October 20, 2013
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
While I have never had amnesia, it can be a good thing. Young people yearn for parental amnesia when they crumple the front end of the family car. Spousal amnesia can be desirable when I misunderstood the correct entrance of Macy’s to meet her. Child amnesia would be nice when you forget to pick up your son from kindergarten. We can wish for boss amnesia when she hears you gossiping at the water cooler when you didn’t have all the facts.
How about pastoral amnesia? I pray that Pastor Don won’t remember the time when he saw me hanging out with bad company. Pastors wish you had congregational amnesia sometimes—“Please forget that bad sermon I gave last Sunday or the day I could not remember her name.”
Wishing and hoping for someone to have amnesia is not that simple. People who undergone bypass surgery, a life-and-death matter, are directed by doctors to change their eating habits, stop smoking, exercise, and significantly alter their lifestyle. They know they should make those changes, and yet studies indicate that within two years after such major surgery a high percentage of patients have forgotten to alter their behavior. They have amnesia. It is a behavioral change that God seeks, and God seeks to accomplish this by putting completely new hearts within the faithful.
Jeremiah
In our lesson from Jeremiah today, Israel and Judah have been ripped from their homeland and thought that God has abandoned them. Into this anguish came Jeremiah instructing them to put down roots in Babylon, build houses to live in, set up shops to practice their trade, seek the welfare of Babylon and told to carry on.
During these dark times, a voice speaks with news of hope suggesting that there is a light, no matter how deep our darkness may seem. The irony is that it is only in the darkness are we forced to seek out and ultimately able to see that light. So Jeremiah in our lesson for today lights a candle of hope—a bright light that will roll back the exiles’ darkness.
The prophet Jeremiah has been calling the people of Israel to obey God’s laws. The law is seen as evidence of God’s love. Out of God’s love, God has allowed Israel to wander and stray from righteousness. But when Israel did this, it was God’s love that he gave them the law. A good translation of the Hebrew for law is “the way.” Law in Israel is literally “the way,” or even more literally, “the finger pointing the way.” Laws like the Ten Commandments function like God pointing the way toward the good life.
Not wanting the people to have temporary amnesia time and time again, the prophets of Israel recalled God’s law for the people. They held up God’s law against the behavior of the people, as if they were holding up a ruler to measure something.
While Israel may have felt abandoned, God remained close and his love led to giving the law and also sending truthful prophets to preach the law.
One problem: it didn’t work. Though the law was clear—all ten of them—and God’s ways were distinct—a finger pointing the way—time and time again, we preferred our way to God’s way. We disobeyed. We wandered. We rebelled. And how we wish that there were divine amnesia!
How ironic that as Moses is up on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments from God, in the time it takes for Moses to walk down the mountain with the commandments to proclaim them to the people, the people are already breaking the first commandment against idolatry. They are worshipping a golden calf.
The main reason for Jeremiah’s prophecy is to point to the devastation that Israel has suffered is because Israel has failed to follow the way that God has set forth. They had amnesia.
What about us? The laws are clear but our behavior seems prone to disobey the laws. And when that happens, we wish for divine amnesia. We yearn for God to forget what we have done wrong.
Living Today
We live in a world today that is similar to Israel’s captivity in Babylon. Our society is often hostile to the Christian faith. Most of all the things that we do at church are foreign in the world. Our worship, spiritual disciplines, and education are often different from the world that we have our home addresses. For example, we practice memory in a world of amnesia; practice grief in a world of denial; practice generosity in a world of selfishness; practice obedience in a world of indulgence; practice hope in a world of despair.
When we pick up today’s newspaper, watch the TV news, and we would see the truth of the ancient word from the Book of Common Prayer, “We have done that which we ought not have done and we have left undone that which we should have done and there is no health in us.”
Just when Israel who was incapable and powerless to make the lifestyle changes demanded by these laws, God proposed a new approach. God said, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (v. 33). This new approach would not require that laws be posted on the wall or carried in a box, but they would be installed in their hearts.
It would be intertwined into their emotions, hopes and dreams. It was a move from commandments to conversation, from rules to relationship. More than knowing the rules of God, they were to know God with their being. It was a new covenant that would alter their pattern of failure and transform it into a relationship of forgiveness and new life.
Do you think that we can trust people to do the right thing even without reference to external codes of conduct? Can we have such a faith of conscience? It is the kind of change we hope happens.
It’s like a home where instead of parents feeling confined to write down the rules and set curfews, limits, and chores for their children, how much better to set a tone of conversation and relationship where there is partnership in caring for the welfare of one another, encouraging doing good things together and desiring to share in responsibilities that help everyone in the home.
