Cut to the Heart

The new covenant is not cut in stone, but on the heart -- of God! A sermon for Lent5b.

SJF • Lent 5b • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The Lord said, This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.

Throughout this Lent we have been exploring the concept of covenant. Week by week we have looked at a number of covenants that God made with the earth or with his people. We began with the rainbow covenant from the days of Noah, and then took account of the covenant God made with Abraham, sealed with Abraham’s own blood and in his flesh, and in that of his descendants forever. Then we heard an account of the giving of that covenant at Sinai — the covenant which our Scripture today notes that the people broke. And last week we looked at the healing covenant of the bronze serpent, the one that Moses made at God’s direction to heal the people of their snake-bites — and of how Jesus applied this to himself as a sign of his own New Covenant in his flesh and blood, his saving passion and death. The common element we saw in all of these covenants was their two-part nature as both agreement and sign of the agreement.

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Today, as I noted, we step back to that covenant cut in stone — the one given at Mount Sinai, the one that the people broke. The prophet Jeremiah promises that the ever-faithful God will provide the people with an unbreakable covenant. And the crucial difference about this covenant is that it will not take the form of something external and general, but something internal and personal. God will not write this covenant in the sky, as in the days of Noah; nor in the mere external flesh of his people’s men-folk, as in the covenant with Abraham; nor on tablets of stone, as he did in the days of Moses; nor in a token or a totem to ward off the pain of snake-bite, as also in the course of the people’s journey under Moses. No — God will write a new covenant on none of these, but on each and human heart.

The new covenant will be immediate in the strictest sense of that word — direct, with nothing intervening or coming in the way between God and the believer. No intermediary or messenger or teacher will be required to transmit or announce or instruct about this covenant. It will cut straight to the heart.

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Now, it is abundantly clear from the rest of the book of the prophet Jeremiah — and from the records both in Scripture and in secular history — that this miraculous intervention by God into the hearts of the people of Israel did not happen in Jeremiah’s time. The people remained as stubborn, willful and sinful through the time of Jeremiah as they had been in the days of Moses, the judges, the kings and the other prophets; and they would remain just as bad on through the captivity, and the return from Babylon, and the building of the Second Temple. They still turned to idolatry and sinfulness; and even when they turned to the law, it was to that law of Moses and the priestly law of sacrifice and burnt offering, the mechanical and external worship of God.

There were no doubt in Israel those for whom the love of God went beneath the skin, whose hearts were touched by God. There were righteous as well as wicked folks in and before Jeremiah’s time, and in the captivity and beyond. But all that righteousness or wickedness was still measured by compliance or non-compliance with that old law carved in stone.

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Yet Jeremiah had announced, “The days are surely coming” — that’s a prophet’s way of saying, “I cannot tell you when, but some day something wonderful is going to happen: God will act, and the world will be changed.”

And so it was in the days of the Second Temple, during the Roman Occupation of the land, word began to spread about a man who was more than a man. Word spread even far enough for Greeks to hear of him — Greeks who had adopted, or at least admired from afar, the Law of Moses, and came to worship in Jerusalem. And they came to Philip — one of the disciples who happened to have a Greek name! — asking to see the man they’d heard about, this man called Jesus.

The request gets passed along and finally comes to Jesus who responds, in John’s account, with one of those speeches with which John’s gospel is sprinkled— almost a sermon in itself. Perhaps it is the realization that the accomplishment of his great work — to be a light to all the world — is finally in the process of fulfillment. After all, Greeks are coming to him, literally for goodness’ sake!

And so he launches into that rhapsody on his coming sacrifice and its universal effect. It will be like a single grain of wheat that perishes but becomes a fruitful harvest. For a moment his soul is troubled by the implications of this perishing — of dying in order to bear fruit. It is also very close now — his houris approaching, the hour when the New Covenant will be well and truly cut — in his own flesh and blood upon the cross.

And in response to the trouble on his heart, God speaks in a thundering voice — no, not for his sake, but for the sake of all who heard it.

And suddenly, immediately, it is no longer the prophet’s vague promise, “The days are surely coming...” but rather it is now God’s Son’s own “Now!” “Now is the judgment of this world. Now the ruler of this world will be driven out! And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

It is as if the heart of God himself has been laid bare, and written upon it is the promise and its fulfillment. The New Covenant is now, Christ seems to say, the hour of completion and realization, the time in which the sharp sword of God’s own Spirit will cut to the heart of every human being, drawn to the foot of the cross upon which the Son of God is lifted up — no bronze serpent he, but the Son of God in flesh and blood, revealed in his Paschal suffering, losing his life, perishing, that he may take it up again, and us with it — a plentiful harvest — all of us marked on our foreheads with his cross and on our hearts with his love.

