Hold Life Gently

Jeremiah 31:31-34,

John 12:20-33

Hadn’t the People Israel a covenant with God already— the covenant that said God would be their God and they would be God’s people, a Chosen People? But now, the Northern Kingdom, Israel had been overrun and lay in ruins. Their little part of paradise, their “Promised Land” had been obliterated. It was clear the same was about to happen to the Southern Kingdom, Judah. Where was God? What of that covenant that went all the way back to father Abraham, and was carved in stone by the Liberator Moses?

The truth is that the people had been in almost continuous rebellion against the Law of Moses since before the chisel marks had cooled. And they were reaping what they had sewn—going their own way into ruin. This, however, would not be the last word of the people, or of God.

Here in Chapter 31, Jeremiah offers some of the most consoling words and images of restoration ever uttered. These are words of healing for these deep wounds, for this deep guilt. These are words to wipe away the tears. These are words of liberation. A new exodus would take place. These are words of liberation from their unfaithfulness.

He offers an image of great tenderness—a new covenant will replace the former one, without canceling the former one. It is not the intention of the law that will be new, but the way it is conveyed will be new!

It will be written on warm hearts, beating hearts of passion, not cold tablets of stone.

This understanding is one of the peaks of Old Testament theology. It was shared by most of the prophets, and was central to the early church’s understanding of Jesus’ message told in the New Testament  (New Covenant).

The New Testament Proclamation is that to truly be People of God, the focus cannot be one of external conformity, but rather must be internal motivation.

The problem is that external conformity either erases our individual gifts, our thinking and our contributions as we fall into uniformity becoming automatons rather than thinking, feeling, creative human being. Or it fosters rebellion.

There is something about us humans when we hear, “Thou shalt not,” we think, “Hmm, I wonder why not? That sounds interesting, exciting, I will have to check that out!” It is the forbidden fruit syndrome. (And don’t act like you don’t know what I am talking about.)

When the law is written on our heats, we grow up some. The “heart” in the Old Testament is seen as the seat of love, both thinking and feeling. We still use it that way. The law written on the heart has to be a law of love. And it has to be as central as the heart is to the body.

When the law is written on ones heart, the focus shifts from “I must” to “I want to.” What an immense difference that makes. It is like the shift of a tectonic plate. That is the shift brought to the world in Jesus Christ. No wonder the earth shook.

It is kind of like the difference between having to take care of your little sister when you were a teenager, and taking care of your own child when you are an adult. Things that are external or foisted upon us are sacrifices. Those same things, internally motivated, are choices, motivated by love, by relationships, by a sense of ownership.

A friend when I was young grew up on a neighboring farm. Of course, as a kid he had to do chores like all of us farm kids, about which he always complained. In the summer when there was a lot of work to do, he hated it even more and complained continually. When I saw him many years later at a class reunion I was very surprised to learn that he had bought his father’s farm. I was even more surprised to hear him speak with great pride about the farm, and his obvious love for the land and the work.

I told him that I was surprised to hear that he was on the farm, and I reminded him that he often said he could not get out fast enough and wasn’t going to get stuck on that “blankity blank” farm. He replied, “It is so different now. I have decided to do it. It is not my dad telling to do this and that. I can see what needs to be done. I can see the benefit in the long run. I can see how what I do effects the future, and what it means to be a good steward of the land.” Then he admitted, somewhat sheepishly, “I can see why my father loved it.”

It seems to me, that in coming in human form, Jesus shows us what a person with the law written on his or her heart is like. “As he said, I and the father are one.” They were of one purpose, one vision. They were one in love and compassion for the people.

That is why Jesus took the passage from Isaiah as his own, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captive, recovery of sight to the blind, to proclaim the present reign of God.” Then he said, “This has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

He said many other remarkable things. One of them is just after the passage read from John this morning, where he says to his disciples, “No longer do I call you servants, but friends. Servants do not know what the master is doing, but everything I have heard in this most intimate relationship with God, I have shared with you. He had written the law on their hearts.

In today’s Gospel lesson we see Jesus speaking about what he has already done. That is, given up his life as God. He speaks also about what he will do—pour his love into the world and give his life up to the manner of execution of a troublemaker. Why? It is because God’s law of Love is written on his heart. His heart gave out for the world. And before that he said another remarkable thing. This is not only his way, but also, his disciple’s way.

