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Fifth Sunday in Lent

Jeremiah 31
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to[a] them,[b]”
declares the Lord.
33 “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34 No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”


All the knowledge that humanity has ever produced at their fingertips, and people are watching cat videos.

So how did we get here? How did we go from the new and shiny hope of the information age to people fighting on Facebook? And what happens next, as everything around us becomes seemingly ‘smart’?

In the beginning, was Web 1.0. This was the era of email and the static webpage. Kids won’t remember this, but the first version of the World Wide Web featured pages with information, uploaded by anyone who could string together a little code and find a server. Don’t panic if this already seems unfamiliar, because this internet was not to last.

Then we began to see the outline of Web 2.0. You would visit Amazon and find customer reviews, both good and bad, and the teenagers running the site left them up! “Dan Brown is a terrible writer” would appear right above “I had no idea Jesus was married—thanks Dan Brown.” The emphasis shifted from presenting information to allowing visitors to have an experience, to join a conversation.

In case you are curious, there is a Web 3.0 on the horizon, and maybe it’s already here. The next web will learn about you and your interests, and present you with a web that is uniquely yours. Type in “I’m hungry” and your device will guide you to the nearest Tim’s and suggest the best donut based on your evolving tastes. I’m not sure if we should be excited or terrified.

I share this with you because the Bible anticipates the evolution of the various webs and ends up creating something that the teenage billionaires could never have expected. The same evolution in ‘user experience’ can be found in the ‘believer experience’ that makes up our tradition. So where to begin?

We begin with a series of static webpages that we’ll call Bible 1.0. If we focus first on the Law, we can see divine legislation from the beginning. God gives us the bad news first and says ‘you are dust and to the dust we shall return.’ Mortality isn’t the most cheerful topic to begin with, but you have to start somewhere.

Next up there are various bits of Law that appear as our story with God unfolds. The Rabbis point to the seven laws of Noah, binding on all of humanity and sealed with a promise to never again flood the earth. The covenant with Abraham and Sarah, and the first promise of a future with God. And all of this leads, of course, to Mt. Sinai and the most enduring static page of all, the Ten Commandments.

These covenants and the laws therein form the early basis for a relationship between God and humanity. It was a somewhat one-sided affair, with lots of “I shall do this” and “you shall do that” with both sides finding their way. It was inevitable that this relationship should evolve, and perhaps reach Bible 2.0, but how?

It begins, as these things so often do, in exile. When the best Judeans are carried of to Babylon, there begins an era of revelation and creative remembering that forms the basis of the next Bible. But like all transitions, it will not be seamless or without the occasional dig. Jeremiah begins his thumbnail sketch this way:

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.

And the people were thinking ‘I guess we deserved that.’ Foreign gods, foreign wives, disregard for the widow, the orphan, and the alien. The instructions were clear, even if the presentation was looking a little dated, but the people turned away. And however you assess blame for exile, the outcome was the same: disobedient people forced to recreate their tradition in a foreign place.

Now before we get to the mechanics of this new expression of Bible, I want to dwell a moment or two in exile. Lent and exile go hand-in-hand, and this recurring theme is one of the ways we are encouraged to prepare for the season that follows this one.

Walter Brueggemann describes exile as “a community of faith living a peculiar identity in an indifferent or hostile environment.”* In other words, Israelites in exile must define what it means to be an Israelite outside Israel, to describe and maintain a ‘peculiar identity’ while overcoming the challenges of living in a strange land.

The parallels to today, which go far beyond our Lenten reflections, are too big to ignore. Having transitioned away from a society with a largely Christian self-understanding, we are functional exiles, unable to immediately see a way forward. We shift into a prophetic mode, but our prophecy is a confused mess of paternalism and whatever issue is trending today.

In the midst of this confusion, we struggle to define ourselves. Versions of Christianity abound, with all the mistrust and ambiguity that follows when it becomes increasingly difficult to identify the heart of the religion. One of the real challenges of being “a community of faith living a peculiar identity in an indifferent or hostile environment” is knowing what makes you peculiar.

So back to Bible 2.0:

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”

So this is a new type of interaction from a God more accustomed to smoting and sending snakes. There was always a relationship, but it was rather static in presentation and unilateral in execution. Like those first pages that said “Hello World!” and plenty of “thou shall nots,” version 1.0 was far more stone tablet than heartfelt. This new interactive God will embed the law within us, both heart and mind, and everyone (“from the least of them to the greatest”) will have access to this knowledge.

Beyond this, God is promising a new style of relationship, a promise of intimacy that is profoundly new and unique among the gods. No longer will we puzzle over our relationship with God and wonder where it’s truly headed—instead we will rest in the promise of mutual fidelity. This will become clearer in the days to come, but for now we receive the promise “I will be their God and they will be my people.”

And how will this be achieved? Or rather, where to start. Well, God is willing to make the first move: “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” Thank God for that. Bible 2.0 has replaced frustration with forgiveness, a God who understands our nature and still remains faithful to us. And this will become vital when we arrive at Bible 3.0, the crucified God who stubbornly forgives, just days from now.

Our journey through Lent continues, a peculiar people who seek to walk with God each day. May we continue with God’s mercy and love, written on our hearts once more. Amen.

*Brueggemann, Reverberations

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 7:30 AM