Lectionary citations

Jeremiah 31:31-34 with Psalm 51:1-12 or Psalm 119:9-16 AND
Hebrews 5:5-10 AND
John 12-20-33

Focus Scripture:
Jeremiah 31:31-34

Weekly Theme:
On Our Hearts

Focus Statement:
“I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”

Questions:

There is good news to be preached this day (like every day!): a new covenant, assurance of pardon, transformation of our lives and our life together, a future filled with hope. All of this because God is at work as God always has been, in the midst of the people. We’ve been hearing this Lent the stories of covenant, from Noah and the rainbow through Abraham and Sarah and their many descendants (including us), Moses and the people at the foot of Sinai, and now the prophet Jeremiah speaking of a covenant not of stone, not external, but written deep inside, on the very hearts of the people.

One often hears “the God of the Old Testament” contrasted with “the God of the New Testament,” with the former harsh and punishing and the latter a much “kinder and gentler” God. However, this is only one of many texts from the Hebrew Scriptures that speak of a loving and forgiving God of Israel, returning over and over to the people in mercy and tender care. Even though the people keep straying and breaking the covenant with God, God still remembers the people and remembers God’s love for them and is moved to try once again to establish the relationship with them that is described tenderly in both parental and marital imagery (“took them by the hand,” “I was their husband”).

If this text addresses the broken spirits, the “lost-ness” of exile, the lost vision and lost hope of a people who feel abandoned by God, it addresses such suffering with words of comfort and hope, and a vision for the people not only long ago but today, lost again in a very different world, with very different but even more powerful empires, the empires of militarism, materialism, and greed. We live in a time of transition, something beyond “post-modern” but not yet called anything, and the times are “a-changing” so fast that we’ll have moved on to another “new age” before this period has even been named. We live, they say, in uncertain times. But what time, we might ask, has ever been “certain”? In every age, God’s word offers hope, however, to the people. What is the hope that your church longs for? What would its transformation look like? What has it looked like already?

God offers the people of Israel a new covenant. Perhaps one of the best things that have been said about covenant is that it’s something that each party enters for the sake of the other. Not for one’s own protection or rights, but for the sake of the other. We know that’s true of God, but is it true of us? Do we do anything for God’s own sake? If this covenant is not with individuals but with the people as a community, how does our private faith need to be experienced in the life of a community of faith? Are we often tempted to keep faith a private thing, a “personal relationship with Jesus” that seems to have little to do with this covenant, even a new one, so long ago? Parker Palmer has written beautifully of the “true” covenant that “means the acceptance of weighty obligations to a Lord who demands that we ‘do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God’.” The church accepting this true covenant would “serve as a channel of reconciliation in a world in love with divisions…the church would proclaim not its mastery over the world but its servanthood – to God, to humankind, and to the vision of a peaceable kingdom” (In the Company of Strangers). How does this vision bring the idea of covenant to life for your congregation? In what ways has the church been faithful to this covenant, and in what ways have we failed? How would “an outsider” measure our faithfulness to it?

As Christians, when we hear about God’s law, we remember Jesus’ own conversation in the Gospel of Luke with the lawyer who asked what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asked him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” Can you imagine what the world would be like if we all loved God with all our heart, our soul, our strength, our mind, and our neighbor as ourselves? What if we were, as Walter Brueggemann describes, “transformed into a community of glad obedience”? (Commentary on Jeremiah) What if our very identity were all wrapped up with the One to whom we belong, and we ourselves sought first to be forgiving, peaceful, and just? What would the world look like? In what ways would it affect, for example, our shared life, our public commitments to education, ending hunger and poverty, racism, sexism, and prejudice of every kind?

Another reading for today, Psalm 51, uses the language of true contrition and humble repentance. The psalmist longs to be transformed by God, made whole, made clean of sin. This is a radical change, this new hope, this new community. It begins with God’s own “forgiving and forgetting.” How much of the energy of the church is turned toward forgiveness rather than judgment? How is your congregation opening its “heart” to its new creation and to God’s hand at work in the life you share?