Let us thank God has called us to the foot of that cross, has marked us with that sign, has written his covenant upon our hearts. In Christ we die, like grain once scattered on a hillside, and in him we also rise, and bearing fruit unto eternal life will rejoice with him for ever.+

Cutting a Deal

The covenant sealed in flesh and blood: Abraham's, Christi's, and ours... a sermon for Lent 2b

SJF • Lent 2b • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
God said to Abraham, I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised.

On this second Sunday in Lent we come to the second great Covenant of the Hebrew Scriptures. Last week we witnessed God’s first covenant — the promise that the he would never again wipe out the world by a flood, and it was sealed with the sign of God’s own name in the heavenly rainbow. I noted last week that a covenant has two parts: an agreement between the parties, and a sign of that agreement, noting that the covenant with Noah was more or less one-sided: God made a promise to Noah and put the rainbow in the sky as a sign of that promise.

In the covenant God made with Abraham, however, we see a covenant in its complete form. God promises Abraham that he will be a father of nations, and promises him the land in which he dwells as a perpetual heritage. And this time around, the covenant is to be signed by Abraham in his own flesh, and the flesh of all of his descendants forever. I’m tempted to say that this time the shoe is on the other foot, but this sign involves an entirely different portion of the anatomy, and the less said about that the better. In fact, the editors of the lectionary were so sensitive and perhaps even squeamish about this that they actually left out all of the verses referring to circumcision, to Abraham’s side of the deal. But I have chosen to include them, however, because I think it is important to see that this covenant has a sign in addition to a promise — and the sign this time was a sign in flesh and blood; literally cutting a deal — which is the way the Hebrew authors consistently refer to making a covenant: a covenant is something you cut — and a cut almost always bleeds.

It is important, however, that we note that more flesh and blood is talked about here than merely that directly connected with sign of circumcision. Remember that the promise that God makes is that Abraham and Sarah, as old and barren as they are, and who are given new names as part of this covenant arrangement, will have flesh and blood descendants, starting with the son promised to Sarah. This couple, childless until their very old age (although Abram had fathered a child through Hagar, Sarai’s servant), would soon have a son of their own, Isaac, through whom the covenant blessing would continue, a sign of the promise revealed in flesh and blood.

There is a great promise here, a promise from God, but it costs Abraham something — it costs him and his descendants forever some pain and some blood, as a sign of the covenant which is to be marked in their flesh forever. It is a covenant that requires some personal sacrifice.

And so it would also be with the covenant that God establishes with us in Christ Jesus. In the Gospel passage today Jesus tries to explain to his disciples just how costly salvation will be — costly to him, as he endures suffering, rejection and death, before he comes to the resurrection in that crowning glory. Peter tries to rebuke him — this is too much for him, too much of a sacrifice, even though it is not he who is making it — but Jesus insists in no uncertain terms that there is a cost to this new covenant, this New Testament in his blood. The cost that he will pay is his life, and he tells Peter and the other disciples that this is the cost to them as well. If they wish to save their lives they must lose their lives for his sake and for the sake of the gospel. They must deny themselves, their very selves — who and what they are in every sense of the word — and take up their own cross and follow him.

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As you know, every time I baptize a child here at this font I also mark them on the forehead with oil blessed by the bishop, saying, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” As the hymn we just sang says, “Each newborn servant of the Crucified bears on the brow the seal of him who died.” The early church regarded this anointing with oil and baptism with water as our Christian version of circumcision — an unbloody circumcision marked not in the flesh but by the Holy Spirit. And so it is that even the youngest infant, baptized into this new life, takes up his or her cross to begin to follow Jesus, even before they can walk, as a sign of their own baptismal covenant.

