Jeremiah 36:1-8, 21-23, 27-28; 31:31-34

Lord of Life, Kennewick – Deacon Heidi Cryer’s Retirement

It’s hard not to catch some of the similarities between today’s text and Deacon Heidi Cryer’s transition to retirement. Jeremiah has been prophesying for around twenty years. Suddenly he is asked to write everything he has spoken down on a scroll. I can only imagine the documentation the council, staff, and other leaders have asked you to do after over twenty years of ministry. The words you have spoken have imprinted themselves on people’s hearts to be sure, but there’s a reason we write things down, right? 

In today’s story, the spoken word of prophecy becomes the written word. This assures that Jeremiah’s words will live on in the community beyond the prophet’s lifetime. Spoken words disappear in time. Written words are more enduring. The spoken words have been rejected; written words will persist through time and will have either a judgmental or salutary effect on later generations of readers. It was so important to God that Jeremiah and his scribe had to the exercise twice because the king meticulously destroyed the first scroll. I hope you all have made back-ups of Heidi’s documentation.

Twenty years may seem like a short time in the span of history, but it was a big twenty years for Jeremiah and the people he spoke to. Likewise, consider where we were as a country and synod when Heidi first came to Lord of Life in 2003: the year MySpace was invented; we were still in the Iraq War; Lord of the Rings: Return of the King had its film deput. 

I am so grateful for Heidi’s ministry in this place and with this expression of the Body of Christ. I am grateful that you have tended to her transition to retirement so well—documentation, celebration, exit interview, many conversations. It’s a lot when you have a good goodbye after over twenty years. And as I have had conversations with both Deacon Heidi and Pastor Kirsten, I sense that you have been honest about the larger simultaneous truths—that Heidi’s ministry in this time and place has been monumental and that ministry will go on when she is no longer serving as your deacon. 

Ministry will continue because, as our text so poignantly reminds us this morning, we worship a God of promise and relationship; a God who certainly uses individuals as instruments of healing and proclamation, but is not dependent on any single individual. And the God we worship is always doing a new thing. In this morning’s text we hear about the new covenant.

We do well to pause here and revisit the entire notion of covenant. The covenant is an agreement or pact. It binds two parties together into a relationship. One or both of the parties make certain promises, or they commit themselves to something they will honor. Anyone here part of an HOA covenant?  

God made one of the most famous covenants with Noah. He made the covenant after the Great Flood that wiped out everything but Noah, his family, and two of every animal. God put a bow in the sky and promised that no matter how bad things got, he would never again destroy the world with a flood.

God also made covenants with Abraham and Sarah, promising them as many descendants as the stars in the sky. God makes a similar covenant with David, the shepherd boy who slaid the giant Goliath and became king.  God promises that David’s house and kingdom shall be established forever. 

In this morning’s text Jeremiah refers to the most famous covenant up to this point—the covenant made when God took the people by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, a covenant that they broke. The old covenant was the one made on Mount Sinai after God had led the people out of the slavery of Egypt through the Red Sea. That covenant was based on the Law, the Ten Commandments written on stone. Parents were to teach that covenant to their children.

Some things will stay the same with the new covenant. God will continue to be the initiator. The Law will still be the norm for living as God’s people.  The goals will be the same: to love God and to love the neighbor.

So now let’s return to our text. Consider again King Jehoiakim we meet in the passage. It is so easy to read this passage from Jeremiah and think immediately of every civil law that I believed in that the courts have overturned, or the legislators have rewritten. I can compare those instances so easily with the king tearing up Jeremiah and Baruch’s scroll. But I am not preaching to the judiciary or a legislative body. Instead, I am preaching to you and me.

Where have I metaphorically or literally torn up the prophecies from God—the reminders to love God and love neighbor? Well, I find it much easier to love the neighbor across the globe who is different than me. It is harder to love neighbors when their different cultural norms rub against my daily life. I want to claim my norms and world view as superior. Likewise, there are neighbors in my neighborhood who put up campaign signs that made loving them increasingly difficult. I don’t think I am a person who has enemies until I read Jesus’ command to love our enemies, an iteration of loving our neighbor, and suddenly I cannot get to the confession and forgiveness fast enough.

And as for loving God, or not worshiping other gods, here I am convicted too today. You will not find me bowing down to statues or idols, but I can sometimes feel myself idolizing ideologies and social movements. Algorithms that keep me in bias bubbles don’t help me at all and it can take all my strength to step away from devices and simply get some fresh air.

I need the new covenant Jeremiah speaks of as anyone else. What will be new? This covenant will be like the one made after the flood. It is unilateral. The promise of the new covenant is sheer promise. The people don’t have to agree with the covenant. The new covenant cannot be broken. Neither the people nor God can break this covenant. It is everlasting.  

Most important, the new covenant is based on God’s forgiveness. God’s new covenant is a generous forgiveness that wipes the slate of the past totally clean for you and me. From the least to the greatest, “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” 

We often place limits on forgiveness. We are like Peter asking Jesus how many times we forgive those who wrong us, “seven times?” Jesus corrected Peter, “No…seventy times seven.” This forgiveness is generous and extended to all, including each of you, from the wretched and despised to the great and the honored. God’s forgiveness is not a new reality. However, in the new covenant God’s unilateral act of forgiveness is the basis upon which this new covenant is established. So, was that the end? God engraved instructions on people’s hearts and peace and kindness prevailed?

I believe an honest reading [Fretheim’s] of Jeremiah 31 is that the text has not been fully fulfilled, even with Jesus Christ. Yes, you will receive forgiveness and new life at the table today. Through baptism, God makes a covenant with each person that God never walks away from. You remain always a beloved child of God.

And yet, we are not yet at a point where we no longer need teachers and evangelists who will encourage us to know the Lord. We are not yet at the point where we can claim that all know God, from the least of them to the greatest. This remains a promise for the future. So today we give thanks again for Deacon Heidi, one who has encouraged this community to know God. Thank you for reminding so many of us, myself included, of the love and presence of God already imprinted on our collective heart.