Jeremiah 31:27-34 “Is YHWH’s New Covenant Bad News or Good News?”

(Lectionary for October 16, 2016)

This passage is so rich historically, theologically, and anthropologically that one tiny article can scarce do it any justice. On the historical side, the language of the “new covenant” (Jer 31:31—a delightfully easy verse number to remember!) was borrowed by the collectors of the New Testament who decided that their collection of texts was in myriad ways the fulfillment and conclusion of the earlier sacred texts that they knew well, and now called the Old Testament, since what they now knew as new had made the older texts—well, old. This fight to use appropriate words to describe the Bible’s two testaments is especially contested today, some using “First and Second Testaments,” others “Hebrew Bible and New Testament,” while others stay with the familiar language of “Old and New.”

This historical conundrum about the correct names to use for the two testaments leads directly to issues of theology. In what ways is the “Old Testament” old? Out of date? Superseded? In what ways is the New Testament new? Since its subject is throughout Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah of the Christians, is there any need for the older texts? Have they been made mere historical curiosities, no longer binding on the new Christians? Yet, without the older testament, can we Christians fully comprehend what Jesus thought he was doing in his very Jewish ministry? These issues remain vexed ones among scholars of the Bible, the teachers of many of our preachers who themselves thereby remain unsettled with the many questions, unsettling in turn many parishioners.

Whatever later students have done with this Jeremianic language, in the context of the prophetic book itself the language was chosen to contrast the old covenant that YHWH had “made with their ancestors when I took them by their hands to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant they broke though I was their master” (Jer 31:32), with the promised new covenant which has a distinct, and I will argue, troubling character. The word translated “master” is literally “their baal;” the ancient meaning of the word was of course the storm god of the Canaanites, but Israel later borrowed it to mean either “husband” or master”. If Jeremiah means this more literally, then he has YHWH making fun of the Israelites who continued to worship Baal as their god, when all along YHWH was in fact the only God there was, hence quite directly “their baal.” Even if Jeremiah confines his use of “baal” to imply merely that YHWH was always and  has always been Israel’s master, the fact that Israel refused to accept that reality caused them to break YHWH’s Egyptian covenant and necessitated the offer of another covenant entirely.

And that new covenant is decidedly peculiar, leading us to examine the anthropological implications it holds for those of us who attempt to understand and receive it. Let me state my belief about this new covenant right up front: it is on its face bad news for human beings. Far from connecting this new covenant so readily with the supposed “Good News” of the Gospel of the New Testament, I wonder if we should so easily make such a connection. Or perhaps said another way: Jeremiah’s new covenant may require us Christians to redefine what we mean by Good News entirely, if we suggest that our New Testament is in fact the New Covenant proposed by Jeremiah. A closer look at what Jeremiah is proposing, I hope, makes my point.

“Surely, this is the covenant that I will cut with the House of Israel after those days, says YHWH: I will place my Torah within them; I will write it on their hearts—I will be their God and they will be my people” (Jer 31:33). Ancient Israel long referred to the making of covenant as “cutting” a covenant, an apparent reference to the most ancient practice of animal sacrifice as covenant sign (see Gen 15 for an example of the practice). Jeremiah employs here the ancient and storied language though animal sacrifice may have been far more rare in his time. In fact, the hallowed tradition of animal sacrifice is precisely the opposite of what YHWH proposes to do in this new covenant. YHWH will now perform divine heart surgery on each one of us, claims Jeremiah, cutting into us to write YHWH’s Torah directly on our hearts, the heart in Hebrew anthropology being the center of will and intelligence.

It is distinctly unfortunate, if not downright pernicious, to keep translating the Hebrew “torah” as English “law.” Yet, the NRSV persists in this red herring. “Torah” is a noun derived from Hebrew “to teach,” thus including all the teaching of YHWH for the people. This by definition includes stories, psalms, other sorts of poetry, proverbs, and, yes, laws, as we understand the word, all the literature that the tradition affords. To translate “law” is finally wrong and dangerously misleading, for if the Old Testament is law, and the New Testament is gospel (old Luther rears his hoary head), then it becomes all too easy to relegate the former to the dust bin and to elevate the latter to a place of preeminence with little need for that which has become dusty and old. Once again, we are thrown back into that theological maelstrom that we noted above.

But what of my point about the anthropological problem in evidence here? If God must perform surgery on each one of us, writing on each of our hearts the Torah of YHWH, then what role is there for each believer to search for a proper understanding of that Torah? And the answer is blindingly clear: no role at all! There is finally nothing any one of us can do to gain a proper grasp of YHWH’s teaching. This is made all the more certain in the next verse.

“No longer shall each one teach a neighbor or tell a sister or brother, ‘Know YHWH,’ because all will know me, from least to greatest, says YHWH. Surely, I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more” (Jer 31:34). The implications for all teachers and preachers are clear enough; find other work! All seminaries and churches will close, since the surgery of YHWH will give us all we need. All of the preaching and teaching of the past 3,000 years (or so) have come to nothing, so much wasted wind, so much loss of papyrus and vellum and paper and bytes. In the end, only God can make us know what God wants, and we are helpless and foolish to attempt it.

I know this sounds interestingly just like the “grace alone” of the Protestant Reformation, the justifying grace of John Wesley for us Methodists, a grace only God can offer and provide. Hence the connection in much Protestant theology between Jeremiah’s new covenant and the New Testament’s claims for the grace of Jesus for the cosmos. I get that, believe me, I do. But when it comes right down to it, I am troubled about it. No, not just because this puts me out of a job and makes a raucous joke of my 50 year ministry of preaching and teaching. My problem is that I am finally of no value, that my struggle for the truth of God has been and will always be a failure. Without the divine surgeon at work, I am doomed to a fatal heart attack.

But the real danger for me is that I may just give up the struggle, let God do all the work, and go and do whatever I want, because I cannot become a full believer, a genuine Christian on my own. (Look at Peter Breugel’s “Seven Acts of Charity” to the right) I think that has happened to many modern Christians. If God is the only actor, if only God can make me what I cannot be on my own, then I suppose I can jump in the    pool and have another martini, as I wait for God to do it for me! If that is the upshot of such a new covenant, count me out. I simply cannot sit around waiting for God to cut me open; I have a significant responsibility for my life among God’s people, and no new covenant can exist to let me off that hook. If that is what Jeremiah’s new covenant means, then it really is bad news for me and for the world in desperate need of Christians who are ready and willing to act for God in the world right now. “Not everyone who cries, ‘Lord, Lord’ gets into the realm of God,” said Jesus one day, “But those who do the will of the Father in heaven.” Talk is cheap; waiting on God is cheap. Surely by now we know what God wants of us; let’s attempt to do that now.