This is not a command, but a lesson, a truth. If we share God’s love and God’s intention for the world, we have internalized what it means to follow. When the law of love is written upon our hearts, we are not taken, but given. We give ourselves.

It is one of those paradoxes, that so apply to life: the only way to really have life, what Jesus called “eternal life” —life with the quality of the eternal, is to be willing to let it go. More truthfully, it is to give it, perhaps to give it up. For life is, after all made to be spent.

When I was in late high school, a friend of my sister boarded her three-year-old filly quarter horse on our farm. The horse’s name was “Imp.” She asked me to ride it as much as possible, and to do some training of the horse, as it was young and very spirited. It was a good, smart horse. Did I mention, she was very spirited?

She was also a horse with a soft mouth. With a bit in her mouth, she had no life at all. She was disturbed and distracted, uncomfortable and shy of being hurt. So rather than use a bit, I would ride her with just a bozell (a hard leather piece that goes over the nose.) I always rode her bare back as well. With only a bozell and riding her bare back, she would go like the wind She was free, and so was. Riding in that manner I still had some control (at least the illusion of it). I at least had the power of suggestion. I also discovered that riding bare back isn’t squeezing for all you are worth gripping tight so not to fall off, but rather learning to move together, take each other’s cues. At times it felt very much like we were one.

Isn’t the life Jesus is talking about like that? The tighter we grasp it, the more unholy our grip becomes. The tighter we grip, the less we feel, the free we are. We squeeze the life out of it.

Think of a relationship with a loved one. If you seek to possess your life partner, to remake him or her in your image, or to hold them so tightly that you become insanely jealous or possessive, you lose them. If you don’t lose them physically you do emotionally. And if you succeed in changing them, then they are no longer the person you were attracted to in the first place!

It is the same with a child. Ours is to nurture, protect, and guide with an ever-loosening grip as they grow. Eventually, we only hold them with our hearts. God knows how hard that is, and how true.

The notion of giving up our life is a warning against making anything other than the One True God, our god. Only a loose grip keeps us from possessing and using things as if we cannot do with out them. That is, making them god. We grip tightly to many things. We so “possess” them, that soon, we are possessed by them.

To what do you grip so tightly that it threatens to possess you: your looks, your health, independence, job, your role as mother or father, spouse. Perhaps it is your self-image: the sure one, the steady one, the needy one. Perhaps it is your house, the money you (used to have) in the stock market. We hold these things as if to give them up is to die. And so our tightly gripping hand cannot open either to receive or to give. Our hearts are so fully written by what we possess that there is no room for a new word.

Is there something that you are clutching too tightly? Where have you made an idol out of a gift, out of a talent, out of your good fortune, out of your looks, you health, your job, your relationship, your history. If that was taken from you, do you think you could survive? Is there room for God here? Is your heart so set on certain things that it is closed to a new word?

And where have you let loose of some things, either willingly, or it being forced upon you, and you yet found life. These are experiences that teach about God. Perhaps you found even a deeper sense of God as a love that you now know in your heart. Perhaps you experienced a life-changing accident, a health crisis or job crisis, the death of a loved one, a divorce, or simply growing up and moving away… yet somehow you survived. You found that God was already in that new place just as the Scripture said. And life righted itself. Joy returned. Tears were wiped from your eyes.

Where, in throwing yourself into something bigger than yourself, did you find yourself, and what it really means to be alive?

If life is given rather than held, if God’s intention is written on our hearts, the life is made knew. We behave differently. We can afford to love, even to risk. We can afford to care about others, for failure or difficulty will not destroy us or negate our value!

When God’s intention, God’s hope for the world, is written on our hearts, we can risk being hurt, instead of distancing.

We can afford to feel bad, even guilty rather than blame others or wrap ourselves in the protective cloak of anger.

We can afford to fail rather than play it safe. We can afford to engage the seemingly hopeless struggle with all of our might, because we are called to do so and we know that everything does not depend on what we can see or accomplish in our lifetime.

If the law of God’s Love is written on our hearts, we can afford to accept and welcome rather than judge. We can allow ambivalence and doubt rather than retreat into narrow doctrines and truncated views of God and of human.

We can afford to let our hearts rule, to hold life gently, as a gift—the way one holds all precious things.

And we just might find a joy that we never imagined. We might just discover that God is always and forever holding us with a gentle hand.