Christ the King
Jeremiah 31:31-34
The days are surely coming, says our God, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband. But, this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know God,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
Inner Voices
Our human minds are very susceptible to our surroundings. Some things come to us instinctually: breathing, the fear of falling, attraction to shiny objects. And, other things, we have to learn: reading, writing, cooking, religion. Our brains are designed to learn, and a good number of people spend twenty or more of their early years in school, just to learn. Of course, we never stop learning, we learn all our lives, and through it all, our brains never stop being susceptible to our surroundings. Even when you know something to the very core of your being, you know it, if enough people tell you that thing is wrong, with enough conviction, then you might start to doubt yourself.
For example, I love biology. I often say that if hadn’t gone into the ministry, a career in biology would have been the perfect fit for me. I love learning about ecosystems, plants and animals, mushrooms, the weirder the better. Biology facts have just always been easy for my brain soak up, in a way that other subjects like physics, or chemistry, or math just aren’t. I guess if you like something, then it’s just easier for you to learn about it. Suffice it to say, I know quite a bit of biology. But, there are times, despite what I would say is a pretty firm grasp on the subject, when I do doubt myself.
There was this one time I was at work, I was with four or five co-workers, and somehow the subject of pandas came up. I have no idea why we were talking about pandas, but someone said something about panda pouches. And, I said, “Pandas don’t have pouches. They’re not marsupials.”
Everyone else in the room said I was wrong, that pandas did have pouches, and that it was common knowledge.
So, I said, “No, you’re thinking of koalas. Koalas have pouches because they’re marsupials, like kangaroos and wombats. Marsupials are the only mammals that have pouches. Pandas aren’t marsupials; they’re bears.”
But, everyone kept insisting that pandas had pouches, and I started to doubt myself. Did panda’s have pouches? Were they marsupials? Was I remembering all of this wrong? I knew that when pandas are born, they’re really tiny, and they’re pink and blind, kind of like marsupial babies, so maybe that’s where the confusion was coming from? And, the more they insisted, the more I doubted what I had known to be true. Maybe pandas really did have pouches? I could no longer tell what was true and what wasn’t.
Jeremiah, chapter 31, verse 33 has been one of my favorite verses of the Bible for a long time. “But, this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” I specifically like the part that says, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” To me, this is our sense of right and wrong that God has given to us, our conscience. This is how we know when we shouldn’t be doing something, and how we know when we should. All of us have God’s law written on our hearts, and we carry it with us everywhere we go.
But, then we have the nature vs nurture argument. If we are born with God’s law inside of us, then that is a part of our nature. So, what about the nurture part? Ideally, our parents would have nurtured goodness and kindness and generosity in us. Ideally, we would have learned to think logically and carefully in school. Ideally, we would have picked up things like mercy and justice and joy. Ideally, we would have learned how to love one another and to love ourselves.
But, how many people get to grow up with ideal lives? How many people have the perfect parents and go to the perfect school with perfect teachers? How many people have the perfect childhood and perfect relationships? Almost nobody. Probably nobody.
As we learn, as we grow, unfortunately we pick up things like deceit and envy. We pick up things like selfishness and indifference. Some people learn to value money and power above all other things. Some people are taught to hate. Some people are taught to hate themselves.
We have all of these competing voices and desires inside of us…how do we know which is true and which is not, which voice to listen to? How do we recognize the law that God has written on our hearts?
I know it’s trite, I know it’s a cliché, but the only answer I’ve been able to come up with is WWJD: What would Jesus do?” I’m sure most of you have heard that before: WWJD. It was really big in the 90s, lots of people had bracelets that had WWJD on them, there were hats, and shirts, and stickers, it was a whole thing. But, it works. If you’re ever confused or unsure about what the right thing to do is, WWJD: What would Jesus do?
Unfortunately, there is a distinct lack of people asking this question before they do things in this country, right now. It’s especially disturbing because it’s so often the people who claim to be followers of Christ, people who claim to be Christian. A week ago in Columbus, Ohio, the state’s capital, a group of masked men walked through town waving Nazi flags and chanting racial slurs. Around the same time, residents of 11 towns in Indiana woke up to find thousands of flyers that said, “Leave now. Avoid Deportation. Trinity White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” We now live in a world where people are complaining to their pastors who preach about Jesus because Jesus is too “woke.” Obviously, the people doing these things aren’t asking, WWJD: “What would Jesus do?”
As more and more people fail to ask the question, more and more people are emboldened to give in to their baser selves, to ignore their conscience and do these terrible things, to ignore God’s law that’s been written on their heart. We need to say something. We need to remind them…remind them that we are all God’s people…that they are God’s people.
We need to speak up when we see or hear hateful things. We need to be brave and bold. Listening to God’s voice isn’t just about avoiding doing the wrong things, it’s about taking an active role in righting the wrongs that’ve been done to the people around us, helping the helpless, and bringing justice to the oppressed.
Figuring out what Jesus would do is the easy part. If we’re being honest with ourselves, we usually know what Jesus wants us to do. It’s the doing that’s the hard part. Doing what God wants us to do isn’t easy. It means going against what the world wants us to do, sometimes even what our friends and family want us to do. It means going against the tide, standing out and maybe drawing unwanted attention to ourselves. But, Jesus called us to be the salt and the light. We aren’t supposed to be like everyone else; we are supposed to be the seasoning that makes everything better, that makes life better. We aren’t supposed to hide under a bushel basket, we are supposed to shine brightly with the light of God, pushing back the shadows of bigotry and shame and greed.
“But, this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people,” We are the bearers of God’s law. We are the bearers of God’s justice and mercy. We are the bearers of God’s love. If we are going to be God’s people, if we are going to be followers of Christ, then we need to speak up and we need to act. God is sending us out into the world, and the world needs us. Amen.
~ Rev. Charles Wei
