Sermon Text: Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 12:20-33; Psalm 51
It takes a long time for any of us to learn something new. At Christmas time, I was absolutely set on learning how to play the guitar. I headed to the Guitar Center in Cedar Rapids and found the perfect guitar for me and bought it on the spot. My brother-in-law gives lessons, and so we worked out an arrangement that I would have a lesson each week when we came over for dinner. So far, so good.
For the first few weeks, I practiced nearly every night. It was exciting to hold this instrument in my hands and to hear the intonation of the strings. I learned a few new chords each week, but I think the more I learned, the more I realized how little I in fact knew. Every new lesson opened up a whole world of possibility and questions and soon it was almost overwhelming.
And then, I got busy. Or rather, other things in my life started creeping in and taking importance once more. My practicing suffered. I began to dread my Friday night lesson and on more than one occasion conveniently “forgot” my guitar at home. I know, it’s pathetic really, but eventually I just stopped playing.
For a few weeks now, my guitar has sat in its case in the corner of my office waiting to be played. Waiting for me to pick it up once again. And I think the thing that makes it so hard to do, is that I know I’m going to have to start all over again. I’m going to have to go back to the basics.
As I glanced over at my guitar this week, I realized that many of us could easily substitute the words “faith” or “church” or “prayer life” for my experience learning how to play. When we begin this journey and this relationship with Christ, we are so full of energy and excitement and we dive in head first, eager to learn.
But life creeps back in. Or at least, life as it was before, and if we do not give our relationship with God the care and attention it needs, before too long we find that our faith is sitting in the corner, gathering dust, rather than an active and vital part of our lives.
In many ways, I don’t know that we are necessarily to blame for this phenomenon. Maybe it’s because we are lazy, or too easily swayed by the ways of this world. Maybe it’s because we are weak. But it seems like each of us has built into our nature this inability to fully follow God the way that we want to. Call it what you want – the consequences of free-will, original sin, or the brokenness of humanity – but there is just something that seems to prevent us from truly accepting and embodying the will of God in our lives.
In Romans, Paul talks about this struggle in his own life, saying “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am!”
This problem of will, this problem of sin isn’t something that just plagues us. It isn’t something that just plagued Paul… it has plagued us as a people of God from the very beginning.
There is a bible study group in our church that meets on Wednesday mornings. And in the past few months, they have been working through the first books of our Bible. We have listened in as the Hebrew people hear God’s call and say that they are willing to follow God’s law… but then time and time again grumble, and try to do things their own way, and fall by the wayside. Over and over again, God reminds them that they are a chosen people, reminds them that they have been brought out of slavery and bondage – that they have been freed to live a new life in relationship with God. And over and over again, they fail.
In the midst of a time of failure, one of those moments in the life of Israel when they were the farthest from God and seemed irredeemable – God sent a prophet named Jeremiah into their midst.
Now, Jeremiah had some tough words for the people of God. He spoke harshly against their worship of other gods and their mistreatment of the poor and told them very clearly that God was about to let Babylon come in and carry the people off into exile.
And before too long – the things Jeremiah spoke of began to happen. The king was taken away, the army collapsed, the temple was ransacked.
But then, in the midst of their despair, Jeremiah laid aside the words of judgment and condemnation and began to speak a word of hope.
“A new day is dawning” God spoke through Jeremiah, “ A new day is dawning where I will put my law within you… I will write it on your hearts. It will not be like the promises we made in the past – promises that you could never live up to – even though you love me, and even though I was faithful. This law, this new way I will write on your hearts and I will be your God and you will be my people. I will forgive you, I will restore you, and I will remember the ways that you failed in the past no more.”
The law – the beautiful words of God that are meant to guide our actions and to help us to live in love with one another – is a good and holy thing. But try as hard as we might – I’m not convinced that we can do it alone. Left with just good intentions and our own hearts and minds and wills – the law is an unattainable goal that will always show us as wanting. None of us is perfect enough. None of us is good enough. None of us, no matter how much we love God, can do it on our own.
But something changes in these words from Jeremiah. The law is transformed from some external measure that we must live up to – to a relationship, a way of being, that God writes on our very hearts.
The Psalmist cries out – give me a clean heart, O God, put a new and right spirit within me. Take that old self of mine that never seems to get it right, and fill me up with your will. Because I can’t do it alone. Only you can sustain me. Only you can help me to do it right.
In our United Methodist tradition, when we talk about grace, we talk about it in three ways. First, there is the grace that comes to us before we even know or understand who God is – prevenient grace. Then, there is the grace that helps us to see clearly what God desires of our lives. Through justifying grace, we begin to understand just how much we have failed according to the law, and just how much God loves us anyways. And when we accept that love of God – a third kind of grace pours into our lives… sanctifying grace. The grace that will sustain us and help us to grow more into the likeness of God each and every day.
It’s easy to describe those three types of grace. It’s a lot harder to accept them in our lives. Doing so means letting go of our former lives so that the love of God can live within us. We can only receive a new spirit within, if we are willing to let our old spirit go.
There is an old Hasidic tale that relates to this struggle.
A disciples asks the rebbe, ‘Why does the Torah tell us to “place these words upon your hearts”? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?’ The rebbe answers, ‘It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay, until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.’
Only when our hearts break open, only when we truly let go of our old ways, does the perfect, loving, powerful word of God fully rest in our being.
This is the message that Jesus tells his disciples over and over again – using the simple image of a grain of wheat.
Unless a seed falls into the earth and dies, it is simply a seed. But when it is planted – when the earth and water go to work on that tiny seed, it is broken open. And before long it stops being a seed and it becomes a sprout, a glimmer of new life that peeks above the soil and will grow and bear fruit.
Our lives without God are a lot like that seed. Without help – a seed will simply remain a seed. And without help, we cannot transform ourselves into what we were meant to be. But through the warm soil of community and the refreshing waters of the holy spirit, we too, can be broken open; we too can die to our old selves; we too, can find new life and bear fruit.
On my own – just me and my guitar won’t go very far. I need instruction. I need encouragement from my teacher. I need people around me who know just how much I want to play and who are willing to hold me accountable. But perhaps even more than those things, I need to go back to that first desire I had to play. And I need to let the love of music and song rest within me, place the notes upon my heart until one day my closed heart breaks and the music falls in.
