… so that it’s our hands which do God’s work… he translated the Bible into the spoken language so that everyone could read it… and he wrote the Large and the Small Catechism so parents could teach their children at home… and that’s why we’re all in red today… why the color of the Spirit isn’t limited to my stole and the altar hangings… you’re wearing red… because tradition affirms that the Holy Spirit lives in and among all of us… and that’s why we belong to the priesthood of all believers…

The Holy Spirit is often described in other ways, too… the Holy Spirit is explained as the wind… or a dove… or fire… and in 3:8… John wrote that no one can predict where the wind will blow… or how a dove will fly… or where fire will spread… and it can be difficult to predict which way the Spirit will urge us… but we invite the Spirit into our lives and our formation… through studying scriptures… prayer… and conversation… ] in Reformation… we are always being made new… we are always letting go of that which no longer serves God well… and taking hold of that which does… letting go and holding on… letting go and holding on… and over time… we increasingly experience… that all of those things which serve God well… also serve us well… but even when we get it wrong… even when we get frustrated… the Holy Spirit is right there with and in us… waiting for us to get out of our own way… ] and God’s law is being written on our hearts… so that God’s gracious invitation to the sinner in us… and God’s loving embrace for the saint in us… burn like a beacon to guide us on our Way… and the Called to Common Mission Concordat which enables me as an Episcopal priest… to serve a Lutheran congregation… is one of the ways that God is expanding our welcome…

I think that different Christian denominations can teach and learn from each other… the retreat I attended this week started out years ago… only for Lutherans… Anglicans… and Roman Catholics… and was called LARC… two years ago… the Planning Committee decided to enlarge the circle… and changed the name to the Ecumenical Community of Michigan… and this week we talked about how healthy relationships in ecumenical and political conversation depend on understanding and openness… and there were Presbyterian… Mennonite… and United Methodist Christians who participated… in addition to the original three… ] and because Roman Catholic communion at the retreat has always been a two-way sticking point… we decided to forgo communion entirely… and celebrate a Moravian Love Feast to which all were invited… as all are invited to this Table… as all are invited by an omnipresent God… who experiences no divisions… and desires the same for all of us…