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Jeremiah 31:31-34
Lent 5B
Comments, Observations and Questions: Hearing “New Covenant” with the Ears of Ancient Israel The Israelites are in exile. The consequences of their disobedience and failure to keep their side of the bargain haunt them everyday — in the foreign language, customs, foods and, most grievously, religions of Babylon. So Jeremiah, who is often called the…
Jeremiah 23:1-6
Proper 29C
Just beyond the ending point for this particular Old Testament Year C reading is a rather striking line in Jeremiah 23:7-8. Anyone who grew up hearing the Ten Commandments—as well as other Old Testament passages—read on a fairly regular basis in church or at the dinner table knows that one of the most famous catch-phrases…
Jeremiah 31:27-34
Proper 24C
I am not sure why the Revised Common Lectionary’s series of passages from Jeremiah skips around the way it does (one week Jeremiah 32 but then next time around it’s back to chapter 29 and now we leap to chapter 31) but I think I can understand why the Lectionary saved this passage from the…
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Proper 23C
It’s not often that a true prophet of God ends up having prophetic egg on his face, but just that had recently happened to Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 28 a prophetic wannabe named Hananiah delivered what he declared was a true revelation from God. Hananiah made wonderfully sunny promises about Israel’s being released from captivity very,…
Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15
Proper 21C
A real estate deal seldom had it so good. All through the Bible you can find a recurrent theme related to real estate, to land, to who owns what. It all began with a promise of land to Abram (who for some reason had to leave behind the land he already owned to set out…
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
Proper 20C
“This hurts me more than it hurts you” our parents assured us as they doled out some form of punishment or another. Timeouts, groundings, restrictions: our parents wanted to claim the greater pain was theirs in the issuing of the punishments than ours in the receiving of them. We, none of us, believe this when…
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Proper 19C
Silent Spring. Or better written, Silent Spring in italics as befits a book title because that was indeed the title of Rachel Carson’s well-known book that was among the first cries of the modern ecological movement. Years ago, before I knew what that book was about, upon hearing the title I pictured some serene setting:…
Jeremiah 18:1-11
Proper 18C
The image of a potter at a wheel molding a wet lump of clay into various shapes is both a vivid image and one that most people can picture easily in their minds—it even cuts across multiple cultures seeing as the art of pottery making is quite ancient. Skilled potters are downright amazing in their…
Jeremiah 2:4-13
Proper 17C
According to the old adage, “You are what you eat.” But parts of the Bible, including Jeremiah 2, give voice to a different point of view: You are what you worship. In Jeremiah 2, one of the prophet’s initial broadsides against the people of Israel was the sad fact that in worshiping gods that were…
Jeremiah 1:4-10
Proper 16C
It sometimes seems as though Jeremiah 1 means more to preachers than to average church-goers. There is something about this pre-natal call to ministry—not to mention the lyric image of God’s filling the prophet’s mouth with his Word—that strikes a chord for lots of us who preach. But since the church long ago began to…
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