A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church, Idaho Falls on 3/22/15, by Rev. Cathy Cummings Chisholm
Scripture: Jeremiah 31:31-24; Psalm 51:1-12; John 12:20-26

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind
when you hear the word: “heart?”

“Heart” is more than just a word
which appears in two of our readings today,
heart is a crucial way of understanding
who we are and whose we are:
our relationship with God and with each other.

Author Gail Godwin had just finished a novel, Evensong,
and was making notes to write another when her agent called.
It seems an editor was working out on a treadmill
and got this great idea:
someone should write a book about the heart…
“not a medical book,
but the ways we’ve imagined the heart through time
in myth and art and popular culture and
what those images tell us about the human condition…
informative, not scholarly…”
The agent asked if she would be interested
in writing this book.
Godwin’s first reaction: absolutely not!
But she did name some other writers as possibilities –
and made suggestions about just what this book should include –
“…world history and religion
and psychology and the arts
… not a plodding survey … a broad inclusive sweep,
with emphasis on the lively, human-interest stuff …
with personal anecdotes

Finally she asked, can I have 3 days to think about it?
She didn’t get much sleep that night –
she kept turning the light on
to write down all these thoughts:
Tony Bennett singing: I left my heart in San Francisco..
The Tin Man asking the Wizard of Oz for a heart …
Augustine confessing to God: “Our hearts are restless
until they rest in you …”
On and on her mind raced, even as she kept telling herself,
turn light off, go to sleep …
She couldn’t stop thinking of phrases with the word: “heart”

“Heart of the city, heart of the country,
heart of the artichoke,
my heart’s in the highlands,
a heart turned to stone,
he’s chickenhearted, no, he’s lionhearted,
her heart is a lonely hunter,
from the bottom of my heart,
in my heart of hearts,
I had a change of heart,
it did my heart good,
to your heart’s content,
eat your heart out,
heart in my mouth, wear my heart on my sleeve,
cross my heart, lose my heart, take heart,
don’t take it to heart, don’t lose heart,
pour your heart out in a heart-to-heart talk,
set your heart on it, set your heart against it,
let not your heart be troubled…”
Bless her heart….

First thing the next morning Godwin called her agent.
Yes, she would do it.
For 2 years she researched and wrote and
lived with what was titled:
The Heart – A personal Journey Through Its myths and Meanings.
The book begins with a look
at how various cultures and religions
throughout history have viewed the heart.
She notes that in the Bible
there are over a 1000 references to the heart.
One of those references is in today’s reading from Jeremiah:
The lectionary commentary Awaken sets the context:
“The book of Jeremiah describes the last days of Judah
as an independent kingdom.
Chapter 39 describes the fall of Jerusalem
to the armies of Babylon.
Many [from Israel] were taken into exile in Babylon,
and Jeremiah and other leaders fled to Egypt.
This is the beginning of a whole new chapter for Israel.
No longer is the temple the center of their worship.
No longer are they in the land of promise.
God’s people have to begin to define themselves
in a new way.
And Jeremiah’s description of the covenant
is part of that redefinition.
The old law was external, written on tablets preserved in the ark of the covenant.
The new law has no such visible form.
It is internal, shaping thoughts and actions,
and it is open to all from the least to the greatest.”
(AWAKEN, Lent-Easter 2015)

To really understand Jeremiah’s promise
of a new covenant written on the heart
or the Psalmist’s prayer “create in me a clean heart”
we need to set aside our modern knowledge of biology.
The Hebrews did not think of the heart as a muscle
that pumps blood throughout the body.
Godwin writes that they thought of the heart as
“the seat of wisdom and understanding,
the inner personality,
the whole gamut of emotional life.”
That’s the heart we mean when we say today,
I want you to speak from your heart …
Let’s talk heart to heart ….
She gave her whole heart to the project …
We still use “heart” to refer to the most real, authentic person we can be.

But the Hebrews also believed
in the concept of a common heart –
the “collective mind, or mind-set” of the people.
When Jeremiah promises a new covenant,
what’s new is that it will be written on the heart of Israel,
the people’s relationship with God will be internalized, into a way of being,
into a new understanding of covenant -for the community.

The dictionary understanding of covenant is that it’s a contract.
Two parties come to an understanding,
they agree to a specific terms:
Party 1 will do this, Party 2 will do that,
these are the penalties for breaking the contract,
then sign here and here and initial there.

Writing in the journal, Unbound, Raymond Roberts,
describes the Presbyterian and Reformed understanding of Covenant as being
“In contrast to …[culture’s] hyper-individualism,
the covenantal view maintains that people are best understood in relationship with God and others.
Our English word “covenant” translates the Hebrew word “b’rit,” which means, “to bind.”
It signifies the way our lives are bound together with others –
in families, in larger societies, in the whole of creation – and ultimately with God.
These binding ties give rise to obligations.
“Obligation,” is a good covenant word; Raymond says,
in the middle of it stands the word “ligament,”
which refers to the sinews
that bind our lives to the lives of others. …
A covenantal understanding not only accounts
for the ways our lives our bound together,
it declares this a source of blessing.

