God's law for Dummies.

Jeremiah 31:27-34
Individual Retribution
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord.
In those days they shall no longer say:
“The parents have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.
A New Covenant
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord:I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Luke 18:1-8
The Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge
Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent. ’ For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming. ’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”


We're back with Jeremiah this week - and his good news for God's people in exile.
In our reading last week, the message and the challenge was for the people of God to make the best of where they were. In a strange, land, yes. Among strange people with different customs who were largely indifferent to their God. That too.
But the message was - not to simply mark time but to engage with the culture in which they found themselves. To establish themselves, put down roots and affect the people around them. It sounded a very familiar and timely message for the people of God today.
Encouraging for us, who find ourselves in a world often indifferent or even hostile to the God we serve.
Timely reassurance that, as God's people we can affect our communities for good. Not by remaining apart from the community. Not by being aggressive or over bearing but by simply living as God would have us live - within God's law of love.
And its that law that we hear more about today from Jeremiah.
This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord:I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.
The prophet Jeremiah, charged to bring good news to the people of God living in exile does an amazing job.
He brings a word of comfort and of challenge.
A word to encourage folk trying hard to maintain their identity, trying to practice all that they had been taught from an early age, all the things that made them distinctive as God's people.
As they worked hard to discern God's purpose for them - or even as they wrestled with the worry that God had abandoned them the prophet assures them of God's faithfulness.
And introduces them to a new facet of God.
It's like a God for Dummies.
A God who is not hard to fathom out.
A God whose only desire is to see the people do well, living in harmony, without fear.
A God whose ways are easy to follow- because those ways make perfect sense.
They are not complicated, no twists or tricks but straightforward, down to earth, right living.
No longer, the prophet tells them will you have to struggle to see God or to learn of Gods ways or to discern Gods purpose - those things will be as instinctive as life itself, as integral as breathing. Gods law will be written on their hearts.
That might seem like old news to us.
We have grown up in the light that Jesus brought into the world.
We are familiar with Jesus' paring the law down to love God and love your neighbour.
Few of us have ever tied ourselves in knots to fulfil God's law.
But, for God's people in Jeremiah's day, following God was fraught with all sorts of rules and regulations and the possibility of tripping up and falling foul at any time.
For Jeremiah to speak the word of God; I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, was revolutionary.
And just what the people needed to hear in their exile.
In those few words they were freed from generations of burdens.
Freed from the burden of paying for all the mistakes of the past - not just their own but those of previous generations.
The people to whom Jeremiah brought Gods word were a people who expected to always be in arrears with God, to never measure up.
A people who were always looking back to find out what had gone wrong, always looking for others to blame for their sorry predicament.
Jeremiah's word from God opens for them a whole new range of possibility.
Jeremiah invites them to imagine a place where the past is no longer a millstone around their necks.
To imagine a place where they have no need to work out what went wrong or seek revenge.
A place where it is the present that matters.
A place where they can live in love with their neighbours and create a new reality.
And, yet again, the prophet's words jump out of the pages, hurtling through the ages, to confront us today.
Confront us with a new reality too - that we can move forward.
That we can be confident about the future when we rely on God's law written on our hearts, inscribed deep within each one of us.
A law that allows us to move forward free from what is now behind us, be it good or bad.
A law that not only allows us to move forward but urges us to do so.
How many of us have become stuck in the past?
Remembering old hurts or longing for former times?
How many of us lament the church we once knew and loved?
How many of us spend our time looking back, working out where it all went wrong, whose fault it was?
Still tasting the sour grapes of our Old Testament reading rather than hearing the words of hope that the prophet speaks and being assured that Gods law is still written on our hearts.
The law of love that frees us from the burdens of the past and allows us to live in harmony with the present that is ours today.
I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.

It was with the conviction of that reality that the widow of whom we read in Luke's gospel lived.
She knew Gods law of love dwelt deep within all people - even the judge who ignored her pleas.
She had an expectation that justice would prevail because it forms part of God's law of love that is written on the hearts of God's people.
So she refused to give up demanding justice.
This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord:I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Just imagine if we lived within that reality - the reality of being the people of God, having God's law written on our hearts. Expecting justice. Being persistent in looking for signs of love in ourselves and in others.
And, even when we find our spirits crushed or our hopes dashed, going back for more because we know that God has made a new reality possible.
Living in expectation of love.
Making it a reality for others by our loving actions - and encouraging others to do the same.
God's law is written on our hearts.
It is a law that frees, not constricts.
A law that, lived into, brings change to communities.
And then imagine the huge sigh of God as we live like that.
A sigh that says - At last, they've got it. It's not a dream for the future. It's available now when my people live in the law written on their hearts. It's not a remote possibility - it's a present reality. What else have I been trying to reveal to them for centuries? Why else would I write my law within them, so that living it becomes as instinctive as taking their next breath?
Lets hear that sigh of God as we finally "get it" today.
Gods law is written on our hearts.
May we live in God's law, sharing the transforming love of God and expecting no less from others whom God also calls beloved children.
And, by our expectations, may love and justice become realities in our community.
For the glory of God.
Amen


