[Advent 3: Joy] the joy of liberation -- not just for ourselves but for all

The days are surely coming, says 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 spouse, says God. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says God: 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, says God; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Jeremiah 31:31-34 (NRSV, alt.)

This was our Scripture reading the morning of the Cantata, the Sunday of Joy during the season of Advent.

What joy does this promise bring to you?

What would it mean for God to forgive your iniquity and remember your sin no more?

What would it mean for you to know God and for God's law to be written on your heart?

Rev. Dr. Stan G. B. Duncan writes:

The central ethical principle of the Hebrew Scriptures and echoed in the Christian scriptures is that God has liberated (saved, redeemed) us and now we should liberate and redeem others. What it means to be a religious person is to liberate slaves. And that means slaves of psychic demons in abusive homes, and it means physical demons of countries so enmeshed in the depths of debt repayments that their children starve and die in infancy. But God, in spite of our perpetual inclination to break the covenant, comes to us in these words of Jeremiah and offers us a second (and third and fourth) chance. "Renew the covenant, and have it written on your hearts, where it will emanate out from you rather than being imposed from outside onto you." God is always calling us back to the basics of worship and justice. God is always offering us a chance to come home from Babylon. It is up to us to make the decision to make the journey.

"God is always offering us a chance to come home from Babylon."

Nothing we have done (or failed to do) can keep us apart from God. As Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message, "nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable" can separate us from the love of God (from Romans 8:38-39).

But as Duncan points out, this isn't just about our own personal liberation. To be united with God's love also means to be connected to God's love for all others -- to know God is to have God's law written on our hearts.

Advent 1 I quoted William Loader on what "the day of the Lord" meant in the prophetic tradition. Similarly, Duncan talks about the Jubilee Year in connection with "the day of the Lord" and "the year of the Lord’s favor." He reminds us that "sin" and "debt" are often nearly interchangeable terms in the Biblical tradition.

Many of us middle-class folks may not feel a bone-deep yearning for our debts to be forgiven (though certainly many of us wouldn't mind our student loans being forgiven), but for people suffering under Roman occupation, in debt slavery, to have their debts forgiven would have been literally life-changing.

Duncan writes:

A Jubilee sermon could be based on the justice demands of the notion of the "knowledge of God." Walter Brueggemann, commenting on this passage, argues that one cannot know God without being attentive to the needs of the poor and the weak. And he says it is not that one is derived intellectually from the other, "rather, the two are synonymous. One could scarcely imagine a more radical and subversive theological claim."^[5] This is very similar to the claims about loving God in the New Testament. See for example the blunt words of 1 John 4:20-21: "Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their [siblings], are liars."

Hosea, a contemporary of Jeremiah, reports that when "there is no knowledge of God in the land, swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, and all who live in it languish...." (4:1b-3a). The Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez makes the point that God is encountered in concrete acts of justice an mercy to others. So if justice is not present, then God is not present. "To know [YHWH]...is to establish just relationships among persons, it is to recognize the rights of the poor. The God of Biblical revelation is known through interhuman justice. When justice does not exist, God is not known; God is absent."^[6]

[5] Brueggemann, "Covenant as a Subversive Paradigm," A Social Reading of the Old Testament: Prophetic Approaches to Israel's Communal Life (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress: 1994), p. 49.

[6] A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, tr. Sr. Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (New York: Maryknoll: 1988, revised ed.), p. 110-111.

We are reminded that Advent Joy is not just for ourselves, but for all of God's children. Living in harmony with God means also sharing in God's desires for justice and mercy for all.

I know for me, this is the hardest part. To believe that God loves me even with all the terrible things I think and say and do? That's easy. That doesn't require any work or change on my part.

But the reminder that I'm supposed to work toward liberation from all sorts of oppression for my kindred here on earth? That takes work. To be liberated from my insular self-interest, to risk my security and comfort on behalf of others (whom I may not know or even like), that kind of radical transformation is scary. But that's what it means to truly know God. And it's a one-sided God's covenant if I only reap the personal benefits and ignore any obligations on my end.

Hillel the Elder asks, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?" (Pirkei Avot 1:14).

What about you, Beloved? What spoke to you in this passage?

Is the promise of knowing God directly and intimately, appealing or frightening or a little bit of each?

You're invited to continue the conversation in the comments -- responding to any of the questions I've asked throughout this blogpost or raising questions of your own, or simply sharing some thoughts. (As always, you're welcome to comment anonymously/pseudonymously if you prefer.)