The Sunday Sermon: October 17, 2021 – 21st Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture: Jeremiah 31:31-34
A New Covenant
This morning we begin a season in our church year, our church life, that is not on any denominational or ecclesiastical calendars, but is as important to us as Advent, Lent, or the lazy Ordinary Sundays of summer that follow Pentecost. This morning we begin our annual “Stewardship Session,” the weeks we set aside every fall so that we may consider the deep implications and the deeper faith statements we will be called to consider and offer in four weeks on Pledge Dedication Sunday, November 14th.
Every year since 2009, my first full Fall in this beloved community, we have not made this time a “campaign.” We’ve called it a “season.” I’m not sure that makes much difference to any of you, or to the Treasurers and Finance Team members through the years. But for me the difference is … fanfare and focus. Since I’ve been here, we’ve never put up big red thermometers that chart our financial progress toward a set number; or set out a bunch of balloons to draw attention to the responsibilities of membership in a church which include the giving of money; or held an after-worship lunch and power-point presentation on the ups and downs of the past year, with an emphasis on the downs to motivate all of us to “keep it up!”
No, every year we share more “quiet” minutes for mission, sermon messages, and a few snail mail letters of encouragement from the members of our tireless Finance Ministry Team that encourage you to remember, to consider, to re-consider, and then to give – through the pledging of your money for the year ahead in service to the mission and ministry of this church.
This is not a “campaign”. It is a “season” in our lives together, every bit as important for preparing us for the next year as the seasons of Advent are for preparing us for Christmas Day and Lent in preparing us for Easter morning.
Every year I look back at years past to see what messages I shared, and to consider re-using a particular scripture passage or sermon, itself. As I looked back this past week, I was reminded that last year there was little or nothing in the way of a stewardship sermon. We were gathering outside for drive-in services and/or in our homes through our pre-recorded worship services, remembering that it was the season of stewardship, but hearing more about COVID updates and creative ways of being together–apart, and already wondering how in the world we were going to “do” Christmas this year. As I looked back to the years before last year, it all seemed so far away and so long ago.
The reality is that this year … everything is different, and not just in the normal “we’re-all-a-year-older-to-begin-with” kind of way. But in an “everything-is-really-different” kind of way. As I looked back this year, encountering first Sunday stewardship sermons that almost all contained something like “this is an anxious time in most congregations, but there is no reason for us to be worried” type of messaging, I found myself, for the first time in twelve seasons … a bit worried. A good time to pray.
Pray with me …
So, let me address that last confession. We’ve been talking in our Adult Sunday School class about finding the right questions to ask in our (almost) post-pandemic world. Among those questions was “how will your church support its mission in the aftermath of a pandemic that has kept many members away, out of continued caution or shifting priorities?” Just last week during our Session meeting, Finance Chair Lynn Wilkinson shared with us that 2020, last year, was a good year for giving. In our inability to give of our time and talents due to the quarantines and our social-distancing, the giving of our tithes, our pledged money, was a priority for all of us, it seemed. This past year, 2021, began that way, but attention to giving has waned in the later summer months and the early months of the Fall. It always does, Lynn reminded us, and we anticipate the usual end-of-year catch-up in giving that many of you (many of us) do in December. But the real concern, the deeper questions are centering themselves on next year, 2022.
Given all that we’ve been through and continue to go through, how sustainable is our traditional way of “giving through pledges”? Given the continued absence of about 15-20% of our “normal” Sunday morning worshippers, how different are the “giving priorities” of church members and visitors? Given a very real sense that these buildings and our personnel are not required for our experience of the Divine in our lives, how concerned are we with payrolls and property that consume a huge portion of our budget, versus hands-on mission and care that costs only our time and talents? Legitimate questions, all, and ones we must and will respond to. But ones that make this year’s stewardship season “really different” than all the years before it. So, I’m a bit worried in ways different from years past.
It is into this new reality, that we turn to our Holy Scripture, reading and hearing a familiar passage from Jeremiah. Listen for the Word of God.
