“The
days are surely coming, says the Lord, 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… a
covenant that they broke… but instead it will be like this: 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.”
God goes on to say, “You don’t need
to teach one another about me anymore, because all will know me, from the least
to the greatest.”
Wow! This is the God we worship—a God who is always doing new things. When the covenant was once only for those in power, God came on to the scene and said, “Now, it is for the powerless.” Later, when the covenant was only for those of pure blood, Jesus came along and told a story about a Samaritan who showed mercy. And when the covenant was still only for those who could claim a little Jewish ancestry, God came on to the scene and said, “Now, it is for Gentiles, too—for all of us here today, I imagine.” Then, in the centuries since the Bible was written, God seems to be up to the same business—taking those we believe to be outside the covenant and welcoming them in, not as subservient but as equals. This is the God we are dealing with here—a God who makes all things new, who welcomes in the lost and least and the ones we have rejected.
I come to you this morning
representing Red Willow Ministries, and I can tell you that right now it feels
like a new covenant moment. We spent the better part of a year, alongside
churches like yours, assuring that the least and the last are remembered and
cared for, and it hurt because we have rarely had clear answers, and we are
missing so much of what we feel we once had. At Red Willow, we come back to
camp this coming summer thirsty for what we have been missing, longing for
something familiar but also for something new, because the pandemic has also
revealed many of the ways that things have been broken. God is going to do a
new thing and it always starts now.
I love how the new covenant in Jeremiah is simply a promise about knowing God, because that is exactly what we are about at camp. Camp cannot be the arbiter of good theology; we are not here to delve deeper into Luther’s catechism or to spend a lot of time talking about church practices and rituals. Rather, we are a place where God is made known to us. We are a place where you go to meet Jesus on the way, and this happens to the least and the greatest of us, each in our own way. And we have one tremendous advantage at camp both in the days of COVID-19 and as we seek to be a place where people meet God: at camp, we spend so much of our time outdoor. Outside, God’s presence comes alive. The Christian faith is a faith open to the skies (a “hypaethral” faith). We are a faith that comes alive outdoors where the miraculous does not seem so miraculous anymore; where the yearly migration patterns and the green shoots rising, where campfires and songs bear witness to something magical.
One of the most formative weeks of
my life was spent as a Camp Counselor at Lutherhaven Ministries in Coeur
d’Alene, Idaho. Each week at camp we would be assigned a different role—a
different cabin, different age group, occasionally day camp or a village. One
week, I was assigned to lead Teepee Village at Shoshone Base Camp, which was
about an hour drive from the main camp up the north fork of the Coeur d’Alene
River, basically in the middle of one of the largest areas of forest in the
contiguous United States. Shoshone Base Camp is the launching pad for youth
servant groups and occasionally for summer camps. In our case, we had to walk
one-and-a-half miles, first up a mountainside, then down to reach two teepees
that had been setup on the shores of Shoshone Creek. The handheld radios we
were given were not powerful enough to reach from the teepees to camp, meaning
we were quite literally on our own out there. Just me and a fellow counselor,
Anna, with a dozen 5th and 6th grade boys and girls. We
were supposed to be teaching them the Bible and leading worship and all of that,
but I am not sure if we opened our Bibles once. Instead, we talked about God
under the open skies. The kids made rock dams in the creek; we came across a
moose cow and calf blocking the trail one day; and we even had a light frost
one morning (in August, mind you), and several of the kids worked with me on
starting a fire to warm us up. I have been to seminary; I have studied Religion
in undergrad; I grew up attending worship most weeks; and I have been a part of
many church trips before, but nothing felt so holy as that week in the woods.
It was God-time, whether we cracked open a Bible or not. God met us under the skies.
So often, I think we feel obligated
to do certain tasks to meet God—to really earn it—because we feel like this is
the most important thing, so it makes sense that it would be something we have
to work hard at. We have been conditioned to believe that the most important
things require the most effort. So, we pay our dues. Perhaps this is even the
reason we come together in worship, or why we read from a daily devotional at
home, or even why we read the Bible on our own or with our children or
grandchildren. These are wonderful practices that help create space to meet
God, but they are not work to be done. After all, God is love, and love does
not come to us by the strength of our will power or effort. Love chooses us. God
meets us apart from our work, after we have read scripture when we are out and
about thinking about nothing like the Bible and suddenly something strikes
us—perhaps another person who crosses our path, or a river, or a tree, or that
serene sense of calm that most of us are searching for, especially these days.
God meets us when we stop trying.
So, if you feel yourself going
through the motions, whether out of obligation or habit, I hope you hear today
that the new covenant is for you: God chooses you. And it comes like love, not
because you deserve it, but because you are made in God’s image and nothing can
separate you from him. God’s covenant is not only for the ones who feel on fire
for God, but for the least and the forgotten, and especially for those who put
on a face for the world that they have it all together when they are really,
truly dying inside. God’s promise is for those who feel like they are always
getting it wrong.
It is my fervent desire that Red
Willow is a place for folks like that—those who believe they are not enough and
who cannot see God in their daily lives—because I believe that camp is one
place where God meets us in spite of what we carry. This is why our ministry
matters, but for the rest of you, who may never come to camp, the great news is
that camp is far from the only place where God’s presence is made known. God
will meet you anywhere if you are open to it. And all God requires is that we
let go of the story we tell where we can do it ourselves—that we stop holding
on to narratives that control our lives that say we can fix things, or that we will
be fine if only such and such happens. Instead, we invite God in with a word of
confession by saying, “I can’t do it, God.” I just cannot.
The reason this works so well at
camp is because there is no temptation to turn on the TV; there is no cell
phone, no constant messaging and advertising, selling you that this one thing
will complete you. We promise something entirely different—that nothing can
complete you but the God who created you. More than that, nobody is outside of
that promise. God’s new covenant is for the least and the greatest—not
for you to lord over your neighbor. I do not care how unholy they are. Jesus
comes for tax collectors and sinners, murderers and adulterers. We spend a lot
of time and energy in the church telling you “Don’t do this” and “don’t do
that,” so we had better spend much more time and energy telling you that Jesus
comes for you regardless; that there is nothing that can separate you from the
love of God. That is the power of this covenant, which is being remade with
every new generation, as we figure out new ways to exclude people. We are
really quite good at excluding people, it turns out! That might be what people
are best at, actually. But you know what? God takes us anyway, because it’s not
about how good we are.
Our mission statement at Red Willow
is this: “Red Willow Ministries is a community for all people to hear God’s
call to live in relationship with God and one another.” When I first heard that
mission statement, I thought, “That sounds more like a church than a camp,” but
of course, it is both. There is really little difference in our ministries,
because all we are doing is providing the fertile ground for God to show up and
grow things. You do it in worship; in social ministries; in Bible studies—we do
it swimming and campfires and blaze orange sunsets—but God shows up all the
same, because there is no right way to do ministry. If you are open to it, God
will show up.
That is the new covenant. God will
show up and remember our sin no more. God will proclaim that it does not matter
how we got here; all that matters is that we are home. I suppose, if we are
cynical, we might ask why any of this matters then—if we are saved by a promise
we can do nothing to accept by a God who accepts sinners of all varieties? Well,
I humbly suggest that all that is left to do for us, therefore, is to reflect
that love of God for a world desperate to hear it.
That is what we are going to be up
to this summer—it’s what they’ll be doing up the road at Park River—it’s what
you will be doing here in Petersburg/Dahlen. In that way, we will be partners
together, doing much the same ministry, caring for and loving on God’s children—young,
old, and in-between.
No comments:
Post a Comment