Sermon 25/3/12

As a race, sometimes humans suck. We lie, we cheat, we steal... and that's just our politicians! As a rule, we are not a pretty bunch of people. You have to feel sorry for God sometimes. I mean, God goes to all the trouble of writing the rules down for us on stonking big pillars of stone – hard to miss, you would think – but even that isn't enough to keep us on the straight and narrow. At the time Jeremiah was writing, God's people Israel were in a pretty sad state. God had made them a promise – I will be your God and you will be my people. They had agreed – until times got tough. And then they started looking for a better way – an easier way. A great deal of covenantal water had flown under the bridge since the Exodus event. Israel had not been faithful, had not stuck to their side of the covenant.

Rescue and release...restoration and return...Jeremiah speaks of God's promises to the people of Israel while they are still in captivity, still in exile, steeped in loss and grief that have broken their hearts and their spirits, too. Their city has been destroyed and their conqueror Babylon has carried away their leaders to the far-off capital of its powerful empire. By this 31st chapter, Jeremiah is no longer scolding the people for their sin and their lack of faithfulness to God. Instead, Jeremiah brings the people a new message from God. God is trying to tell them something, Jeremiah says, and it's good news, a word of comfort and hope. God has had compassion on the people; God's heart has been touched by their suffering, and God forgives them.

In this time of exile God makes sweeping promises to the people of Israel, promises of restoration and return and, most importantly, of relationship, too. Once again, as in so many covenant stories before this one, God promises to be in relationship with the people - like God's promises to Noah, to Abraham and Sarah, and to Moses and the people at Sinai - God promises to be a presence with the people, abiding with them, and promises that they will even belong to each other: God says, I will be your God, and you…you will be my people.

For ancient Israel, and for most Western society too up until the last couple of hundred years, the heart was primarily understood to be the center of intellect and values, how we understand and respond to God, each other, and the world around us.
So when God says in Jeremiah that the new covenant is written on our hearts, God is not saying we will "really feel it this time." Instead, it is that the new covenant would inform everything we see, say, and do "from the inside." When speaking of our heart, we may be speaking of our soul.



Consider now the primary image from John's gospel. We are speaking of a grain of wheat, the 'heart' and centre of the plant. This heart, or should we call it soul? must 'die' and be transformed if it is to be fruitful. And that isn't the end of it. The fruit of the seed will become in turn a seed again, then fruit, then seed... a never ending circle of life. It occurs to me to ask how the seed feels about this cycle. Probably nothing... it's a seed. But for me, in the constant small dying and renewal in my life, sometimes it hurts. And sometimes, often even, I can't see the renewal for the pain.



In a lot of ways, the last 18 months have been really hard. I have been to, either assisting or mourning, 11 funerals including my grandfather and my father in law. Some have been a joyous celebration of a life well lived and continued with God. Others have been following a sad and senseless death cutting short a promising life. But throughout this process I have been forced to confront my own perceptions and belief about what comes next.



One of the saddest funerals I went to was for a 24 year old man who was killed near the beginning of a promising career as an internationally renowned violin player. His funeral was large and beautiful and well attended, but it was empty in its heart because his family couldn't, or didn't find or somehow didn't express God in the experience. It made me realise how much comfort I find in the 'outer trappings' of my faith, the scripture and words and sacraments that help bring us closer to God. Later, journeying with my father in law through his final months, we spoke a lot about death and dying and what is to come. We didn't come up with any definitive answers, which I know he wasn't too impressed about, but he taught me not to fear death. He didn't want to die, he wasn't ready to go, but he knew that death is not the end but a new beginning. I had never been in a position before where I was trusted with guiding a soul to their eternal life. I had to take stock of the words I was saying and see if I truly believed the. If I didn't at the beginning, I did at the end. God's grace saw me transformed from the person I was into the person I can become. And this continues all the time. I need to give up the safety of what I think I know or believe and let it die in order to become new.



Another example very recently of a death leading to new life has been played out in this very Church over the last few weeks. We know Reverend Tania and her team are constantly looking for new ways to bring people into our Church family. It was with great hope and expectation that a new, open door service was initiated. I think it's safe to say it crashed and burned. This was certainly a death. And death is never easy, or pretty. But from death comes new life. And with the failure of this particular venture brought new fruit in the ideas for what families really need from this parish.



I believe that God uses the small deaths of our existence to bring us closer to God's will. I believe that the closer we get to living by God's will the closer we get to walking in the light. The deaths in our lives may seem huge, meaningless, of total loss. We may feel like we are lost in the darkness. But when we accept Christ in our lives, the darkness can not remain. God will work within us to transform our darkness to light, our fear to hope, our death to new and better life. And so Jeremiah speaks to us still, as he tells us that God is our God, and we are her people.



Amen.