Changed from Within
Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 12:32[1]
When I was in High School in the 1970’s, we still had a fairly
strict dress code. Girls couldn’t wear skirts or shorts that didn’t reach as
long as their fingertips. Guys had restrictions on the length of their hair,
and they definitely couldn’t wear any facial hair. And there was no way that anyone
could show up to school with clothes that had holes in them! I realize that
hasn’t changed much in some places. But then as now, when Summer comes, most
students wear whatever they want. I grew my hair out as long as my parents
would let me get away with. The school rules really don’t affect how students
dress when they are away from school. But then the fact of the matter is that
those kinds of external rules have very little impact on what a person chooses
to do on their own.
That’s why it’s so important to teach your children values in a
way that they internalize them. It takes more than a “do as I say, not as I do”
approach. Most of us who have much gray on our heads know that children are
going to do what they see. And it’s essential not only to model the behaviors
you want to encourage in your children, but also to give them boundaries that
make sense. The values tend to stick when we help them understand why those
behaviors are important. When they find the motivation within themselves to
follow a certain code of behavior, they’re much more likely to actually
practice that way of life.
That was one of the problems that the people of Israel had
always faced. They had been given God’s torah,
God’s instructions about how to live. But it would seem that they never really
embraced the principles they had been taught. And so the prophets of the day
declared that they were going to be sent into exile in Babylon. Now, it’s easy
to think that this was just the “Old Testament” God being angry and vengeful
and punishing. But the truth is that even in the Hebrew Bible, the judgments
that came upon the people of Israel were intended to bring them back to God.
They were “tough love” in action, and as a number of prophets indicated, it
broke God’s heart when that happened.
The prophet Jeremiah was called to declare the word of the Lord
to a people undergoing judgment, living in exile. They had lost everything, and
may have felt that God had given up on them. But Jeremiah’s message was
something they may not have expected. He promised them in the name of the Lord
that God was going to make some changes that may have been hard for them to
imagine. Instead of an arrangement that depended on whether the people followed
“external” rules, Jeremiah said to them in the name of the Lord that God would
make a whole new covenant with them. And that new covenant would depend solely
upon God’s unfailing love and unshakeable faithfulness.
But perhaps, equally as important was the fact that this relationship
would be one in which God would change the people themselves from within. Jeremiah
says in the name of the Lord, “I will put my law within them, and I will write
it on their hearts … . No longer shall
they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall
all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD” (Jer.
31:33-34). God would transform them into people who were so changed from within
that they would want nothing more than to love God with all their hearts and to
love their neighbors as themselves. In a very real sense, it would give a whole
new meaning to the promise that “I will be their God and they will be my
people” (Jer. 31:33).
I believe our Gospel lesson for today also relates to this
promise. It’s a very different setting, with Jesus responding to certain Greeks
seeking him out, and seeing that as the sign that his time was at hand. And
what was going to come to pass was going to change everything. As Jesus puts
it, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”
(Jn. 12:32). Now, on the surface of things, that might not sound so
earth-shaking. The next verse seems to almost downplay what Jesus said by
interpreting it as indicating the kind of death he was going to undergo—death
on a cross. But I would say there’s much more than that going on in this
statement. I think Jesus was indicating not only the kind of death he faced,
but also the far-reaching effects of that death.
As a result of his death on the cross, Jesus says that he will
“draw all people” to himself. If you think about it, how do you “draw” another
person to yourself? Somehow you have to do something that changes the way they
feel about you so that they want to be near you. In Jesus’ case, I think he’s
talking about how his death on the cross would change all things and all
people. In the context of John’s Gospel, this reflects the power of God’s love
poured out in Jesus Christ. It seems to me that only God’s love is powerful
enough to change us all from within.
Real change is incredibly
difficult for most of us. We have to be
willing to take a hard look at ourselves.
Unfortunately, many of us don’t like what we see when we look that
closely, so we don’t look and we don’t change. But the promise of change that
our Scripture lessons present is more than a self-help project. They promise
that God is determined to change us all from within. They promise that God will
take the initiative, working to bring his grace and mercy and love into all our
lives. And the end result is that we will want to live our lives in a
relationship in which he is our God and we are his people. We will want to love
God with all our hearts and love those around us truly and sincerely. And we
will do so because God is changing us from within.
[1] ©2018
Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 3/18/2018 at Hickman
Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
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