Jeremiah 31:27-34

Pentecost +21 - Year C

Jeremiah 31:27-34

Note the lack of difference between:

"The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth have been set on edge" and
"The leaders have eaten sour grapes, and the community's teeth have been set on edge".

Unfortunately, the solution to this is not to do a pendulum swing and have everyone dying for their own sins, their own sourness. This shift passes right over the interface and interrelationship of our communal and our individual selves. This avoidance also shows up in the imagery of everyone knowing the same larger reality, G*D, if you will. It misses that we also need one another to be able to work through the perpetual disagreements that rise with one generation following another, each having a different experience base. Even within a generation there are varying understandings of personality type, gifts and abilities, any number of entitlements, and basic political power theories. Without entering into an admittedly difficult interrelationship with both G*D and Neighbor, self and others, we either harden ourselves into authoritarianism or participate in constant blame.

This little story is about more than Atlas Shrugged type individual responsibility or some grand cult in lockstep from the inside out. It raises questions about our being persistent and hopeful "widows" at one point in our life and "unjust judges" in another as seasons of experience and generations succeed one another. What covenant do you see following the one proposed here, as it takes into account this covenant's failure point of pride at having G*D's law within one, G*D defined as "on my side"?