October 17, 2004
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
The Gospel according to Luke 17:11-19

It is so good to return to FCCB and to worship with you all today. My time away has been wonderful, but I have missed you and especially missed being at worship with you. For me, the week begins and ends with the act of worship and when I am out of that rhythm, I find myself becoming almost homesick for this 10 o'clock hour on Sunday morning. I realize that it is a privilege to dwell in Christian community; a remarkable blessing to live within the covenant of sacred community. In a culture where the sacred has been devalued and community is hard to find, it is a privilege to worship together on Sunday mornings.

It is also remarkable to be able to be a part of a progressive Christian community in such a time as this — when we are in the midst of national elections, a war in Iraq and a time of unrest and tragedy in so many parts of the world. The news out of Haiti is not only tragic, it is maddening! I hope that we will pray for Father Jean-Juste and that we will all write letters and emails to see that he is released from prison and returned to his parish and ministry with the poor as soon as possible. To be a member of a progressive Christian community in these time means that we remember the promises of God with God's people and that we will uphold those promises with our own efforts.

In our Hebrew Text, the prophet Jeremiah describes the new covenant that God has promised to God's people. Our text reminds us that it will not be written on tablets of stone, nor in a book, but it will be written in the depths of the human heart. Jeremiah believes that the covenant between God and us is a covenant, not of legality or law, but a covenant of mercy, a promise of love and the emergence of a new spirit of understanding and compassion created by the God of hope.

It is one thing to have a piece of paper that binds me to my beloved. It is quite another thing to begin anew with the promise of love and the opportunity to give and receive loving kindness everyday. The law is binding, only legally. The spirit of love is what really binds us to one another and it is that love which is a gift of God. We are promised that we can be renewed by holy love with each other throughout our lives.

So this text raises the question of the nature of the Christian conscience. What is it that is written on our hearts? By what laws, rules, and impulses do we live? I am sure that our Adult Education class with Speed Leas today will help us move into a concrete understanding of our Christian conscience and the ways that we can build on our relationships with each other.

Freud taught us that the conscience, "the watching institution," as he called it, is the internalized voice of our parents and our culture. As such, most of our actions are prompted by the myths and values of the culture in which we live. We begin life, inevitably, as cultural animals, tribal and ethnic human beings, obedient to the rules of our tribe.

However, Jeremiah raises another possibility — of a heart that moves in harmony with the promptings of God. God or culture? What is our highest loyalty? By what values do we live?

Paul Tillich, referring to this passage, spoke of the Christian as having a transmoral conscience, or a trans-tribal, or trans-national conscience, as owing obedience to a higher law. We live in the world but are not of it — meaning that although we are cultural beings we are also prompted by a higher standard, the covenant we embrace with God.

The Christian conscience comes alive in the call for a universal sense of sacred community. It requires us to practice compassion for all of our neighbors --- not just those of our own kind.

As we go into this election time we need to ask ourselves where our primary loyalties should be.

The question isn't whether we are conservative or liberal; whether we embrace this candidate or that one. The question for us is predicated upon which policies promise the greatest good for the greatest number of the citizens of the world --- not just the citizens of the U.S.

The law of God, written on our innermost heart, is the law of universal compassion and gratitude for healing, of belonging to a community that includes all human beings and all sentient beings.

What is the new covenant for today, for this day?

Care of and concern for our physical world — floral and fauna, oceans and deserts, mountains and valleys, cats and dogs, birds and bunnies.

Compassion for the hurting, the lonely and the lost of the world — compassion and an understanding of our boundaries - when we can heal and when we must trust God to do what we cannot. A spirit of responsibility for the poor, the disenfranchised, those without basic human needs — a home, enough to eat, access to health care and education.

Our Gospel lesson reminds us to be grateful for the wideness of God's mercy. Pray now that the new covenant of God will be written on all our hearts, so that we might learn to live with compassion, honesty and love toward humankind — emerging from a heart of gratitude.

Amen.