Proper 14, Year B, Track 2
1 Kings 19:4-8
Psalm 34:1-8
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51
"As probably all of us know, after twenty years, direct American involvement in the conflict in Afghanistan is finally ending, but the intensity of infighting between the Afghan government, the Taliban, and tribal militias has only intensified. In the wake of these events, another pressing responsibility of the US government has taken center stage: evacuating those Afghans who helped us before the Taliban can reach them to exact retribution, in particular the many interpreters who provided vital information to American troops who do not speak Pashto, Dari, Farsi, Urdu, or any of the other languages spoken throughout Afghanistan. These men and women have risked their lives to save the lives of both their countrymen and American and allied forces. I have had the privilege of working with some of these interpreters, and I can say that their job is as challenging as it is dangerous. Interpreters do not simply transcribe words from one language to another, but they also must translate the ideas those words intend to convey. To put this into perspective, imagine translating casual American speech for someone who has no familiarity with American culture. Imagine translating idioms such as “break a leg,” “a dime a dozen,” “the last straw,” or “under the weather” without providing the meaning behind those statements. At best it will confuse; in war, the consequences can be much worse.
Now imagine trying to teach something at the same time as you translate and interpret. Better yet, imagine that the subject you are teaching deals primarily in the intangible. Instructing students in Kenya or Vietnam about the discourses of Aristotle, perhaps. The very idea is daunting, isn’t it? Well this is very similar to how the Israelites in the Old Testament learned about God under the Old Covenant. Before the coming of Christ, God spoke to his people through prophets, priests, judges, and other holy men and women specifically appointed by Him. They were chosen to speak the will of God into right action among the people of Israel, and those we remember among the righteous in the Old Testament did so admirably, oftentimes even when doing so could put them in harm’s way. But there was not a personal relationship between God and every Israelite. The people could not directly confess their sin and ask forgiveness from God. Even King David, in the aftermath of his sins of adultery and murder, seems utterly oblivious of the gravity of his actions until God sends the prophet Nathan to him. After the construction of the temple, intercession was addressed by a designated priestly caste system, which was also responsible for teaching Israel about right living. But throughout Israel’s history, we see destruction and downfall time and time again as a result of ignoring the will of God as spoken through the righteous, heeding the words of the unrighteous, or very often both. By the time of Jeremiah, priests, prophets, kings, and even his own family had closed their ears and their hearts to the warning that they were bringing about their destruction. And so God brought about the fall of Judah, the utter destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and the exile and enslavement of the Israelites in Babylon. But God took pity on his people even though they had turned on Him, and in Jeremiah 31 He speaks through His chosen prophet to convey a message that would change everything they knew. Starting in verse 31 we read “‘The day is coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. The covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife, says the Lord. But this new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day, says the Lord. I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the Lord.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already, says the Lord. And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.”
Just consider the magnitude of what God is saying here. He recognizes that the changeable and easily corrupted hearts of men cannot rise to the challenge of keeping the old covenant. He sees that, much like an inexperienced interpreter, they cannot be trusted to convey the will of God to His people. Therefore God must speak directly to the heart of every single one of them, and where we still struggle to understand or accept that will, God sends His ministers—not to proclaim God’s intentions, but to help God’s people understand those intentions for themselves.
God also states that “I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.” God cannot dwell in a wicked heart, but He also no longer requires burnt offerings and rituals offered by priests as a condition for atonement. When we choose to follow Christ, we are granted one sacrifice and one high priest in the form of the Son, perfect and perpetual, the only means sufficient to make our hearts a suitable tabernacle for God.
Some 600 years after Jeremiah proclaims this new covenant, Jesus reveals in John 6 that it has come at long last, saying “It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from Him comes to me. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only He has seen the Father. Very truly, whoever believes has eternal life…I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” Christ is the perfect and only offering capable of cleansing all our sins, past and future, and He is the only priest worthy of presenting that offering to God. He is the only one able to prepare a dwelling place in us for the Holy Spirit, thereby assuring us eternal life in His heavenly kingdom and giving us the ability to know God’s will for us. Not only that, but by displacing the sin in our hearts and making room for the Spirit, the motivation to follow God is similarly internalized. No more does God need to perpetuate a cycle of calamity and deliverance to bring His people into righteousness. That desire comes from within us if we listen, and that desire changes us in the eyes of those who do not know Christ. We do not need to fear that we are inexperienced or ineffective interpreters of God’s message. If we follow that motivation within us to do what is good in His sight, we are God’s message, and we are responsible for spreading that message to the ends of the earth. Amen."