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Liminal spaces

Jeremiah 29:1,4-7
Jeremiah’s Letter to the Exiles in Babylon
These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Luke 17:11-19
Jesus Cleanses Ten Lepers
On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

Remember those Boney M lyrics:
By the rivers of babylon, there we sat down
Ye-eah we wept, when we remembered zion.
When the wicked
Carried us away in captivity
Required from us a song
Now how shall we sing the lord's song in a strange land?

In our first reading this morning, Jeremiah is given a message to take to the exiles in Babylon - Gods people - driven from their own land, taken into captivity and forced to live in a foreign culture. People wondering how to be the people of God in a foreign land. People wondering how long they will remain in captivity and how they can ever maintain some sort of identity as the people of God when removed from all that is familiar to them. And the message Jeremiah proclaims is one of encouragement to put down some roots where they find themselves:
Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile.
The message to these people is that their business is not to mark time. It's not about holing up and waiting for release, waiting for things to get better. Their business is to LIVE where they are - to enjoy life in its fulness.
Although they find themselves in a border land, their task is to discover God in that place with them.
To affect the culture in which they find themselves.
To make a difference right where they are.
Isn't it incredible that a message written some 2,500 years ago to Gods people in exile has just as much relevance for the people of God gathered in worship today?
Our task, no matter how irrelevant or how marginalised we perceive ourselves to be is to find new ways to sing the Lord's song, to find new ways to positively affect the culture around us.
There are more and more signs of people of faith being exiled today.
From schools to work places to offices of government, faith is being sidelined.
Those who speak up for faith are being driven to the margins, forced to exist in the border lands, treading a fine line between faith and offence.
But it is often in the margins, under stress, that creativity comes to the fore.

A word I loved to use when I worked in Hospital Chaplaincy is liminal.
For me, that word described perfectly the interface in which I often found myself working - encompassing faith and ritual and tradition and superstition - straddling the chasm that folk often felt when their experience of life and faith to date no longer accommodated the place they found themselves in the landscape of illness - their own or that of a loved one.
That place where there were no easy answers - or any answers at all.
Liminal - a place of transition, a border land.
According to the fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia,
During liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt.

That sounds just about right for the church right now.
We can't be sure that traditions will continue.
We can't take things for granted - like our place in society and especially our right to maintain respect and influence.
But that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Being in that liminal space, being in the border land demands that we get creative.
And just like the exiles were encouraged to do in Jeremiah's day, we too are called on to
seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
We may not be in exile but we are certainly moving nearer the margins.
But rather than be disheartened by that, we can be energised to find new ways of singing the Lords song in a strange land.

In our gospel reading, we also find Jesus in border territory.
On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.
In that border territory, 10 lepers approached Jesus, but keeping their distance as demanded by law.
Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priest.
It was in that moment that they were healed. As they went, they were made clean.
Nine of the healed lepers knew the drill.
The custom was that they had to go and show themselves to the priest so that they could be declared fit to be accepted back into community.
The foreigner, the Samaritan, wasn't so invested in custom and culture.
And that freedom was what allowed him to grasp the true nature of the healing he had received and to return and give thanks.
The Samaritan wasn't so caught up in ritual and so was much more open to recognising the sheer grace of God present in the healing he encountered.
He saw his healing, not through the eyes of centuries of custom and tradition but with the freshness of an outsider.
And so he was able to experience not just Jesus' healing but his blessing too.
Jesus said to him: “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

Reflecting further on our two readings today, we might want to ask ourselves:
Where, today, do we find ourselves in those border lands?
What are the boundaries, real or perceived that we would like to traverse today?
What are the boundaries that discomfort us?
How might we affect the culture in which we live - for good?
How might we share faith in new and imaginative ways?
How might we get creative and straddle those liminal places in ways that reveal the grace of God to others?
How might we sing the Lords song in the strange land in which we are called to work for God today?
seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

May our prayers be for the welfare of this parish and community we serve today.
May we get creative in finding new ways to witness to God and to live out our faith.
And may we influence those we meet daily with the love and grace of God.
For the glory of God.
Amen

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