"Heart Burn"

That old curmudgeon prophet of the 6^th Century before Christ was noted for his hard-hearted words of advice.  Jeremiah offended kings and rulers, the rich and the poor, the ins and the outs.  He bombarded folks with words of warning and disaster about the religious nationalism of his day.  Watch out.  Get ready.  Don’t do that.  Be sure to do this.  Here it comes.  The people, the chosen people didn’t want to hear what he had to say.

Finally, however, the exiled Hebrews got some good news from old Jeremiah: God is going to do a new thing. (vs. 31)  Instead of having to lug around a library full of law books, instead of memorizing lists of dos and don’ts, God is going to make a new covenant and write it on your hearts. (vs. 33)  God will brand your hearts with a message of love and forgiveness; burn it into your very being.  You’ll carry it with you wherever you go—you will never forget that you are God’s people and, likewise, God will never forget you.  More importantly, perhaps, is that God will not remember and keep score of your past sins and missteps.  Whew, sounds like a promise one could live with, doesn’t it?  In the midst of dark, dismal times, it is a sunny, hope-filled, heartening message.

It’s a message for us, also.  As we continue our Lenten journey and Easter is now in sight, this is welcome news for those of us who have been having heartache from examining and re-examining our lives, thoughts and decisions.  We are slowly emerging from the winter of guilt and shame into the bright, sunny-side spring of forgiveness and rebirth.  Knowing that we are in covenant with a loving God who will forgive and forget brings heartfelt thanks and hope.

Lent is a dry, hard, cold time—winter of the soul, a time of dormancy and hibernation.  The trees lose their leaves and look like dead sticks, the ground looks barren, the seeds I plant are swallowed up by the soil and seem to disappear and the dried up looking bulbs I planted last fall seem to be lost and gone forever.  Sometimes our lives seem so sin-filled and empty, so lonely and lost that it is hard to see into the future and the promise of what could be.  However, what I know, from many years of experience and watching, is that those things are not dead, as they seem; they are just doing something I cannot see or understand.  Something is happening, even when I don’t know it.

Jesus, in our Gospel reading today, has a heart-to-heart talk with his Disciples and a handful of outsiders who are seeking Jesus.  He talks about glory and heaven, and leads the way to the cross by saying that the seed must die before it can bear fruit. (vs. 24)  We know, from many years of preachers telling us, that this section of the Gospel and these words are in preparation for Jesus’ crucifixion.  What we sometimes forget is that the words were written 50 years or more after Jesus lived and reflect not so much the events of Jesus’ life as the significance that the subsequent community of followers put on those events, episodes and actions.  This is not the verbatim transcription of Jesus’ visit to Jerusalem, but a reflection on the mysteries of life and faith.

In both of the scriptures, the prophetic words are of hope and expectation, in the face of exile and death we hear words of comfort to remind us that, with God, all things are possible, including good ultimately coming out of what seems bad at the time.  It should give new meaning to the phrase heartburn—God has burned into our hearts a promise of hope and salvation.  We, who live in abundance and even excess, cannot fully identify with what it might mean to be a hungry farmer and to choose to plant a seed of corn or a bean rather than to eat it now.  It feels a lot like throwing it away… one puts a seed in the ground and it is gone.  But, what we know, is that the planting/growing process must happen in order for there to be more corn and beans and…hope.

Living in the midst of a world at war, observing the conflicts in our community, our country and our world would easily lead one to despair and withdrawal.  What I know is that God isn’t finished with us yet… we have a history of people pulling through difficult times and circumstances and rising to new heights of freedom, justice, mercy and love.  I believe that it can and will happen again… given time, and hope, and faith, and the work of the community.  What I know about that seed stuck in the ground is that it takes someone to care and nurture it for it to fully develop and to bear fruit.  Things happen, even when unseen or unknown by us, the observers.  But they often take a lot of work, too.  It is the caring, tending, helping, hoping that gives us our identity as followers of Jesus the Christ.  Love one another is the message that needs to be burned into our hearts, giving us our Christian name and identity.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus says that the seed must die to bear fruit (vs. 24), then after lots of words about glory and being glorified says: when I am lifted from the earth, I will draw all people to myself. (vs. 32)  Now, I don’t pretend to be an authority on what that means, but I can’t help but see some analogy to the metaphor of being planted and bearing fruit.  I also recall that in our Baptism ritual we speak of dying and being raised with Christ.  We proclaim that Christ is planted deep within us by the power of the Holy Spirit and we tend and care for that seed of Christ that it may rise in us to bear fruit.  Jesus is the seed that gets buried and his rising is like the seedling bursting forth after a period of dormancy and we are all raised with him.  The scripture passage makes no mention of some will/some won’t, you have to believe this or that, or any other conditions.  This sounds to me like promise of a universal salvation for humankind—a promise we can live with.  It pulls at our heartstrings.

It is sometimes hard to keep faith alive while we wait through a period of dormancy.  We wait through winter to see the signs of spring, we wait for birth, we wait for death, we wait for war to end… but we watch while we wait and we are called to keep the faith that God is at work, even when we don’t see it.  We gather at the table of Thanksgiving, a reminder of the covenant burned into our hearts: we are God’s people, we are forgiven, we are the hands and feet and mouths of Christ in the world today.  Tending, caring, loving is our task.  As surely as green growth is appearing in our yards, and we see evidence of spring all around us, God will bring about new things, out of this time of death and despair.  In that spirit, we continue to live, to worship, and to gather around the table to remember.  Thanks be to God!