"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 will be my
people."
This morning, I want to begin with a closer look at our Old
Testament lesson
from The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah---in particular, the
passage just read.
"The Interpreter's Bible" provides us the following
commentary:
"This passage presents the most important single teaching
of Jeremiah, where
his religious thought reaches its climax. It is one of the
mountain peaks of
the Old Testament and came to have great importance in the New
Testament.
The new covenant does not involve the giving of a new law; that
is
unnecessary. . . .The covenant is to be new in the sense
that it will confer
a new, inward motivation and power for fulfilling the law
already known."
We can readily see that the New Covenant signified a critical
and radical
change in the history of God's people and their salvation. It
shifted the
focus from an external conformity to the "Law of
Moses," to an internal
faithfulness to God out of love. It turned obedience to the
Commandments from
an "I must" to an "I want to." It
completely turns around the question from
"Do I have to?" to "What better thing can I do
for you, O Lord?" It compels
us, and future generations of Christians, to seek not the least
we can do but
rather, the most we can do to demonstrate the love for God,
family and
neighbor that is "written in our hearts."
There is an immense difference in doing something willingly
because it is
"written in your heart," and doing something
reluctantly because, it is
demanded of you by others. We see this every day in almost every
aspect of
both private and public life.
The program for yesterday's Men of St. James breakfast meeting
was a
presentation by Gary Gustavson that described his family's two
cross-country
bike trips. That's right, two---and there is another planned for
this summer.
That makes one every five years. There was even a marvelous
video that Elaine
filmed as they traveled over mountains, across deserts, through
small towns
and around big cities.
The commitment of family members, parents and children, and next
time around,
daughter-in-law too;---the commitment of family members, to
these separate
adventures was and shall not be simply the challenge of
accomplishing what
others would not even consider, or the physical benefits derived
from such an
undertaking. No, the commitment was, and shall be, to 3000
miles of doing
what is "written in one's heart"---enjoying the
blessings of family
togetherness in God's great out-of-doors.
People are happiest and most successful when they are putting
themselves
wholeheartedly into the activity because it is "written in
their heart." The
secret to the highest form of happiness and personal
fulfillment, for you, is
to be found "written in your heart" and, whether you
realize it or not, it is
written by the Lord!
On a larger, more historic scale: You may recall that Joan of
Arc started her
mission to save France when she was 16 years old. Bolstered by
her belief
that God had directed her to do so, a teenage Joan led an
uprising against
her country's British oppressors. Captured by the enemy, Joan
was condemned
as a heretic, and burned at the stake when she was only 19 years
old.
Was Joan of Arc a crazed heretic or a noble saint? Mark Twain
wrote of her:
"She was perhaps the only entirely
unselfish person whose name has a
place in history. She was truthful when lying was the common
speech of men,
steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age
which had
forgotten what honor was."
In 1431, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for what? ---for
convictions
that were "written in her heart."
Jesse the Body Ventura and Joan of Arc, is this a comparison
worth making?
Ventura is the governor of the country's most Lutheran state
and, I
understand, holds membership in a Minneapolis "Lutheran
Church Missouri
Synod" congregation. But, according to The Lutheran
magazine, he refuses to
do interviews with any religious media. He says he has his
beliefs; he just
won't tell us what they are!
Jesse did snap up an opportunity to be quizzed by a writer from
Playboy
magazine. In this wide-ranging discussion, his views on religion
became
somewhat clearer---but not much. For instance, his suggestion
that "religion
is for the weak-minded," got the most attention from the
national press and
immediate, convoluted, and conflicting explanations from his
embarrassed
advisors.
The important question for Jesse or anyone is whether a person
can help
others, let alone save others, if he or she is unwilling to go
to the core of
their convictions which, for the Christian, begin and end with
the cross.
There are of course, different levels of "core cross
commitment." When
debating issues in church and society, people sometimes shrug
and say, "Well,
I wouldn't go to the cross for it"
---meaning, "It just isn't all that important to me."
Realizing that there are many degrees of devotion to issues and
ideas, Bob
Wendel, a Presbyterian, has come up with a "Cross Scale of
Commitment,"
running from the most serious commitment to the very least.
Number:
1. Go to the cross and rise in three days.
2. Go to the cross expecting to die but not to rise again.
3. Go to the foot of the cross but no further.
4. Watch someone else go to the cross.
5. Visit Golgotha on a vacation.
6. Wear a cross at work.
7. Wear a cross to church.
8. Buy a cross for a friend.
9. Look at crosses in the Cokesbury Press Catalog.
10. Write with a Cross Pen.
("Late Night with Bob Wendel," Presbyterian Headline
News, July 3, 1998, 4).
A disciple of Christ has to be somewhere near Number 1 on Bob
Wendel's "Cross
Scale of Commitment." In the gospel of John, Jesus
concludes his public
ministry with a bold statement about the last days of his life.
Jesus
proclaims that "it is for this reason (the cross) that I
have come to this
hour" (12:27). Far from fleeing his fate on the cross, it
is toward
crucifixion that his whole life and ministry have been heading.
Each one of us must discover those places where the vision of
Jeremiah and
Jesus (not Jesse) are struggling to be realized. As we
ourselves meditate
upon of Jeremiah's vision and Jesus' "journey to the
cross," our prayer
should be that WE might be miraculously and marvelously blessed
with a
renewed commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ that is
"written in our
hearts".
AMEN.