This should not seem so strange to us who worship as our Lord one who first came among us as an infant in a manger. Just as a child was promised to Abraham and Sarah, a child was promised to us, a son given to us, who lived as one of us and died as one of us, but then rose victorious from the grave; and it is through him that we also share the promise of that rising from the dead. Abraham signed this covenant with his own blood; and God signed this new covenant, this new baptismal covenant through Jesus Christ — God signed this covenant in his own blood, the blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

We bear the mark of his suffering — his cross — on our foreheads, perhaps invisible as it is marked with holy oil, but it does show up when we are signed with ashes at the beginning of Lent — the minister acting almost like a detective dusting with ashes that reveal God’s fingerprints upon us — each and every one. It is a sign of the covenant we have with God, and God with us, the sign of the cross. That sign is always there, even if you cannot see it, the sign of God’s covenant with you, and you with God, in Christ Jesus our Lord — it is the sign of the saving cross, marked on your own body. Remember it, take it up every day; remember him, and follow him, who is our Lord and our God, who suffered for our salvation and rose from the dead that we might have new life in him. To him be the glory, henceforth and for evermore.

No Pleasing Some People

The curse of the double-minded judge, and the freedom of the children of God.


SJF • Proper 9a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
To what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.”
Some while ago I spoke about the fact that different people will find the same foods either enjoyable or awful. The same dish may be treated as a delicacy by some, and a culinary disaster by others — evoking delight or grimaces depending on the taste-buds of the diner.

It also appears to be true that some people are by nature “fault-finders” who will not be pleased whatever the dish set before them. Their noses are permanently upturned, and their manners ungrateful. Unlike the fussy Goldilocks — who at least found a bowl of porridge, and a chair, and a bed to her liking, and was at least satisfied a third of the time — there are folks who are just so picky that nothing completely pleases them. There is always something wrong for those who are impossible to please.

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Jesus confronted such people in the passage we heard from Matthew’s gospel. They’ve been offered two very different “dishes” — to continue my dining analogy. John the Baptist was what is called an ascetic: one who lived an austere life of fasting and privation. He lived in the desert wilderness, dressed in a camel’s hair mantle bound with a leather belt, and ate nothing but locusts and honey. And whether the “locusts” in question are the insects or the beans of the locust tree, it is a diet few, then or now, would be willing to duplicate. And what did these unpleasable people think of him? They thought he was crazy!
Then along comes Jesus, who, after his own relatively short but intense time of asceticism, during that forty days he spent in the wilderness fasting, returns to civilization and accepts the dinner invitations of well-to-do bourgeois tax-collectors, and passes his time in the company of women who, as the old euphemism has it, “are no better than they should be.” And what do these unpleasable people think of him? A glutton and a drunkard and a friend of sinners!

There is just no pleasing some people. If you don’t eat they condemn you as an overly scrupulous killjoy, and if you do eat they condemn you as a self-indulgent pleasure-seeking hedonist. And this condemnation — this refined ability not to be pleased with what is offered, this judgmental snobbery that wrinkles its nose towards whatever is presented to it — is held up as a kind of sophisticated wisdom.

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Jesus contrasts this snobbishness, this thing that passes for intelligence and wisdom, with the eager acceptance that infants will show for something that pleases them. How many times have I seen a child’s face light up at the first taste of a droplet of the sacred wine from the tip of my pinky finger on the day of that child’s baptism! Yet a connoisseur of fine wines would likely turn up his nose at the far from vintage port that we use as our communion wine — bought by the case from a liquor store in Yonkers with the distinctly déclassé name of Liquorfellers. Truly a certain kind of innocent ignorance is bliss!

But at a deeper level, this all points to the profound difference between judgment and enjoyment. One of the reasons that Jesus speaks so strongly and so often against judgment is that it actually is the biggest kill-joy of them all. It is very hard for a critic to enjoy whatever he or she is experiencing. A critic or a snob is always double-minded — of a double mind — because rather than simply enjoying what they are experiencing, a part of their mind is always standing back, comparing it, criticizing it, judging it. Off to the one side from the one enjoying and the thing enjoyed, is this analytical observer, this killjoy, the critic and the judge who tells you that you can’t really enjoy such a common or low-class thing.

