Listen to Your Heart
Listen to Your Heart
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Have you bought a car lately? We all know the drill right? You walk onto the lot and some secret alarm goes off inside the dealership: “Attention sales people! There is a customer in the lot!” The salesman or woman comes and greets you, more often than not a “greeting” that might be similar to how any other predator would size up their prey. Thus begins the dance. You and the salesperson go back and forth about various options and packages and models. You begin to “haggle” a bit. You get closer and closer to a deal. The salesperson says the fateful words: “Let me talk to my manager…” and leaves you sitting in some cubicle. There is more haggling. Then, finally, you reach an agreement. The only thing that remains is to sign the contract. In that contract, you make the binding commitment to pay for the car. The dealer commits to providing the car and a warranty (and that rustproofing deal they talked you into!)
Covenants were the contracts of the ancient world. Just like today, most of the covenants were entered into around business transactions. People needed to find a way to formalize the commitment between a buyer and a seller. In that world, this would have included sacrificing an animal and passing between the two halves of the animal together—a ritual way of expressing how the two parties were bound to one another. (Thank God we don’t do that at the Subaru dealership!) In the big picture, the whole process would have been about defining expectations. A covenant was a serious commitment.
Whether you are in the ancient world and “cutting” a covenant or in our modern world and signing a contract, you are participating in something which helps society be civil. The goal is to prevent cheating. The goal is to keep things from simply boiling down to power and brute strength. The goal is to build trust and shared expectations. Of course, covenants and contracts don’t always work. However, to break a covenant or a contract is serious business. Broken contracts or covenants almost always generate harsh consequences.
For our ancestors in faith, this is a really essential part of their story. As we remembered last week, these are the descendants of the slaves whom Moses brought out of Egypt into the wilderness and eventually to the promised land. Having been enslaved for generations, their lives would have been structured and governed by the Egyptians. Then, all of a sudden, they are free. They are on their own. I think it’s safe to say, they wouldn’t have had a clue what to do. Of course, when they were slaves they would have longed to be free. However, now that they are free, that freedom, itself, must have overwhelmed them.
Think of a young person. Now, imagine that young person has grown up with “helicopter” parents. It turns out the “helicopter” parents were good. They understood what their child needed to do to succeed. They got that child into the right activities. They managed their child’s daily challenges. They made sure the child was prepared for the next exam. All of this went great…right up to the child’s first day at the incredible college that all that “helicoptering” got them into. Then, the parents left and the child had no idea what to do with that freedom: “What time should I get up? When should I eat? What classes should I take?”
Generations of life in slavery had “stunted” the growth of our ancestors in faith. So, God enters a covenant with them. The God who brought them out slavery is going to be their God if they follow the rules. At this point, we all should pause and just think about what an extraordinary moment this is. God is entering a covenant with human beings. God is entering a binding agreement: if you follow the rules that I am about to give you, then I will be your God and you will be my people.
So, here is God, offering to be bound in an agreement to the people. What’s in it for God? Presumably, God so loves these people that God will do anything to help them figure out how to live together. God sees that they are lost. So, God offers them guidelines. Some of those guidelines are about the relationship between God and the people: you shall have no other God’s before me and, by the way, don’t use my name just because you hit yourself with that hammer. Many of the guidelines are about how to get along with one another: don’t sit around wishing you had your neighbor’s stuff or were married to your neighbor’s wife and, no, you don’t get to kill each other or steal from each other, either. Just to make the point, God gives Moses stone tablets with these rules written on them. Everything is clear. Anyone can read the rules. That’s the gift of a good covenant or contract—there are no surprises.
The only surprise is this: the problem for people is not knowing the right thing to do; the problem is doing the right thing. For generation after generation, the people fail to fulfill their end of the deal. People cheat each other. People steal from and kill each other. People “worship” all sorts of things that are far less than God: wealth and power and brute strength, just to name a few. The bottom line is that God invited the people into a special relationship. They were going to be God’s people. The problem is that the people just wanted to be like everyone else. (Isn’t that the human dilemma—wanting to feel special but wanting to just fit in, all at the same time?) “We want a king…like everyone else. We want a temple…like everyone else. We want the prophets to be quiet. Who wants to hear all that?”
If you take a careful look at God’s rules, the people should have been better than that. They should have cared about the weak and the poor and the outcasts because they had once been the weak and the poor and the outcasts and God had cared for them. They should have been the people whose lives were forever marked by the gratitude they felt for God’s care. They should have jumped at the chance to have God be their God. Who wouldn’t want to be God’s people? Yet, they didn’t. They broke the covenant, again and again and again.
Here’s the problem. As soon as I say it, I think we all are going to understand. What is the human tendency when we are given a set of external rules? The human tendency is…to break those rules. If some authority says to us, “Don’t do this!” then it is only a matter of time until we do that. What’s that? You don’t believe me? You go drive to O’Hare and tell me how many people you see driving 60 miles an hour in the 60 mile per hour zone. When you set external rules for people, the first thing we will do is test those rules: “If the speed limit is 60, then what happens if I go 65 or 68 or 72?” This is true of us in childhood. It remains true for us in our most childish moments as adults: “What can I get away with?” If I don’t get caught then I haven’t broken a rule, right? Next time you are driving on that expressway, count the number of people who are texting and driving and then tell me what I’m saying is not true.
Of course, there are rules in life that get generated differently. Not everyone who chooses not to cheat on their spouse makes that decision because they might get caught. Not everyone who drives at a reasonable speed does so because they don’t want a ticket. There are people who do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do. We don’t cheat people or take advantage of someone or drive too fast because we are not that kind of person and we don’t want to live in that kind of world. We can’t make everyone else’s decisions for them but we get to make our own. We get to make decisions that have integrity and that integrity has nothing to do with making the same decisions as everyone else.
Here’s the image that we should sear into our minds. Two people come to an agreement. There is no formal contract. There is no paperwork to sign. Instead, there is a discussion. There is an agreement that has been reached. What seals the deal? Those two people shake hands. That’s enough between people of integrity. They can trust each other because no one is looking to get away with anything. Keeping the agreement is just an expression of who they are. No threats are necessary.
This is the goal. This is what we are here to learn to do: to quit trying to see what we can get away with and choose instead to be better than that. I know…I know…there will always be people who are looking to cut corners. That’s not the point, though. The point is that God wants us to choose to not be that person. God wants us to stare those temptations down and choose to be who we are instead of choosing to be like everyone else. God wants us to make choices that are an expression of our core, best selves, regardless of what anyone else chooses to do.
This is the promise of the new covenant. The first covenant was written on stone. This new covenant is going to be written on everyone’s heart. It is going to be inside of us. We are going to know what the right thing to do is and, just as importantly, we are going to want to do it—not because some prophet guilted us into doing it but simply because it is the right thing to do. I won’t test my choices based on what will bring me the greatest approval or the greatest wealth. I won’t measure my choices against what everyone else is doing. I won’t even need anyone else to teach me what the right thing to do is. I will know what to do and I will do it, or at least do the best I can. And the promise is that if my efforts come from the heart and I fail, God will forgive me and invite me to try again.
Watch for the person who cares for the poor and the overlooked and the ignored. Watch for the person who acts with integrity, even when that integrity costs them in the world’s eyes. Watch for the person whose word can be trusted and whose handshake seals the deal. These are the people of the new covenant. These are the people who are listening to their hearts.