Jeremiah’s warning from God about the impending disaster to befall Judah and Jerusalem seems to collide into what could otherwise be a pleasant reflection about God’s love. How does this fit? Covenants and disasters are not the purpose of the Old Testament. Unfortunately, many Christians take the approach that God in the Old Testament is a jealous god ready to deliver punishment on a whim, a God of the law, and then with the flip of the page, the God of the New Testament is the God of Love revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ. In fact the proper Jewish understanding of the Law is that the Law is freedom, the law is our delight—it is not a burden but rather a map to living in a loving relationship with God.
The previous chapter in Jeremiah reveals that Israel has fallen by clinging to idolatry and worshipping false gods. There we read, “I know, O Lord, that the way of human beings is not in their control, that mortals as they walk cannot direct their steps. Correct me, O Lord, but in just measure; not in your anger, or you will bring me to nothing.” And now we read of God’s pending wrath.
The connection in these two readings comes by simply looking into the center of our lives and seeing what we hold up as truth, what we worship. Idolatry in the Old Testament would easy translate into today’s desires for more money, better appearances, and generally anything else that pulls our hearts away from the love of God. God is always faithful, waiting patiently for us to respond to the invitation of love. Just as Jeremiah says, we cannot direct our own steps, we need God’s help in our everyday lives. When we try and walk alone, we follow our own will and not “thy will.” That’s when trouble begins.
In this season following Pentecost, most commonly referred to as “ordinary time,” I prefer to look at this space before Advent as simply “Kingdom time.” This is a time following the inauguration of the Kingdom where we are called to live deeply into its truths and live out its promises of justice, equality, and above all, love. If love is indeed the fulfilling of the law, then we must open up our very souls to be flooded with heavenly grace. Living in the Kingdom is not just about being good, it’s about living by God’s directives. The latter day prophet, Mother Teresa once said, “at the end of our life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done. We will simply be judged by 'I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was naked and you clothed me, I was homeless and you took me in.’” If there’s any doubt, then, as to what we are to do in our daily lives as Christians it is simply that.
There’s a rather young hymn in the American Church with a simple refrain, “they will know we are Christians by our love.” How we love and what we love are equally important to the Christian task. In this morning’s Gospel, we heard about Jesus giving to Peter the power of the keys—the power to bind and loose on earth. What strikes me the most about this is that we tend to bind more than we loose. We bind out of fear, fear of the unknown, fear of the other. We bind out of judgment—repelling those things that we see in the world that we know exist inside of us. We bind and thus we ourselves are bound. In light of the command to love one another as I have loved you, we should be persuaded to loosen more than we do. We do this by love, we do this by mending broken relationships, standing alongside others in their battles with addiction and recovery, being a strong shoulder for a loved one who has recently been diagnosed with a terminal disease, or simply stretching forth our arms to our sisters and brothers living on the margins of the world. We loosen those chains in our lives by relinquishing the power of our own idolatry. When we honor the Christ in each stranger, we are in affect loving the Christ that lives inside of us. We love and so let go of those things that really bind us, loosening by God’s grace and allowing the light to shine brilliantly inside of us.
Then, they will know we are Christians by our love.
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