Our reading from the letter to the Hebrews today continues to reflect upon Jesus as the High Priest and upon the new covenant with God under which we live, no longer being under the old covenant. In a section quoted from the prophet Jeremiah, the author of Hebrews states: “I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Those poetic words speak of the new relationship we have with God, not a relationship based on rules and dogma and doctrine, but a relationship of mutual love and respect, of a relationship between God and the people he has claimed for his own.
Poetic words are nice, but what does it really mean to our daily lives for God to put his laws into our minds and to write his laws onto our hearts? If we really believe that God has written his laws onto our hearts, then we will be inspired to live out his laws in acts of mercy and justice, inspiring us to move beyond our complacency and our inaction to really live out his laws in our lives. Yet, we see a lot of conflict and injustice in the world, in our own communities and our own backyard. We see people lashing out at each other in anger and wanting revenge. We need to hear God’s law in our hearts calling us to the greater good.
As I drive down Capital Street or Bailey Avenue or Martin Luther King Jr Drive driving down to work at the Chancery office in downtown Jackson most days, I go down those streets, seeing the abandoned and burned down buildings, roads that are barely drivable, cars running red lights, and an environment that gives off a sense of fear and foreboding, and I think: how did we get here? How can we say we are followers of Christ and live this way? There are no easy answers, but if God placed his law in our hearts, we need to wrestle with these things.
This week we celebrated the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. I wonder about God's inscriptions on his heart. He was faithful to God's calling and, yet, he too knew the frustration of falling short. In a sermon entitled, "Unfulfilled Dreams," he had this to say, "The struggle is always there. It gets discouraging sometimes. It gets very disenchanting sometimes. Some of us are trying to build a temple of peace. We speak out against war, we protest, but it seems that your head is going against a concrete wall. It seems to mean nothing. And so often as you set out to build the temple of peace you are left lonesome; you are left discouraged; you are left bewildered."
May we never give up the desire to follow God's laws that are inscribed in our hearts, no matter how much a struggle and challenge this entails.
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