Read Jeremiah 31:31-34 … The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Our scripture passage this morning is embedded in Jeremiah’s Book of Consolation which is a series of visions of salvation announcing God’s restoration of Israel. The intended audience of these messages are those who were exiled to Babylon in 586 BCE. They believe they have been defeated and dispersed by the Babylonians because of their unfaithfulness to God. But now, God is forgetting all that and looking ahead. “The days are surely coming,” these exiles hear, when your future will be bright once again.
“The days are surely coming.” These are incredible words of consolation. We feel the expectation and the confidence in this short phrase: The days are surely coming. It’s not a precise prediction, is it? Jeremiah doesn’t say “tomorrow” or “Tuesday week.” But it is a confident word of assurance that there is a future for those who are questioning everything they knew. It’s not just any future, it is a future brimming with hope and meaning and promise. And it’s not some heavenly future, but a very down-to-earth one, an historical future, not beyond this world, but in it. It is our future, too, if, and when, we can let go of the memories of a past that binds us, or keeps us doing things in the same way we have always done them, or presenting ourselves – our time and our talents and our money – in the same way as we’ve always presented our time, and talents, and money.
We have to address the questions I asked us just after our prayer. I trust we will. I know I will try, with your help. I don’t know what the answers are yet. I don’t know. Maybe those questions lead to more questions as our responses reveal new ways of begin and “doing” church. But, if we’re unclear how we’ll get here, we do know the desired destination – we do know where and “how” we want to be.
This passage in your pew bible is subtitled, A New Covenant. The “new” in the “new covenant” of which Jeremiah speaks, does not include one thing replacing another – old ways of being together and being community are not being replaced by new “easier” ways of being together. What is, or will be, new in the days ahead with God and God’s people is that the way of being community, and sustaining community, will no longer be a yoke, or a burden. There are still the laws and the structures, but they will no longer be understood as encumbrances, or inconveniences, and certainly not as punishment or penance! It will be a promise, this community. It was in Jeremiah’s time. It still is. It will be.
When God’s covenant with us, and our covenant with God is truly “written upon our hearts” then our being here (whenever we gather together) will not be experienced as a sacrifice, but as a service; our buildings and our personnel will be understood not as the “ends” of our vision, but as the “means”; our ministries and our mission will not be time lost in our lives, but time that enhances our lives, and; our giving (on all levels – time, talent and money) will not be understood as our obligation, but our opportunity. The days are surely coming, says the Lord. What say we?
In the last verse of our this morning Jeremiah passage, God promises to forget. I will remember (the past) no more, says the Lord. In that promise, God is calling us to do the same. To forget, not the memories of the place and all those who have been a part of it with us. Not the memories, but the mindset. From verse thirty-two, no longer seek to be “led by the hand” but, from verse thirty-three, “follow your heart.” Get out of our heads. That’s a hard thing for us to do.
For better or worse, we are basically bio-chemical memory, you and I. We’re pretty literally “wired” to remember things. That’s why it is so scary to lose our memory and why dementia and Alzheimer’s is so cruel. But God is calling us to something new. And in order to more fully understand it, let alone embrace it, we’re going to have to forget a few things that we’ve “always done” and “always relied on.”
We’ve embarked on another season, this season of stewardship. As Advent prepares us for Christmas and Lent for Easter, these days are preparing us … for something new.
This year our questions can only be faithfully answered if we forget how we’ve responded in the past and seek a new covenant with God and with one another. Take a look at the year ahead for you. Continue, or begin, to pray about how you will provide for your church in the year ahead – your time, your talents, and your money through your pledge for 2022. Let us get out of our heads and not look back at last year’s sermon messages, or the practices in the years before. Let us write our commitments on our hearts and make a new covenant, with God and with one another.
God’s promise is sure: I will be their God and they shall be my people. What about our promise?
“Let us talents and tongues employ … reaching out with a shout of joy.”
Amen.
Reverend Joel Weible, Pastor
Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church / October 17, 2021