& my worst old times
Falling as it does at the end of November, Christ the King is an interesting little festival to preach every four years. Having just wrapped up an election, the church has us celebrate a king!
To be a Christian, insists the church, is to follow someone else; Christ, our king. It’s a good sermon. One we all do well to hear.
But I’ve come to realize a sermon like that would only leave you and me in the same old settlement. And today’s scripture is all about the new covenant!
Which sounds pretty good right about now. Doesn’t it? New?
I don’t know about you, but all those not so helpful habits I’ve racked up since March are beginning to take their toll. And Lord knows after the gamut of a holiday season unlike any other we’re all about to face, new will be more welcome than ever come January.
But, truly new is really hard. And the past never seems quite past. Does it?
…A little while ago we heard about some folks stuck in the same situation. In fact, at that point in their history, it didn’t really feel all that historical. In fact, it felt more like a fate they’d all been consigned to.
The account of King Jehoiakim sitting there indifferently, cutting up the scroll and tossing the pieces in the fire is an account of a people grown cold and calloused.
But RIGHT into that seemingly hopeless situation, God sends Jeremiah with something novel! Something new! “The days are SURELY coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant,” Jeremiah declares to a people caught in an old pattern.
But the way God accomplishes this new thing is in the last way you’d expect!
“FOR I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin NO more,” says the Lord.
The Lord opens a new future by forgiving the past! Forgiving it so completely that the Lord knows nothing of it anymore!
There is nothing in your past your Lord and Savior is afraid of. There is no sin in your closet too big for your Lord to take into his tomb and just leave there!And a sermon telling you and me we ought to follow the Lord would be to leave us stuck in that same old bind. Wouldn’t it? Caught in our past.
But thanks be to God, in Jesus Christ, God has done something new! God has made the past a thing of the past!
In Jesus Christ, God has accomplished what Jeremiah foretold! God has forgiven ALL your iniquity from the cross, AND forgotten all your sin by leaving it in the empty tomb forever!
This was accomplished two-thousand years ago. And it was handed over to you way back in your baptism. (And if you’re not baptized, let me know. We can take care of that. It’s the easiest thing in the world!)
When you were baptized, you were baptized into Jesus’ death. BUT, paradoxically, in that death God has made a new future for you!
In Jesus’ death, your past is dead and buried! And the life you now live is lived in his resurrection! His new life! (Rom. 6:3-6)
…Now, I could talk this to death. But that would be more of the same. Wouldn’t it? So hear this, it’s all a miracle. Yes, even on a year like this.
You really do have new life in Christ. Now the past has as much power over you as a corpse. And everything unfolds before you as a gift.
It has taken every Bible story we’ve read this fall to get you HERE. The creation, and even the fall. Your creation, and even your fall. All the prophets foretelling this new thing God would do. And God actually doing it in Jesus Christ!
Your birth, and re-birth in baptism. Your re-birth in this moment as the Holy Spirit brings you before these words, makes them come alive FOR you, finds a place for them in your heart, and creates saving faith through them!
No longer does your future depend on either your past OR your resolve to make a better one. For Christ comes to raise you from the dead, and bring you salvation all on his own power, his own holiness, and his own life!
Go in that promise. It’ll sustain you. It’s new every morning. As the old hymn sings, “Thy mercies they fail not.”
And even when you do, hidden in that death will be Christ’s death! Waiting to take that corpse into his tomb all over again, leave it there, and then raise you to new life in him once more!
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