Jeremiah 31:27-34

Lent 5 - Year B

Jeremiah 31:27-34

It is so easy to see trouble coming. It doesn’t take much projection of current processes to see that we are walking down a path to great difficulty. It shows up in economics with profit being the be-all and end-all of too many. Educationally, we have been testing to a test that keeps us limited to the past rather than learning how to learn into the future. Spiritually, we divide ourselves into smaller and smaller communities, each claiming truth and power. And the list could go on.

It is a very hopeful outlook to see within the coming falling-apart, a new way of doing business. In this case moving from the cultural and communal to the individual being responsible for their own acts. This hope is not without its dangers. Foremost among them is a reliance upon intuition, some knowing of G*D that isn’t grounded in everyday experience. It is too easy to want our iniquity erased and so go out of our way to put a cart before a horse and claim a knowledge of G*D, even greater than G*D knows, that will guarantee removal of iniquity and arrival at a pearly gate.

In the United States of America we have abused this hope of individual responsibiity and are falling apart into extreme individualism and states-rights. This means that we need to hear hope in a return to another universal way - that we are in life together and have opportunities and responsibilities for one another.