Out of a Job? Reflections on Jeremiah 31:27-34

October 14, 2013 by John Holbert

Continued from Page 1

Still, YHWH announces with unforgettable clarity that the old covenant, the one shared and trumpeted at Sinai, has failed, precisely because its human recipients again and again have shattered it. Just like the enraged Moses, gazing at the unspeakable actions of the calf-builders at the base of the sacred mountain, the Torah of YHWH, given to the chosen people out of YHWH's deep love for them, has simply not worked, neither as a guide to human action nor as a curb on human behavior. So YHWH has once again to go back to the drawing board to help the chosen become what YHWH wants them to be.

"This is the covenant that I will cut with Israel after those days, says YHWH: I will place my Torah inside them; right on their hearts I will write it. I will be for them God, and they will be my people" (Jer. 31:33). Remember that in Hebrew anthropology, the heart is the place of will and intelligence, so YHWH will take that organ and use it for a divine blackboard (or computer screen to update the metaphor) and write the Torah directly on each one. This marvelous metaphor is offered both in promise and with a measure of despair. Our hope is that YHWH will finally act directly for each one of us, performing massive divine surgery on us to ensure that at last we will understand just what YHWH desires from us.

Yet, the despair appears in the next lines. "No longer will each one teach another, or say to one another, 'Know YHWH!' for they shall all know me, from the least to the greatest, says YHWH" (Jer.

31:34a). Poof! You and I are now out of a job! All of our teaching and preaching and pleading and haranguing and shouting and whispering have done nothing to bring the people to an understanding of YHWH's love of and demands for the people. Only after the personal surgery of YHWH will "all know me," and only after that will YHWH "forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more" (31:34b). It is enough to make a minister look elsewhere for work. If all my careful sermon preparation and my deep love for my people, and my hours of denying myself to my family are at the end futile, why then should I go on with this work? I suppose the answer to that plaintive and honest cry is found in the wider context of Jeremiah's famous words. The surgery of YHWH will happen only after days "that are coming," during "those days," only after "days that are surely coming." Those days have yet to occur. In the meantime, our job remains to prepare, to love, to work long hours, to announce the presence and power of YHWH into a world that often cares not a whit for any of our talk.

And one more thing. We must not imagine that all of our hard work and faithful labor will usher in the rule of God. No! Only God will do that; it does not lie on our shoulders to save our people; that job has already been accomplished. Jeremiah's famous words are thus hope and warning; do the work of God but allow God finally to reap God's own harvest.

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About John Holbert

John C. Holbert is the Lois Craddock Perkins Professor Emeritus of Homiletics at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, TX.

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