Many generations before the prophet Jeremiah was born, the people of Israel made a covenant with God. The Israelites promised to obey the laws of God. And in turn God promised to protect Israel and make them be a great nation. The Israelites counted on God to live up to this covenant, even when they’d long ago abandoned their end of the deal. Even after they stopped obeying God’s commandments, still they expected God to protect them from their enemies. So much greater was their shock and disappointment when the Babylonians easily conquered them. The capital city of Jerusalem fell, and the political and religious leaders of the nation were taken away as prisoners of war. The old covenant between God and the people of Israel was undeniably broken. The Israelites were disobedient, and God no longer protected them from their enemies. The Israelites longed for the good old days when they could still count on God. They longed for the time when there was still a temple standing in which they could worship God. They longed to see their families and leaders return from exile to restore the way things were. They just wanted to go back to the time when they worked hard, and prospered, and when their God protected them. But through Jeremiah, God explained to them that there was no way to turn back the clock. There were too many broken promises to try to piece their old relationship together. Their only hope, Jeremiah explained, was the promise that God would do a new thing. The old covenant had been scrapped. “But there’ll come a day,” Jeremiah said, “when God will make a new covenant with us.” Their hope rested not in turning back the clock, but in starting over. The broken promises of the past couldn’t be mended, so new promises would need to be made. Using what the past had taught them, they’d have to create a whole new relationship with God. It wouldn’t be like the old days. They wouldn’t be able to rely on the same old excuses. They didn’t know what might come in the future, but they could depend on the fact that things wouldn’t be the same as they were in the past. “The day is surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant… It will not be like the covenant I made with your ancestors.”

Daylight Savings Time may come and go, but we can never really turn back the clock. We can’t go back to the way things used to be. As much as we may longingly remember the good old days, we can never return to them or recreate them. A friend of mine once talked me into going to a medieval dinner show against my better judgment. Our servers wore costumes straight out of the movie Camelot. In the center of the great hall where we ate, there were juggling acts and court jesters telling jokes and mock jousts. The event claimed to transport us back to a simpler time, back to a time when chivalrous knights in armor fought for the honor of helpless damsels in distress. But the illusion was shattered for me when it occurred to me that unlike medieval Europe, we fortunately could count on indoor plumbing. Unlike the chivalrous knights and ladies of centuries ago, fortunately we all bathed regularly and enjoyed the benefit of deodorant. The event purported to transport us back in time, but we didn’t really go back. We just let ourselves be immersed in the idealized memory of how things used to be for a little while. We probably wouldn’t really want to live the way people lived in the further stretches of history. In some ways, things have changed for the better. Likely there are some ways that things have changed for the worse. But there’s no getting around the fact that things have changed, and are still changing, and will continue to change. We can’t return to the past, and we can’t recreate it. There are folks who’ve told me the stories of the heyday of this church. It used to be, so I’m told, that there were so many children in our Sunday School classes that we couldn’t fit them all in at one time. We had to have two shifts of Sunday School to teach all the children who came. Church used to be more of a social center in the community. The church used to command more respect. The church used to be more of a priority in people’s lives. Things are different than they used to be. While it’s crucial for us to tell our stories and remember the lessons of the past, try as we might like to, we can’t go back. The best that we can do is to give thanks to God for the lessons of the past as we turn to face the future. Things change. We change.

God is transforming us by grace. God is continually reshaping us, molding us, and moving us by the imprint of the divine presence upon our souls. We’re developing and maturing as God works in and through our lives. When God first made a covenant with the people of Israel, God handed them a set of laws. Words written on tablets and scrolls clearly explained God’s will for their lives. But the words held less power over time. A few generations even lost track of some of the laws entirely. They misplaced some of God’s commandments, forgot about others, and just disregarded many more. And the living promises of God became artifacts out of history. In Jeremiah’s day, God promised the Israelites that they wouldn’t require commandments written down on paper. God promised to write them directly on the hearts of the faithful. No longer would they need scholars and priests and pastors to interpret God’s laws, because each person would know themselves made new by the grace of God. From the most powerful leader to the smallest child, God promised that each person would know God’s will from the inside. God demanded a new kind of obedience – obedience not just to words in a book, but obedience to the living presence of God moving in our lives. When I was a child, I loved painting-by-numbers. I don’t know if they make them anymore, but paint-by-numbers gave you a canvas with an outline of some scene, often some famous work of art. And they helpfully put numbers on the canvas to show you exactly where to fill in with precisely what shade of color in order to paint a perfect reproduction. I felt like I was guaranteed to paint something beautiful. But after a while, I got tired of painting-by-numbers. The end product always looked a little goofy. The proportions never quite balanced. I could paint perfectly inside the lines, but I always thought that my paintings appeared insincere. They were never as beautiful and masterful as the picture on the outside of the package. I think that I became an artist when I began to paint all on my own. I created art when I painted from the inspiration that was inside of me. Art wasn’t just about staying inside the lines. I began to appreciate not the perfection of art, but the intuitive, subjective, more meaningful beauty of art. God asks that our faith be less like an accountant balancing the books, and more like an artist, moved to create from the imprint of God’s grace upon our hearts. God asks us to speak the truth that’s inside, to trust the prodding and pulling of the Spirit. God is continually reshaping us. We’ve got to be flexible, to grow, and to embrace the new creation that God is breathing into each of us.

We’re not yet all that we will be someday. We’re changing all the time. There’s no blueprint, no formula, no playbook sufficient to guide us as we’re being transformed. There are no guarantees that things will be clear and we grow by the touch of God’s loving hand. We can be certain, though, that we can’t undo what’s been done, and we can’t recreate the past. God is doing a new thing in us and through us. We face today with the assurance that God’s hand guides us and shapes us new each day. Amen.