5Th Sunday of Lent, March 29, 2009
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:3-4, 12-13, 14-15
Hebrews 5:7-9
John 12:20-33
The image from our first reading, of God writing his law on our hearts, is very consoling and meant to encourage us. This purpose becomes all the more clear by the passage’s contrast with most of Jeremiah’s prophetic message, which was harsh and very strongly worded. Jeremiah’s was a voice speaking warning from God about the ways the people were straying.
So today’s reading shows us that the Lord knew, even as he inspired this prophet to have a strong word, that he also needed to speak a word of mercy, kindness and consolation to the people. God inspired Jeremiah to let them know that God recognizes our weaknesses and our struggles and knows that on our own we aren’t able to fulfill the divine law.
To enable us to obey his commands and fulfill his plans, God knows that we need his very life, his grace, his strength and his power within us. As Scripture says elsewhere, it is God who gives us both the desire and the ability to obey him and to do his will (see Phil 2:13).
And so part of that image of the law being written in our hearts is that it will come from within us, an ever greater desire and an ever stronger ability to be like Christ Jesus, as we heard in the opening prayer: “Father, help us to be like Christ your Son, who loved the world and died for our salvation. Inspire us by his love, guide us by his example, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.”
The image of writing could call to mind one complication. That is, if we are honest with ourselves we all could probably admit that we may not always be the best medium for God to write on. We might not always cooperate with the Lord when he wants to fulfill his “writing assignment,” which is one way you might describe God’s work of writing his law on our hearts.
Now here’s another complication. Even the simple term, “to write,” or the image of “writing,” might call to mind very different things for people here in church today. Across the generations represented here, for instance, we have very different experiences of what it means to write.
Those differences came to mind with this past week having been spring break. You see, one young lady’s spring break involved a challenge and a bit of a chore. Her grade school has a very rigorous and advanced writing program. So even though it was spring break, she had an assignment of writing a journal to be able to give a report of what she did during break. At first, she figured that would be a piece of cake. You know, she’d just keep track of what she was doing on her laptop. And since she’d be texting all her friends to update them on what she’d be doing all week, she could save those messages. Then she’d upload the text messages to her laptop, cut-and-paste those together with the journal she’d be keeping, have her document-writing software edit it all, and just print it.
Then she had to face the fact that her spring break was to be spent way out in what she considers the middle of nowhere in eastern Oregon with her great-grandparents who wouldn’t know a computer from a space shuttle. And so she gets there, and there’s no computer. There’s no ability to get or send calls or text messages using her cell phone. See, no satellites are close enough because she’s out “in the middle of nowhere.” Certainly there’s no wi-fi; there’s nothing!
But she’s got to keep this assignment, and so she has to struggle with this ancient, antiquated technology called “pen and paper.” And she’s struggling and making mistakes and crossing things out and crumpling up the paper. Her great-grandfather is watching this with great amusement. Finally he says, “Little Dearie, why are you having such a hard time with this writing assignment?”
And she picks up the pad of paper and says, “Great-grandpa, I can’t figure this out. Where’s spell-check on this thing?”
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Just like that uncooperative and difficult writing medium that the young lady faced, we might cause the same difficult writing experience for the Lord, as He pursues the on-going project of writing his law on our hearts.
Of course, God has nothing wrong with his ability to write his law, but we offer resistance. Somehow, what God is trying to write just won’t stick to the surface of our hearts. And so we’re invited to apply this image to see that the Lord in his compassion and, quite literally, his timeless patience does not give up on us. He continues to write. He realizes that in fulfilling his prophecy to write his law on our hearts, the first time he writes it is not going to be the final draft and the final version.
God knows that he’s likely to keep rewriting and revising, cutting and pasting, deleting sections or sometimes doing a “select all” and deleting that and starting all over again if he’s in, say, computer mode. If he’s in old-fashioned mode, he’s ready to go through reams and reams of paper and boat-loads of cover-up correcting liquid. He’s prepared to do lots of crossing-out or writing in ever smaller print between lines of what he’s already written.
Here’s another image to consider.
The Lord may be writing his law on our hearts, and then we sin. We give in to some temptation, and that creates a spot on our hearts, so to speak. When God is writing and comes to that spot, it might be just like if you’re writing on paper and you come across a grease stain or some other kind of smudge, and you can’t write across that part of the page.
Now even though God comes across those hard-to-write-on spots, he is extremely and unbelievably patient with us. He knows that the fulfillment of his law being written on each of our hearts may involve millions of drafts, perhaps, with lots of revisions and times of starting over. But he never gives up on us and encourages us never to give up on ourselves, and therefore, not to give up on one another. Let’s always look at one another with the sense belief that God is in the process of writing his law on our hearts.
Each one of us is in some version of draft sixteen or draft twenty thousand or whatever. And the Lord is still writing. He is still in the process, as our Responsorial Psalm (Psalm 51:3-4, 12-13, 14-15) said, of creating clean hearts in us. It’s a creative process that takes time and is not just over in the snap of fingers.
Certainly, two of the most precious and certain ways that God writes on our hearts are 1) Scripture and the influence that comes to us through Scripture and 2) the grace of God working through the Church in the Sacraments.
Each time you hear Scripture read, for instance here at Mass or when you yourself might read it in personal devotion, or if you hear it on the radio, if you listen to Christian radio stations, every time you might gather for a Bible study with other people—every time you encounter Scripture, I invite you to look at it as one more time that, to use the computer analogy, God puts the cursor on “open file,” and he opens the file of your heart. He says, “Okay, now let me sit down at the keyboard and do some more law-writing.”
I invite each of us to consider every time we gather for any kind of sacramental celebration as another time that the Lord is sitting down and is going to write his law on our hearts. Whether we ourselves may receive a Sacrament or participate by watching others receive it—even whenever we might be preparing to receive a particular Sacrament—that’s another chance for the Lord to make progress on the writing assignment within us.
Using computer analogies, we could say that all of the Sacraments are chances for the Lord to select “open file” and have the window of our hearts come up on the screen. He starts tapping away on the keyboard, making some revisions or corrections. Perhaps our bad choices or sinful actions have caused some data to deteriorate or to be destroyed, and God needs to restore it.
Be aware that we’re not talking about “laws” such as, let’s say, you might find if you’d go to the library and get out the books of the laws of the state of Oregon or of Multnomah County. It’s not even simply God’s “Laws” as we find them printed in the Bible.
What God means by writing his law in our hearts is obviously not literally inscribing the letters that make up the laws that are written down. It’s “law” in the sense of affecting people’s actions through influence—to use the gentlest image—or through authority that’s backed up with the power of enforcement that produces rewards and punishments—to use stronger imagery. And with the Lord, it’s not just our actions that he affects, but our thoughts and attitudes, emotions and desires, as well.
God has never intended this influence and authority to be an external thing imposed on us like the laws of the various levels of government. This intention comes to light in today’s reading from Jeremiah. God’s guidance and gracious wisdom, as he keeps on writing it on our hearts, is meant to flow from within us to channel the ways we relate to God, one another, ourselves and the stuff of this world.
I invite us each, then, to ask God to help us be a better, more cooperative, receptive medium for his writing. Yield to him as he continues revising and crafting drafts over and over and over again so that we can become more like Jesus. God’s progress in this writing assignment advances our ability to fulfill the assignment of serving God in this world. Let’s each ask God to continue that process. Every day of our lives may we say, “Let it be done to me,” as God acts to open our hearts and to continue writing his loving and gracious law within us.
