Readings: 5th Sunday in Lent, Year B: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 119:9-16; Hebrews 5:5-10; John 12:20-33

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. . . . I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts. . . . 

How is God going to do a thing like that?! How does God write on a human heart? We speak of “knowing something by heart,” but that’s something we do with the mind—by memorization, like a poem or the periodic table, or just by hearing something again and again, like a song. But if I say that something is “written on my heart,” that must mean something more. That would be something that has become indelibly important to me, something that guides me in life, something that has passionate meaning for me, something I could not just leave behind. 

I may forget many of the poems that I once knew by heart—even some of the hymns. But what is written on my heart, even if it should grow faint at times, will not lightly alter or disappear altogether. 

But it sounds like it might be a painful process, doesn’t it? What instrument is God going to write with? A chisel and mallet? (I hope our hearts are not that hard!) A scratchy ink pen? Even a ball point sounds a little threatening. And what does God use for ink? Won’t any pigment imaginable just be washed away by the constant flow of blood?

Sometimes, I suppose, it may be painful. Are there false things written there? Will they have to be scrubbed off somehow to make room for the true? It’s a process that will involve change because it’s not just a matter of ideas or propositions or rules—things that can be known by the mind alone. After God says, “I will write my law on their hearts,” God goes on to describe the results of the writing in this way: “No longer shall they . . . say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me.” The law written on the heart won’t be just knowledge of words. It will be knowledge of a person. We wind up knowing God. 

I used to think that having the law written on one’s heart would mean you would never violate it. But that isn’t what this oracle of Jeremiah is saying. It says that we will all know God, from the least of us to the greatest, “for,” God says, “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” We won’t become instantly perfect, but we will know God as Forgiver, as one who loves us despite our sins, as one who wishes to draw us into an everlasting embrace.

Jesus says, in today’s reading from the Gospel of John, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” To which John adds the explanation: “He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.” The event that prompted all this was seemingly minor. It was the appearance of some “Greeks.” They could be Gentiles or Greek-speaking Jews—we don’t know. But what is clear is that they’re outsiders, not a part of Jesus’ usual audience. In order to get access to the famous man, they have to search out one of his disciples who has a Greek name and probably knows their language. And when they turn up, Jesus understands that his gospel has become, as he wished, a message of love to the whole world.

In response, Jesus speaks about his death. He is approaching it with anguish, yet he accepts it and prays only that God’s name be glorified—a prayer that is answered by the divine voice. Not every one understands the voice. Some think it thundered. Some think it might have been an angel. Perhaps just one or two could hear and understand the words at that time. Most of Jesus’ disciples—yes, including us—are still people who need to have these things explained to us. 

But Jesus wants to change that. When he is lifted up on the cross, he will draw all people to him. He intends to write on our hearts in blood, his own blood. And what does he write?

He writes, “Loved.” 

He writes, “Forgiven.”

He writes, “Embraced by God.”

He writes a whole sentence: “I am with you always.”

Jesus, in his teaching, kept emphasizing that the whole law is summed up in two commandments: Love God with your whole self; love your neighbor as yourself. To know these commandments you don’t need advanced study or graduate degrees. An illiterate person can read them, written on the heart, as easily as a Doctor of Philosophy. 

And Jesus writes this truth on our hearts by giving himself. He goes to the cross because he refuses to diminish or deny the message of love to suit the demands of politics and the pride of rulers. He goes to the cross to challenge our universal human fear of becoming God’s beloved friends. For we do fear it. We fear the breaking down of our defenses, the loss of all those lies we tell ourselves about our own worthiness, the dissolving of our illusion that we are in full charge of our own lives. We fear God because we do not trust God’s goodness.

And so God comes to us, seeking out our hearts and writing a new thing on them. The pen God uses is love. The ink is God’s own lifeblood. The blood with which Jesus writes on our hearts is not just human blood. It has become the blood of God. And the writing will therefore be indelible. 

Even if we ignore the message or forget it for a time or pretend that we can’t read it, it will still be there, waiting to give us new life, new energy, new hope, a new start. And the only thing that God asks in return is that “they will all know me.” Know God as lover and forgiver, as opener of doors, as lasting friend, as unfailing companion, and as giver of the strength to share this love in the longing world around us.

Preached Sunday, March 21, 2021, at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Berkeley, California