Fifth Sunday of Lent

The Way of the Heart

Jeremiah is a prophet for God's people in exile.  They broke the covenant of the Law established in the exodus from Egypt.  In short, they had lost that intimacy of God taking them "by the hand to lead them forth from Egypt".  As famous as Jeremiah is for his prophetic message of doom, it is today's reading from the prophet which reveals God's desire for a new covenant, one that will no longer be subject to the difficulties of written text as the sole foundation of a relationship with His people.  Now God announces to Jeremiah "I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts . . . . No longer will they have a need to teach their friends and relatives how to know the Lord."  God's placement of this law "within" prefigures the presence of the Holy Spirit which is the dynamic, existential element of our faith that makes us a people first and foremost on a journey of the heart rather than the head.  As arduous and demanding as the exiles of Egypt and Babylon were, and the subsequent exodus back into the Promised Land, the Christ Event reveals through the journey to the cross as the greatest exodus of them all.


William Sloan Coffin, a pastor for years at the Riverside Church in New York, expressed this notion so well when he wrote "The longest, most arduous trip in the world is often the journey from the head to the heart.  Until that round trip is completed, we remain at war with ourselves.  And, of course, those at war with themselves are apt to make casualties of others, including friends and loved ones".


The authority of the priests, Temple, and God's precepts written in stone was not enough to sustain a relationship with God.  The revelation of Jeremiah's proclamation of a new overture of intimacy did not do away with priests, Temple, and the written Law; but what was added was a sense of God that transcended text, Temple, and priests.

Christ's presence as the non-Levitical high priest becomes that complement to the Law and Prophets.  For Christ proclaimed he did not come to abolish the Law and Prophets, but to fulfill them (Matt. 5:17).  The high priestly function of the Christ, in the letter to the Hebrews, is to suggest that Christ's sacrifice was himself in an act of pure love.  This sense of God's atonement, developed so well by Abelard in the 11th Century, expresses Christ's mission to win hearts by an example of reconciling love.  This pivotal shift from a primarily substitutionary atonement (God sacrificed Christ to atone for humanity's sins) to exemplary ("Come and follow me") moves us from simply another Temple sacrifice, albeit grand in scale, to a personal journey that involves sacrifice for all true followers of Jesus as the Christ.


The followers of Christ before the term "Christian" was coined, as people of "the way".  Early on, there was a sense that being a disciple was more than a function of intellectual assent, that being a follower of Christ involved a process, the give-and-take of a relationship with oneself, God, and a community of like-minded pilgrims.  Fulfillment of the Law now is fulfilled in its entirety in our relationship with God made possible by Christ's outpouring of God's love on the cross.  Stony hearts can read and follow directions, but hearts of flesh and blood seek communion.  Our Lenten journey is especially focused on the cross because it reveals so well the humanity of God in Christ, the spectacular overture of our God to win our hearts.