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I don’t know how many of you may be familiar with “Keeping Up Appearances,” the television program featuring Hyacinth Bucket, who imagines her name ought to be pronounced Bouquet. She is a woman who has narrowed her own life, and that of her poor husband Richard, to the point where they can hardly enjoy anything any more. She is deeply embarrassed by all of her family members — except her sister Violet who married a well-off bookie, or as she says, a “turf accountant,” and who lives in a home with a Jacuzzi and a Mercedes and room for a pony. Hyacinth envies that one sister but she dreads encounters with the other two. She lives in terror that her only friend and neighbor will damage her hand-painted Royal Doulton tea-cups when she comes by for the obligatory visit. She spends so much of her life judging everything as not up to her standards, and in keeping up appearances, that she has little or no share in the raucous pleasures of her sisters Daisy and Rose. I’m sure that had she been around to hear the prophet Zechariah’s call to daughter Zion, to rejoice greatly at the coming of her king in humility riding on a donkey rather than in a chariot, she would have cringed said, “Really, Richard, a donkey!?”
This would be a tragedy if it were not for the fact that every once and a while Hyacinth is exposed — even to herself — for who she really is, and reluctantly lets her hair down and discovers she can in fact have a good time.

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Closer to our biblical texts, Saint Paul struggled inwardly with that spirit of judgment that kept him from living into the freedom of God’s love, the simple enjoyment of God’s forgiveness and grace. What he called “the law of sin” was at work in him at the very deepest level — that slavery to the law that is the fate of all who devote themselves to judgment rather than accepting the blessed liberty of the children of God. And Paul realized that the only way out of that double-mindedness was single-mindedly to throw himself, as one weary of carrying the heavy burden of the “body of death,” into the arms of Jesus, the source of rescue and rest, redemption and release.

Jesus offers himself, to all who are weary of the need to be in charge, to be displeased at others or themselves, and to accept him as the end of all of their burdens. We are free, like those in the crowds who simply would not be pleased, secure in their own sense of judgment and critique, to reject the offer of rescue and relief. But how much better to accept the offer of peace and joy as a child who reaches out for the sweet reward that is offered by a loving Father.

We have such a Father, made known to us in the Son of God himself, who with that Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever.+

Saint in the Background

Christmas 2a 2011 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG God destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.+

Around this time every year our attention is drawn naturally to the Holy Family, because of the large role they play in the story of Christ’s birth. This is especially true of one member of the Holy Family, who apart from the events immediately preceding and following Christmas, receives virtually no attention in the rest of Scripture. Even during the Christmas season, the dominant image on religious Christmas cards, even on such secular things as postage stamps, is the Madonna and Child. But here is another figure, hidden in the background, tucked a bit out of the way, usually hanging his head a little, although often with his hand outstretched in protection towards Mary and Jesus. He is somewhat in awe at the mystery unfolding around him, this other figure, this other member of the Holy Family. Today’s Gospel asks him to step forward into the light, perhaps to take a little bow — for without him the wonderful work of Christmas and what followed would not have happened. I am talking, of course, about Joseph, the husband-to-be of Mary, the foster father of Jesus.

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Matthew tells us more about Joseph than any of the other evangelists: that Joseph was a good man, an honest man, a sensitive and caring man. He also tells us he was a dreamer. When he found his bride-to-be was pregnant, he could have had her hauled into court he possibly could have had her stoned to death; instead, Joseph decided to settle the whole matter quietly. But then came a dream: an angel warned him in a dream not to take offense. The angel instructed him to take Mary as his wife, and to accept the child that would be born as his own. This was a risk, but Joseph took it; he risked the wagging tongues, that could count to nine and new his marriage had not lasted a full nine months before the child was born. He treated Mary as his wife, and the child as his son.

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In today’s Gospel, Joseph again serves as God’s agent for deliverance. And like his namesake from the Old Testament, Joseph the son of Jacob, this Joseph is one who is a dreamer, who hears the voice of God in his dreams. Joseph’s first dream told him not to fear to take Mary as his wife, and in today’s Gospel there are three more dreams that bring Joseph God’s instructions. And like his namesake from the age of the patriarchs — Joseph the son of Jacob, who called his family into Egypt to escape the famine that came upon all the world when he was Pharaoh’s viceroy — like him, this Joseph son of David brought his family into Egypt to preserve their lives, escaping the horrible plot of King Herod. And that’s the first dream out of the set of three in our Gospel today.

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But let me say a word about Herod. Herod is one of the great villains of history, a mass-murderer of children. When the wise men told Herod of the birth of the new king, he set out to ensure that no new king would ever come from Bethlehem to take his place. I’m sure you recall the story, though our reading today leaves out those verses, just reporting that Herod died. It leaves out the part about how Herod ordered all of the boy-children up to two years of age to be slaughtered: that horrible night of holocaust when the soldiers ran through the streets killing any child they saw.