It’s like when your child picks up his toys without you needing to ask him. And you wonder where did that come from? I think it’s written in their hearts to keep the household in harmony.
Christian Life
Among the gifts that God gives us, through our participation in the rituals and practices of the church is the gift of that “covenant written on the heart.” I have been blessed and humbled by being associated with FCBC and all of you. We may not be “the greatest,” but we are certainly not the “least” of all churches in the world. But when I watch you live out your Christian lives, I have seen evidence that Jeremiah’s hoped for covenant written on the heart has happened in you.
I have seen families in our congregation that have been battered by difficult circumstances. The breadwinner is laid off. A child is seriously sick. House payments are missed. There’s an awful accident. And nobody calls a meeting to discuss the sad situations but somebody, without being ordered or asked, just quietly begins to take up a collection, brings food over, sets off a prayer chain, and lends a helping hand.
Now where did that good work come from? I think it arose out of a covenant not written on stone but written on the heart.
Imagine out in the business world, there is often an ethical quandary. Although nobody upstairs in the corporate office knew it was an ethical quandary until you pointed it out. Some business dealing took place and you, just standing there with a cup of coffee in your hand, said simply, “That’s not right.” And everyone was forced to stop, to review, to reconsider, to rescind their action.
How did that happen for you to speak up, taking a risk in order to support the right thing, and good was done? I think it arose out of a covenant not written on stone but written on the heart.
Today is a good Sunday to acknowledge the fact that it seems like I come up here asking you for your gifts all the time. We want you to make a special gift to Redwood Glen’s Capital Fund Campaign because you believe that camping and conferencing in God’s beautiful redwood setting is worth your support. We want you to give to the World Mission Offering every October so that when we are unable to go overseas ourselves, we can send over 100 American Baptist missionaries all over the world. By the way, I was in Portland, Oregon this weekend and met ABC missionaries including Marian Noyes to Congo and Kyle Williams who is raising his support to go to Congo, Ingrid to Panama and Peter Im to Cambodia.
And now I am asking you to give and make a pledge to the church in 2014 so that as long as there is still darkness in the world, we want to walk in the light of Christ as FCBC.
And after all of this asking, cajoling and inviting you to give generously and give sacrificially, you amazingly do! You put God’s work ahead of your earthly work. You believe in God’s kingdom to be true and that our earthly life is only a way to live out our faith truthfully. You believe the Good News in Jesus Christ is more important than to have good food, good things, or good times that would only fade and rust on earth.
Now from where did this generous heart come? I think it arose out of a covenant not written on stone but written on the heart.
Divine Amnesia
Jeremiah tells of God’s intention to make this new covenant written on our hearts. How can this happen when we have enormous burdens of guilt for having a broken covenant with God? Jeremiah declares God’s solution with a bold, grace-filled move: “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (v. 34b). God’s strategy is to practice divine amnesia, an amnesia rooted in forgiveness and forgetting, for in forgiving and forgetting, God gives us the hope that there is a new tomorrow.
God forgives us for our mistakes and offenses and then forgets them so that they no longer can be a barrier to our relationship with God. God wants us to see that when we forgive the grudges that we have, we can halt and forget their continuation of negative feelings.
God wants us to see that forgiving accepts sincere regret but forgetting releases harbored anger and hurt.
God sees that forgiveness receives an apology and accepts blame but forgetting closes wounds and fades scars.
God sees that forgiveness is an act of compassion prompting worth and value in another but forgetting is an act of love that reinforces the desire that the relationship not be broken.
We may still like to have all those other kinds of amnesia—spousal, parental, boss, pastoral, or congregational but deep down in our hearts, we crave the thorough cleansing of divine amnesia. And today’s message from Jeremiah is that God is merciful in forgiving and forgetting what we have done so that we may have God’s truth written in our hearts.
Remember, a “covenant” is something that God initiates in us. And I am saying that God’s covenanting work continues in you, everyday and powerfully even when you are unaware of it, as God continues to write on your heart the life that God intends for you to live.
When no one else is watching and only God is looking, you do what is right and true, I think this good work of yours did not arise out of a covenant written on stone but written on your heart.
While you are singing a hymn, listening to this sermon, pondering God’s word, participating in a church meeting—God is busy working with you, forming you, writing God’s truth upon your heart. God’s covenant in Jesus Christ is written on your heart like it is on mine.
Let us pray.
Almighty God, whose will is for us to live abundant, faithful lives, we thank you that you love us so much you have revealed your will for us in Christ Jesus. We are dependent upon your guidance and your encouragement, your revelation and your forgiveness, to live our lives faithfully. Show us your way and write on our hearts the courage to walk that way, so that we might be faithful to the covenant that you have made with us. In the name of Christ, the New Covenant, we pray. Amen.