Saturday, April 16: The Rev. Jim Friedrich

No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me. - Jeremiah 31:27-34

The prophet is one who has an eye on the horizon of God’s future: The days are surely coming. Something new is going to happen, changing everything. Jeremiah calls it a “new covenant,” invoking the ancient self-understanding of the Jews that they were God’s partners in the drama of salvation (“I was their husband,” is the way “the Lord” puts it here). The primary image of the original covenant was that of the divine law being engraved in stone on the summit of Mt. Sinai. Moses carried this written Law or “Torah” (better understood as a way of living in tune with the universe than as an arbitrary set of rules), down the mountain to the people so that they might know their own obligations in this partnership agreement. But it’s one thing to read words engraved on stone, and quite another to make those words, and the sense behind them, into an integrated, faithful way of being. And in fact, as Jeremiah’s voicing of the divine reminds us, God’s people (then and now) find it hard keep the law, to honor the covenant relationship by living lives that are merciful, just and loving.

But God knows that it is not enough to tell people how to live. The Torah - what the New Testament calls the Way, the Truth, and the Life - must become something they desire from the deepest center of their being. They must want it more than anything else in the world. And so, says the Lord, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. The heart, in biblical understanding, is not only the physical organ that sustains the flow of life in our bodies, but is also a name for the integrative center of our humanness where each person’s distinctive interplay of will, intellect, memory and desire is grounded.

Gerald May says there is “a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves, that we call a heart.” And this longing at the heart of our being is what Gregory of Nyssa called “the homing instinct for God.” If you want to find God, look in the place of your deepest longing. You will find that God is already there before you, writing on your heart. When will this take place? When will God inscribe the Way upon the center of our being, and make the energies of divine love as natural and fundamental to our existence as the beating of our hearts?

The promised day is already “at hand,” Jesus tells us. It is a temporal process, sometimes painfully gradual, but it has already begun. God’s hand is writing within us even now. We need only to pay attention, consent, give up, surrender, let go of all the obstacles that hinder and obscure that deep and sacred craving. Just as a writer sits down each day to write but a few pages, and after a time completes an entire book, so may the cumulative “heart-writing” of Lent’s forty days produce in us a most holy text of Christian living.

—The Rev Jim Friedrich

Wednesday, April 6: Dwight Russell

"The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him." - Jeremiah 18:1-11

Paraphrasing Augustine of Hippo: “Sin is anything that displaces or gets in the way of our relationship with God.” I’ve always liked this definition because it is inclusive, as opposed to the Old Testament enumeration of things to do, or not to do (as in Leviticus), in order to avoid the wrath of God.

In the book of Jeremiah, God makes it very clear: “I have given you free will. Trust in man and flesh and you are cursed; trust in the Lord, you are blessed. Straighten out your lives!” The Hebrews, of course, don’t get it and they say: “Why should we? What’s the point? We’ll live just the way we’ve always lived, doom or no doom!”

At this point God sends Jeremiah to a potter’s house, where he reports the following: “The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he re-worked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.” At first, Jeremiah was puzzled, but then he heard God’s message: “Can’t I do just as the potter does, people of Israel? …watch this potter. In the same way that this potter works his clay, I work on you…at any moment I may decide to pull up a people by the roots and get rid of them. But if they repent…I will think twice and start over with them.” Sounds pretty draconian, doesn’t it? But the thread of a miracle exists in this passage. Nowhere in the story does it say that the clay is destroyed; it still exists and is re-workable, as are we if we only listen for God’s word.

The season of Lent, for me, is a reflective time of examination. Where do I need to change my life? What have I been doing or thinking that gets in the way of my relationship with God? I pray that I may seek repentance and renewal, and once again accept God’s grace and love. “Give thanks to the Lord, for his mercy endures forever.”

—Dwight Russell

Wednesday, March 30: Rebecca Duffy

O that I had in the desert a traveler’s lodging place, that I might leave my people and go away from them! - Jeremiah 8:18-9:6

In this passage from the book of the prophet Jeremiah, the prophet bemoans for a place in the desert he can flee to get away from the evil that he sees among his people. His heart is sick and he doesn’t know how many more lies and deceitful or traitorous acts he can witness. But he stays because he has a calling and he has the conviction to trust in God, especially when he’s most afraid.

During this time of Lenten reflection, this prophet of the past reminds us all that God continues to speak—and He could be speaking to us much more than we realize, more than the people of Jeremiah’s land realized. We should take the time in our daily lives to listen more closely to those around us, to discern whether they might even be God’s prophets, trying to tell us something. Too often we ignore the signs right in front of us. This reflection exercise has been a good reminder that I should listen more closely to God’s word as it is expressed around me, no matter where it originates.

—Rebecca LaBrunerie Duffy

Thursday, March 24: Jim Blundell

For thus says the Lord: The whole land shall be a desolation; yet I will not make a full end. Because of this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black; for I have spoken, I have purposed; I have not relented nor will I turn back. - Jeremiah 4:9-10,19-28

Some days are just dark. Dark, gloomy, dreary, desperate, desolate, doomed ... some days are lonely. Some days, God just seems absent from our lives. How else can the darkness be explained? A few days ago, a good friend of mine lost his brother to a sudden heart attack. I know that was a very dark day for him. I know he felt very alone.

But God’s power and grace are at work in our lives, even on those most desperate days. The passage from Jeremiah describes a time of great destruction and disaster. It is a prophecy, so it is written as a vision of horrible events coming in the future. The prophet is apparently describing the ruin of Jerusalem and the desolation of Judea by the Chaldeans. “Disaster overtakes disaster,” “the whole land is laid waste,” the earth was “waste and void,” the mountains were “quaking,” “all the birds of the air had fled,” the “cities were laid in ruins.”

If you’ve lost a loved one, or a job, or life is heavy and dark, you know this despair. And yet, in these darkest times, God reveals himself. Near the end of the prophecy, when all the coming destruction and devastation has been described, God delivers the ultimate glimmer of hope. He says “the whole land shall be in desolation; yet I will not make a full end.” I will not allow complete hopelessness, he says. Just when our lives seem to slip into the deepest depths, God offers the light of his salvation. Do not be afraid …

—Jim Blundell

Monday, March 21: What are our idols?

Then the Lord said to me: …disaster shall break out on all the inhabitants of the land. - Jeremiah 1:11-19

We are listening in on the story of God’s call to Jeremiah. The Babylonians have overwhelmed Judah, sacked Jerusalem, and sent many of the people into exile. Into the midst of this conflict, God calls the prophet to interpret for the people the signs of the times. The people have turned away from God and made offerings to other gods. Their affinity for idols has brought disaster down on their heads. God, it seems, really does care when the people turn away from allegiance and service to the Creator of the Universe and turn towards useless idols that they imagine will satisfy their desires. Jeremiah, in very poetic language, will spend 52 chapters explaining to the people the consequences of their poor choices.

What are the idols that we worship? Which is to say, what do we really value more than devotion to God and loving service to others? We all have at least one or two idols. We might make an idol out of security, so we hoard our resources in fear of scarcity rather than share our abundance. We might hold onto our children so tightly that we don’t allow them the freedom to flourish on their own. It is so easy for a child or a spouse or a parent to become merely an object that we use to satisfy our unmet wants. What are the idols in our own lives? Loving and serving God first, Jeremiah reminds us, allows us to love and serve others in the most genuine and authentic way. Heartfelt devotion and service to God clears away all the idols and makes way for wholeness and peace.

—The Rev Lex Breckinridge