Lent 5B
March 22, 2015
Jeremiah 31:31-34
I have many
wonderful memories of my grandparents – some are actual memories, some are
memories of things I have been told about them, making them giants in my mind.
But one of my favorite memories of my grandma June is a simple one from just a
few years before she finally succumbed to Alzheimer’s Disease. We have a family
tradition during Advent of candle-lighting, where we take turns lighting
candles all around the living room, sharing memories or reflections on the
season and singing carols. At this point, my grandparents were still living
independently, but my grandma was already showing strongly some the effects of
Alzheimer’s – she called people by the
wrong names, she couldn’t follow a
conversation, stuff like that, but she was still aware enough to realize she
was doing it wrong. It was clearly very frustrating for this brilliant,
talented, articulate woman. That night of candle-lighting, I remember her
standing before us in the darkened living room, her face lit only by a few
candles and the burning wick she was holding, and she said to us, “I don’t
always remember people, but I remember how to love.”
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| My pretty grandma and me (circa 2007) |
What more
was there to say? As that nasty disease slowly took from us this bright woman,
she forgot the particular details of life – who said what when, who is related
to whom – but the last thing to go for her was her ability to be in
relationship, her ability to love, presumably because it was also the very
first thing she ever learned. Oh, that we could all forget the dirty details of
life and remember only to love one another!
“I will be
their God, and they shall be my people…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 sins no more.” These powerful words are from our reading this
morning from Jeremiah. The Bible, our story of faith, is full of good news, but
to me, this is some of the best: that God desires a relationship with us so
much that God not only forgives us our sins, but actually “remembers [them] no
more.” God forgets our sins – can you
imagine?
What is so
profound about this revelation is that it shows us that our God is a God of
relationship, who will do (and has done) anything and everything to maintain a
relationship with us. This little gem from Jeremiah is all the more poignant
because of its larger context. Those of you who know your Bible know that the
vast majority of the book of Jeremiah is doom and gloom, recalling
all the ways
that Israel has fallen short of their covenant with God. God has tried so many
ways to reach the Israelites, but all they do is turn away, and Jeremiah is
full of fear about that. But here, in chapters 30-33, we have what is known
among scholars as the Book of Consolation: a brief respite from the doom and
gloom to express instead God’s abiding love for us, and God’s promise to
restore Israel. And this restoration begins with God forgetting our sins, and remembering
only to love and be in relationship with us. In other words, it begins with
forgiveness.
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| Jeremiah, by Michelangelo |
Forgiveness
is a topic that is consistently intriguing to me. It is a fairly common,
well-known word, but I think so many of us have no idea what it entails. We
have a vague sense from our liturgy that, at least where God is concerned, it
involves first confessing our sins and wrong-doings, which is followed by the
assurance of pardon from a God who continues to go to all lengths to love us.
But this reality is hard to translate into forgiveness between people. With God,
you see, I always know I’ll be forgiven. But actually being humble enough
before another person to admit that I did something wrong, something that hurt
them, and then not necessarily being assured of their forgiveness, is just not
easy. It requires so much self-awareness, so much humility, so much
vulnerability, and as much as we may like to restore our relationships with
people in our lives, all that is quite a cost. It is often easier just to hold
a grudge and maintain that I was right and you were wrong. Of course, if you
have experienced this, you also know that it is terribly hard to truly love
someone when holding the grudge is your mode of operation.
But if we
are called to be godly people, created in the image of God, then isn’t true
forgiveness that restores relationship something to strive for? How do we do
it? I read a wonderful article a while back called, “A Better Way to Say I’mSorry,” about teaching kids how to apologize, but the material is gold, even
for adults. It describes a four-step apology, in which you first apologize for
the specific thing you did to hurt someone (so not, “I was mean,” but, “I said
this specific thing that hurt you”), then articulate why it was wrong (that is,
how specifically it hurt the other person), then express your hope for how you
will behave better in the future (as in, a positive action you will do in the
hurtful one’s place), and finally asking for forgiveness. So instead of, “I’m
sorry I was mean because I got in trouble. I won’t do it again,” the correct
way to apologize would be, “I’m sorry that I
I understand
that some types of forgiveness are too big or complicated for this model. It
would be difficult to use this on someone with whom you didn’t have a loving
relationship to begin with, for example, or someone you don’t even know but
who, nonetheless, hurt you deeply. Perhaps it is those instances, especially, that
make it so hard some days to pray that petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive
us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” I’m interested in God
forgetting my sins – as I said, to me
that is some of the best news in the whole Bible – but there are some other
especially heinous sins that other
people do that I don’t want God ever to forget, because I will never forget them, and I want God to be on my side.
But there
again is the good, though difficult, news: what we can’t do, God does. We
struggle to forget the sins of others that have hurt us so, that have destroyed
relationships, that have left us
For our
closing prayer today, I want you to try this exercise with me. First, think
about something you have done that
hurt someone else, something you wish God would forget. It can be big or small,
it doesn’t matter. Imagine actually holding it in your hand. In the other hand,
imagine holding something that you wish you
could forget, some way that someone else has hurt you. As you hold those two
things, I will read this passage again from Jeremiah, and while I read, imagine
God forgetting that first thing – as indeed, God already has. As for the other
thing, this one we will hold in prayer. So, brothers and sisters in Christ, let
us pray…
“This is the
new covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, 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.”
Gracious and merciful God, every day we
encounter brokenness in the world, and the destruction of loving relationships.
But you promise to forget our sins and that in all things, you shall be our
God. Create in us clean hearts that are ready and willing to forgive others, so
that we might be ruled not by the brokenness that pervades our world, but by the love that guides yours. In the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit, Amen.
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