October 20, 2019 – Jeremiah 31:27-34
Jeremiah 31:27-34
What is Written on Your Heart?
Lectionary 29C – October 20, 2019 [Healing Service]
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
What is written on your heart? And who has written it?
The people of Judah in Jeremiah’s time had undergone traumatic experiences.
They were now in exile in Babylon far from home after being defeated and exiled.
They had suffered war, violence, loss of home, the death of family members and friends, and
exile.
These are the words that were written on their hearts:
Broken. Hopeless. Isolated. Useless. Destroyed. Homeless. Defeated.
Others had written these words on their hearts – could they ever be erased?
These words had come to define them and that, perhaps, is the saddest thing of all.
If these words remained written on their hearts, and if these words are what defined them,
there was little hope for them – and they knew it.
I am sure these words are familiar to you.
I am sure at one point or another, maybe even today,
these words have been written on your heart.
Broken. Hopeless. Isolated. Useless. Destroyed. Homeless. Defeated.
What has written them? Who has written them on your heart?
Cancer? Injustice? Bullying? Addiction? Illness? Failure? Poverty?
Perhaps the cruelty of other people. Perhaps loneliness. Perhaps depression.
Perhaps anxiety. Perhaps simply exhaustion.
These things conspire to name us broken, hopeless, isolated, useless, destroyed, and defeated.
These names are powerful and they can, if we let them, define us and crush us.
But to the people of Judah Jeremiah brings a world-changing word from God this morning.
God looks at the people says
“These things are not who you really are. These things are not the whole truth about you.”
And then, and then . . . God names them something else.
God calls them something more powerful than anything else:
God calls them “my people.” My people!
God calls them “forgiven.” Forgiven!
God calls them “chosen.”
I will enter into a new kind of covenant – a new kind of relationship – with them, says God.
It will no longer be things outside of them that define – it will be my love for them.
I will enter them and when they look to their hearts they will find something else written there.
They will find my way written there, they will find “chosen” written there, they will find
“forgiven” written there, they will find “beloved” written there –
they will find “useful” and “worthwhile” written there.
And these things will be written in an ink that cannot be erased.
This is what finally heals the people of their brokenness.
It is a healing from the inside out.
It is a healing from all that would break us and from all that would harm us.
On that day long ago announced by Jeremiah’s words there was healing and
new life for the people of Judah, when God promised to enter their hearts and heal them.
This would come to define a new chapter in their lives.
And today, there is healing and new life for you too.
Today is a day for healing from many things – a healing from the inside out.
A day to have something new written on your heart: “beloved,” “chosen,” “worthwhile,”
“beautiful.”
All who feel they are named as something other than God’s beloved are welcome to come to
the healing stations today.
All are welcome to come hear the words of new life: Spirit of the living God, present with us now, enter you body mind and spirit and heal you of all that harms you.
Here is God, entering you once again as God promised long ago,
to write something new on your heart,
something longer lasting than all those other things.
Take heart from this. Take strength. Discover your belovedness, your usefulness, your beauty.
Be named by God – and nothing else.
Come – and be healed, from the inside out. Come to a new start.
And together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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