Dear friends,

Today’s messages are tied together by one theme, the theme of a painful rebirth.  In Jeremiah, the prophet talks about the rebirth of God’s covenant with the people.  A covenant is a moral contract between God and the people.  God will shower people with love and with grace and the people will behave as a loved and forgiven nation.  The text clearly says that the old way no longer works. The people have failed to keep their part of the deal.  It’s like the covenant is an old tree that’s being cut down but this tree holds the seed of a new covenant between God and the people.  The old covenant has to die for a new one to take place.

Just before He talks about what has to happen to Him, Jesus speaks in parable form about the seed that has to die, in order to give birth to new growth.  He is really talking about Himself.  Christians interpret the new covenant between God and people as God’s new relationship to the people in the form of Jesus.  Jesus in a way is God’s mediator between the people and God.  It is as if God is no longer dealing with the people’s leaders directly.  The people never kept their bargain.  Imagine two attorneys sitting in a beautiful maple-paneled office in a high rise and they cannot come to an agreement because one of them does not stick to the rules.  That attorney represents the people.  The other represents God.  In this negotiation the party at fault, the people, will not cooperate.  God no longer wants to use the old attorney, like Moses or the prophets.  Then God, the other party, calls in a mediator, Jesus Who winds up dealing with the disobedient people even to the point of being beaten up and killed.  You see, God as the aggrieved party will stop at nothing to reach reconciliation.  So a new covenant is being born out of the death of an old one.   Dean Lueking (The Christian Century) says that sometimes when we look at a Biblical text we should not just look at what the connection is with our life.  We need to do this, but he says we also have to ask the question “What is God up to?”  Well, what God is up to in these texts is creating rebirth out of things that must die.

Also, friends, Jesus is to return at Easter after His own death.  Before this happens to Jesus and this is in our text today, for a moment Jesus loses heart.  You could say His resolve dies.  We see this isn’t verse 27.  He doesn’t want to go on anymore.  But the moment doesn’t last look.  His resolve and His commitment are reborn. Out of the death of his resolve comes the birth of a new commitment.  Out an instant of sheer terror and anxiety, Jesus emerges ready.

Now, friends, the rebirth of the seed, the rebirth of the covenant, the rebirth of Jesus, the rebirth of Jesus’ resolve, what do they have to do with us? First there is the hope and the joy that we find in God’s willingness to reconcile with us who are the people now.  But it also reminds us of the need of the old to wither in us and the new to be born in our lives.  For instance our habits.  We have habits that do not work for us anymore, but we cannot drop them. These are habits of eating or sleeping or smoking or not exercising, habits of praying or not praying, habits of talking to the people we love and so one Charles Duhigg, a New York Times reporter, has written a book about habits.  He says there is the cue, the thing we see or hear or smell etc. that make us perform the habit.  Then there is the routine that follows the cue.  And then there is the reward.  So that is why I asked the question, earlier, what habits have to die in your life to become a healthier person spiritually?  For me a habit was the way I did my sermons.  I realized on my sabbatical that I am a pretty good teacher and a pretty good writer, but I am not a natural preacher, the kind of person who can stand up and let the words flow out.  I also realized that the habit of listening to a fifteen minute plus sermon is not a habit that works for people anymore.  So that is why in the first sections I teach and the third I share what I have written. A new method and habit had to be born out the death of an old one.

You will agree that there are many habits in our lives are comforting, but there are also many that are destructive. A new trend on television is to show the life of extreme hoarders, people who believe if they throw one item away something terrible will happen. Now we all have our little usually harmless quirks, but that one is destructive.  We all have to ask ourselves what the habits are that need to die to give birth to something new. May God also help us examine our relationships and allow them to be born a new. May God take our dreams and allow them to be reborn. May God take our hopes and give them new life. Thanks be to God. Amen.