But what you may not know is that this Herod was so selfishly protective of his throne that not only did he kill off all of these children in Bethlehem, but he had is own sons killed as well, when they began to act as if they were ready to take over the reins of the kingdom. Herod is a man with the blood of innocents on his hands, and the blood of his own family, a man who placed himself before all others, including his own children.

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What a contrast: Herod and Joseph. Both of them fathers — but what a difference between them! One father risked everything — his reputation, his livelihood, his home — for the sake of a child who was not even his by blood, his foster son. The other father sacrificed the lives of innocent children, and took the lives even of his own flesh and blood in order to preserve his last shreds of power — power which must eventually pass away when he died, as all men die.

And who survived, after all? After Herod died, who came back? Who but the sweet dreamer Joseph, the loving foster-father Joseph, the man who gave up everything: who gave up security and a settled life at the prompting of God’s angel in a dream. After Herod died in misery, Joseph came out of Egypt (in response to dream #2) and settled in the north country, by the Sea of Galilee (in response to dream #3). Herod, the man who sought to save his life, to protect himself from all who might seize his throne, lost his life; while Joseph, the man who risked everything, preserved himself and his family.

And what a family it was: a wife who was not his wife after the manner of the flesh; a son who was not his son except by adoption. This is the Holy Family — not your typical nuclear family by any means — not the family of the “family values” spouting from the lips of politicians, hypocrites and demagogues. Joseph, and Mary, and Jesus represent the true family values, the truly human values that reflect what God values: sacrifice, forgiveness, trust, choosing life for another at risk to yourself, in doing what Jesus would later assure us is the greatest act of love: to risk your life for someone else.

For flesh and blood are not the stuff virtue is made from. Herod despised his own flesh and blood, and the flesh and blood of countless innocents; while Joseph loved Mary and Jesus as if they were his own dear wife and own dear son far better than many husbands and fathers love or have loved their wives or children. Flesh and blood is no guarantee of love, earthly or heavenly. Saint Paul told the church at Corinth that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”(1 Cor 15.50). And when it comes to blood as the binder of love, who can forget those words from the very beginning of human history, from Genesis, when the brothers — brothers in blood and flesh — one killed the other. And what happened? What did God say? “Cain, your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!” No blood is no guarantee of love, my friends; I wish it were. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom. Flesh and blood are no guarantee of living heavenly values even here on earth! Only the imperishable and heavenly can support the weight of the greatest virtues, the strongest goods, the most precious grace. Love, the greatest love, is present only and whenever self-sacrifice is present, in flesh and blood families as well as in spiritual families — of which the church is the prime example.

The saying goes that blood is thicker than water, but I assure you that there is a water that is thicker than the cold blood of a Herod. There is a water that is as thick as the warmest blood of the most loving family. And that is the water of Baptism. For through the water of Baptism we all have become part of a new spiritual family, blessed, as Saint Paul says, with every blessing in the heavenly places. Through the waters of Baptism we have all, all been adopted, each and all of us have been adopted as God’s children through Jesus Christ, adopted into a family defined by faith in him, and in love toward the saints — the other members of God’s great extended, adopted family. This is the family whose kinship is neither bounded nor defined by flesh and blood, by race or nation or clan. This is the great extended family begotten, as John’s Gospel says, not by blood or by the will of the flesh or by the will of man, but by God. It is God who has called us together, as surely as God called together the lost children of Israel, called them home from wherever they had been scattered to the farthest parts of the earth. And he who calls us children will not forsake us.

This is our hope, a hope to which we have been called, an inheritance which we possess as heirs through adoption, through the immeasurable greatness of God’s abundant power. It is an inheritance that it would be a shame to waste.

As we go through this new year, times will get rough — last year was rough enough! — and demands may come to seem unreasonable; should we feel as if our family is asking too much of us, a husband not being considerate enough, a wife demanding too much of our time; our children not paying attention to us, our parents seeming unreasonable; or if our church family should seem to be making too many demands, our time being eaten up by church work and responsibilities — if those feelings should come our way, let us pause for a moment and think about the sweet dreamer Joseph. Let us recall the patient foster-father, the loving, giving spouse; the patron of the church. Let us pause and recall how blessed we are in the opportunity to set self aside for the sake of others; how blessed we are to dream what Archbishop Desmod Tutu calls “God’s dream” — that all, all, all, are children of God, and that through Christ we can be all that it means to be a child of God.+