Sermon, Lent 5: The Promise of a New Relationship

Sermon, Lent 5: The Promise of a New Relationship

Sunday, April 2, 2006, Lent 5, Year B
The Rev. Father Aidan Hix, M.Min., Vicar
St. Aidan’s Charismatic Episcopal Church

“The Promise of a New Relationship”

Readings: Jer. 31.31-34, Ps. 51,
Heb. 5.1-10, Jn. 12.20-33

“I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts.”


Ernest Hemingway once told the story of a Spanish father hoping to reconcile with a son who had run away from home to the city of Madrid, cutting off all communication. Remorseful about the broken relationship, the father places an advertisement in the Madrid newspaper that reads:

"PACO, MEET ME AT HOTEL MONTANA NOON TUESDAY. ALL IS FORGIVEN. PAPA."

Paco is a common name in Spain, and when the father goes to the square in front of Hotel Montana he finds waiting there not just his own son Paco, but eight hundred young men, each yearning for the forgiveness, love and grace promised in the father’s note. Each comes, hoping beyond hope to experience healing and wholeness in life and relationships.

Deep within all of us, imprinted on our hearts–is a yearning to love and to be loved, a desire to know and to be known.

Centuries ago Augustine wrote of this profound yearning, asserting, "Our hearts and restless until they find their rest in You, O God."

At the heart of the gospel story stands this same affirmation–that you and I are in fact known and loved by the God who has created us. Even more, it is in relationship with God through Jesus Christ that we experience abundant life and joy that enable us to know and love one another.

St Paul says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. What does this mean? It means that at one time or another we have blown it, messed up, hurt someone, or been hurt ourselves. Just like Paco and his father, we have made mistakes in our relationships with people and with God. We have hurt others and felt the sting of guilt and shame for what we have done; or we have been the victim of someone else’s cruelty and have suffered the interior pain and anguish of a betrayal, no matter how big or small it may have been.

Today’s Readings all speak to the issue of suffering and broken relationships; but they also show us several glimpses into God’s Pattern or formula for Forgiveness and Restoration. They all address the hope and promise of a new and restored relationship.

1. The Promise of a New Relationship.

In our first lesson from Jeremiah, we see the promise of a new relationship. This theme of Forgiveness and Restoration takes root in Jeremiah's prophetic Doctrine of the New Covenant- which was his greatest contribution to Biblical Truth. It was written while he was a prisoner, shut up in the Court of the Guard; and during the time of the Babylonian Invasion and the Fall of the Kingdom of Judah.

It was a time when most of ancient Israel had been deported from their homeland to Babylon and scattered among foreign countries, estranged from their central place of worship at the Temple of Jerusalem-which was also the center of their National Identity. Now, they were on the verge of losing both their faith and their ethnic identity.

It was during this time of great tribulation and discouragement that Jeremiah prophetically uttered those words, "Behold the Days are coming, when I shall make a New Covenant." These words are words of promise and hope in the midst of hopelessness and a long despair. The words of Psalm 137 suggests the degree of their discouragement:
" By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down, yea, we wept When we remembered Zion. We hung our harps Upon the willows in the midst of it. For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song. And those who plundered us requested mirth, Saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" How shall we sing the Lord’s song In a foreign land?”(-Ps 137).

Yet, it is in the midst of such discouragement that God reaches out with a promise of hope, a promise of a new relationship. We no longer have to live our lives in the feeble attempt to live up to some harsh standard of Rules and Regulations. God, in Christ Jesus, has inscribed his laws into our own hearts, into our very nature.

St. Augustine once said, that slaves serve their masters out of fear, mercenaries serve for what payment or benefit they can get, but sons serve merely for the sake of what is good and noble. And sons we are indeed!

The promise given to Jeremiah was that a Day was coming when God would make a new Covenant with Israel and Judah, heal their divisions, and reunite them. Just like a Husbands Vow of Marriage, “I take thee _N. To be my wife,” God vows that “they shall be my people and I shall be their God.”

Even like a man and his wife engrave a testimony of their love inside their wedding bands, God promises to inscribe his law into our hearts. No longer on tablets of stone, some external standard to be measured up to, God will transform our hearts and ignite his love and holiness within our hearts!

2. The Promise of a Personal Relationship.
We are also promised a new relationship that is intimate and personal. The Lord said that we would all know him. In Biblical terms, “to know,” usually refers to marital intimacy between and man and his wife: Adam knew Eve and she conceived a child. It speaks to us of God’s desire to know us in a deep, personal, and mystical way. But sometimes, like Paco, we don’t feel we measure up to God’s standards of holiness and moral purity.

3. The Promise to Forgive & Forget

But our Lord enlarges his promise of a new relationship by saying, “I will forgive them their iniquities- our mistakes, our errors, our failures- and I will remember them no more- I will forget your sins.” As one commentator said, “What grace forgives, divine omniscience forgets.”

The promise may seem to good to be true- a relationship where our faults are not dredged up from the past and shoved in our face and are not held against us. In Jeremiah’s time, the promise was for the future- “behold the days are coming;” but in the Gospel reading we hear the words of Christ say, “The Hour has come!”

It is in Christ that we have the promise of such a new and wonderful relationship with the God who created us. St Paul says, in 2 Corinthians 5.19, that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their sins against them.” He does not hold our sins against us.

In the Psalm reading we have a perfect example of this promise. David had committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed in battle so he could have her as his own. After the rebuke of the Prophet Nathan, David’s lust loses its grip and he cries our to the Lord for mercy and forgiveness: “Have mercy on me O God!”

He desires to be changed, forgiven and made clean. He asks of God a new heart that is clean and pure and faithful; and pleads with him to restore his relationship with him and the joy of his salvation.

But now, in Christ, the Hour has come. In the reading from the book of Hebrews, we discover that God is not a harsh taskmaster, waiting to clobber us or to beat us over the head for every mistake we make. It says, rather, that he has compassion on our ignorance and our weaknesses.

WHY? It is because he himself was subject to our weakness, our human condition, though without sin. He has become the author and finisher of eternal salvation to all those who obey him!


And there is the rub! The challenge! It is here that the rubber meets the road. Are we truly walking in obedience to him? We have received the grace of reconciliation- or forgiveness- but it is a Costly Grace.

Philip Yancey, editor of Christianity Today, has written a book entitled What’s So Amazing About Grace? in which he asserts, "Grace means that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more . . . . Grace means that there is nothing we can do to make God love us less . . . . Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer distinguishes between cheap grace and costly grace. Cheap grace, says Bonhoeffer, "is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross."

Costly grace, on the other hand, is the treasure hidden in the field, for the sake of which the finder sells all that he has. It is the pearl of great price, for which the merchant willingly sells all that he has, that he might possess the pearl.

Asserts Bonhoeffer, "Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a [person] must knock.” It is a grace, which requires our obedience and cooperation.

Jesus said, “I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor.”

So, now that we come to the close of our Lenten Journey and all of our introspections, harsh self-examinations, our fasts, our vigils, and our acts of penance, we encounter the hope of a New Relationship with God, where our sins are not counted against us. But the way is costly. It cost Jesus the price of anguish, torture, suffering, and death- “Yet he learned obedience by what he suffered.”

The servant is not greater than his master. It will cost us something too. It will cost us the price of obedience. Nevertheless, if we are willing to follow him in the way of the cross, we will reap eternal life.

AMEN. +