Jeremiah 31:31-34

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.

and

Psalm 51:1-12

Refrain:
Create in me a clean heart, O God.

Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my
iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.

Against you, you alone, have I
sinned, and done what is evil
in your sight,
so that you are justified in your
sentence and blameless when you
pass judgment.

Indeed, I was born guilty,
a sinner when my mother
conceived me.

You desire truth in the inward being;
therefore teach me wisdom in
my secret heart.

Purge me with hyssop,
and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be
purer than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have
crushed rejoice.

Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit
within me.

Do not cast me away from
your presence,
and do not take your
holy spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your
salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit.

or

Psalm 119:9-16

Refrain:
Teach me, O God, the way of your statutes.

How can young people keep their way
pure?
By guarding it according to your
word.

With my whole heart I seek you;
do not let me stray from your
commandments.

I treasure your word in my heart,
so that I may not sin against you.

Blessed are you, O God;
teach me your statutes.

With my lips I shall declare
all the ordinances of your mouth.

I delight in the way of your decrees
as much as in all riches.

I will meditate on your precepts,
and fix my eyes on your ways.

I will delight in your statutes;
I will not forget your word.

and

Hebrews 5:5-10

So also Christ did not glorify himself in becoming a high priest, but was appointed by the one who said to him, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”; as he says also in another place, “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.” In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

and

John 12:20-33

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

Fifth Sunday in Lent
April 2, 2006
Jeremiah 31:31-34

MULTIPLYING MIRACLES

Malaria is the number-one killer in Zambia and other countries of southern Africa. This mosquito-borne disease can be prevented as well as successfully treated. But full recovery depends not only upon medical care, but also nutrition. And poverty and ignorance can slow the recovery process.

Joseph, the only child of Manzunzo and Sarah Banda, was two years old when he came down with malaria. Although he survived, Joseph did not regain his energy, or even gain weight, because of malnutrition. Sarah Banda didn’t understand that Joseph needed a higher protein diet–nor could she afford it, in any case. That’s where the Foods Resource Bank, a Christian Response to World Hunger that we support with our gifts, came in. Working with its local partner, the Reformed Church of Zambia, they designed a program to train parents in child nutritional needs and to supply such families with vegetable seeds and poultry.

Sarah Banda was taught some basic concepts of child nutrition, and the family received a mature chicken. Eggs, supplemented by small amounts of meat purchased in the market, became a regular part of Joseph’s diet. Soon the boy began to grow stronger. In addition, Joseph’s family received bean and peanut seeds from the nutrition program. When harvested, the beans and peanuts augmented the family diet.

But Joseph was not the only person to benefit from the seeds and poultry given to the Bandas. In order to participate in the program, each family agrees to give ten percent of their crop back to the community so that another malnourished child may benefit. Thus, a neighbor boy named Given also received eggs and a chick, as well as bean and peanut seeds, through the program.

In this way, you might say, in Zambia and around the world, one gift through Our Church’s Wider Mission multiplies miracles.

Wider Church Ministries
United Church of Christ

In ecumenical liturgical practice, there are normally three readings and one psalm at each Sunday service, in this order:

First Reading: Hebrew Scripture
Response: Psalm (or Canticle) from the Bible
Second Reading: Epistle (or Acts or Revelation)
Third Reading: Gospel

The first two lessons are normally read by laypeople, the Gospel by a Minister of the Word or a layperson. In Roman Catholic, Anglican and liturgical Protestant churches, it is uncommon for an ordained minister to read all of the lessons.

The psalm is not a reading but a congregational response following the lesson from Hebrew Scripture: it is normally sung with a refrain or recited by the congregation as poetry. Occasionally, a canticle is appointed in place of a psalm; it is sung or recited in the same way. The New Century Hymnal provides a complete liturgical psalter with refrains and music.

A hymn may be sung as an introduction to the proclamation of the Gospel.

During Ordinary Time (seasons after Epiphany and Pentecost) two alternative sets of OT readings with responsorial psalms are provided. The first option is a semi-continuous reading through a book of Hebrew Scripture; the second is thematically related to the other readings.