As a community of believers, we are bound together
in the promises we make to each other and in living out those promises.
We make promises as individuals
in the vows we make in our baptism,
when we are confirmed in the faith,
when we are received into church membership,
when we enter into the covenant of marriage,
when we present our children for baptism,
when we are ordained and installed into ordered ministry.
We make promises as a congregation at each of these times
because we believe that we as a community have responsibilities
to encourage, to support, to teach,
to pray for, to nurture each other
in our relationships, in the keeping of our promises,
and to hold each other accountable when we fail.

One of the first questions I ask as the pastor officiating at a wedding
is directed to the families of the couple being married:
“Do you give your blessing to N. and N.,
and promise to do everything in your power to uphold them in their marriage?
And then I ask everyone who is present the same Question:
Will all of you witnessing these vows do everything in your power to uphold N. and N. in their marriage?

None of our relationships are lived out in isolation from the community.
All of our relationships are influenced by our other relationships.
Being human, we have trouble keeping our promises.
We suffer the consequences of breaking those promises –
the hurts and pains of misunderstandings, mistrust, broken relationships.

We need God’s help to keep our promises,
and forgiveness when we do wrong.
What makes our relationship with God work,
is not our faithfulness but God’s.
What makes God’s relationship with us work,
is not our ability to keep God’s covenant,
but God’s ability to forgive us, to shower us with grace.
With God, it’s not business, it’s personal.
God who is faithful sings a love song to us:
I will be your God and you will be my people.”

Yes, Israel had the tablets given to Moses at Sinai.
Yes, they had the Torah, the instructions to follow.
They knew what they were supposed to do – but didn’t.
As David Steele says in a prose poem about Jeremiah:
The nation knows they are a covenant people.
“I will be your God,” says Yahweh,
‘You shall be my people.”
Everyone agrees about that.
But where Jeremiah parts company with folks
Is on what that covenant is all about.
The people assume the covenant
Is about being privileged.
Jeremiah claims the covenant
is about being responsible.

Israel had a long history of acting privileged,
knowing that they weren’t doing what God wanted them to do
but thinking that God would take good care of them
– no matter what.
It is this attitude Steele says
that drives Jeremiah to distraction.
It is a travesty, a mockery
of the sacred covenant.
It misses the point by 180 degrees.
Jeremiah knows the covenant
Is for responsibility … not privilege.
It was clear from the beginning
That Yahweh did not choose these people
for their looks,
or their intelligence,
or their perfection.
Yahweh chose them to become a people
Who would live out God’s own idea for human life.
These people are intended
To model human community and justice,
to be a light to the nations,
a beacon for humanity. – Steele writes.

Just when things seem darkest for Israel,
when they are at their lowest, in exile,
feeling they’ve lost not only home, nation, Temple,
but that they’ve lost God –
Jeremiah gives this word of consolation, hope.
God’s laws will no longer be external –
written on tablets to hang on the wall,
to read in a book, to recite in church –
God’s covenant will be written on the heart-
internalized to the point of being essential
to who were are and how we live.
An automatic pilot for all our relationships,
all our actions – to be God’s people – whole heartedly

A few years ago New Zealand revised their traffic laws.
One headline at the time read:
“Give-way rule change: Get ready for confusion”
At 5 am on a particular Sunday, the new traffic rules took effect
changing which driver had to yield – or give way –
when turning at an intersection.
For decades, the old rules had caused confusion,
and even though the new ones made more sense,
the change itself was expected to cause confusion.
The government spent a million dollars to publicize the new rules.
But a news story about the change quoted a professor of psychology saying that it takes awhile
for the brain to absorb change.
We really do go on “auto-pilot”
when we know something so well
that we don’t have to think about it.
The professor said that our brain has so much to do
that if it can make something automatic – it will –
in order to do the things that aren’t routine.

Jeremiah’s word of hope is that God will do something new.
That God will find a way
for our inner and outer life to be aligned,
to be in synch with each other.
Jeremiah saw that the institutions of Israel were hollow,
that there was a disconnect
between the way God’s people were supposed to live
and how they really were living.

God did do a new thing – again and again.
Jesus was the newest thing of all,
the seed which dies when planted, so new life can grow.
God present with us – in us, through us.
God so loved the world –
God so loves us.
As we come to the end of Lent,
to the stories of that last week of Jesus’ life,
let us open our hearts to God’s heart,
let our hearts be tattooed with God’s love.
Let us live out that love with our whole heart
in our whole lives, throughout our community.