Jeremiah 31:1-6 Commentary

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Have you ever experienced a moment when time stood still? Maybe you were afraid to breathe for fear of breaking the magic of the moment. It’s the stuff of hospital bedsides – the passing on of death and the passing into life of birth.  It’s the good news of a proposal, the announcement of a grandchild to be born. It’s the stillness of the doctor’s phone call and the world closing in. Your senses, like nerve endings, crackle with life.  You hold onto the strangest details and can’t recall the most ordinary things that must have happened. The moment you will spend the rest of your life saying, “I remember exactly where I was when it happened.”

Good Friday is an easy place to see the dynamic on display.  The moment of silence when the Christ candle is carried out, when the last note of the hymn fades to stillness.  The weight of the sadness of the world is a place where time stands still.  But it can—and often does—stand still in joyful moments too. Celebrating a reversal of fortunes no one saw coming. Soaring on top of the alleluias, as it were.

These are what theologian N.T. Wright calls the “thin places,” the moments in time when the curtain between heaven and earth grows sheer for a fleeting glance.  A thin place, like a sacrament, where we hold the story of the past and the hope of the future while living deeply in the present.

Lectionary Connections

Listen, I’m not here to tell y’all what to do. My best guess is that the Hebrew Scripture Lesson is not going to be front-and-center in the preaching ministry of the church on this Easter Sunday.  Jeremiah—even this most joyful section of the book—isn’t quite the “Alleluia” that this Resurrection celebration requires.

That said, what I’d like to do is offer a few connection points and places where Jeremiah points to or even participates in the goodness of our Easter morning resurrection celebrations.

Setting the Tone: from Darkness to Light

After six weeks of Lent and, further, the descent into the darkness at Calvary on Good Friday, the gift of Easter morning is light breaking forth.  If you back up the Lectionary reading to include Jeremiah 30:23-24—all about the storm of the Lord and wrath bursting forth, justice against the wicked—you will be able to mimic this movement from death to life, from darkness to light.  Verse 24 does this perfectly: “The fierce anger of the Lord will not turn back until he fully accomplishes the purposes of his heart. In days to come, you will understand this.” Interestingly, the Jewish commentator Robert Alter observes how these verses seem out-of-place and plopped in here between hope and fulfillment.  He writes, “This entire verse may be a fragment unconnected with what precedes or follows because the image of wrathful destruction scarcely accords with the prophecy of jubilant restoration just annunciated.”  From here, of course, you have a wonderful opportunity to proclaim the jubilant surprise that no one saw coming — the resurrection of the dead and new life in Christ.

A Kind Welcome

The song of Jeremiah harmonizes with the Psalmist’s in two ways.  First, the songs are grounded in conviction that the love of the Lord remains steadfast and everlasting. God’s love endures forever.  But not only that, God’s everlasting love manifests in the welcome of open gates, entering in, as in a victory parade. Psalm 118 traffics in martial imagery, a battle has been won and must now be celebrated.  Jeremiah 31:3 centers the kindness of God drawing the people in, which Alter suggests, “the verb here is probably dictated by an image of God’s leading the people through the wilderness on the way back from exile.” From battle to victory and from exile to belonging.

The Thin Places

One of the gifts that we receive in the book of Colossians is the way it takes the whole ancient-future history of the world and presents it to us in digestible portions.  The hymn in chapter 1 is the story of God’s eternal power and reign and yet it somehow manages to do its work in five memorable—and memorizable—verses. And here, at the beginning of chapter 3, the implications of the resurrection are made plain.  Of course, Paul goes on to explain further that new life requires the putting to death of sin and evil and then raising hope, peace and goodness up in new life. But, here is the north-star, the pithy truth, the thin place where the whole story comes together: “For you died and life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” It’s all told. Right there in two verses.

Similarly, Jeremiah 31:1-7 tells the whole story.  The CEB Study Bible suggests, “Jeremiah draws from Israel’s great statements of faith.” It is the exodus and the wondering. Receiving the law on Mt. Sinai and the promise of a land, a place to belong.  “In fact, the lines between past and present blur.” Jeremiah tells of people who find favor in the wilderness and we might ask, “which time?” Is this an exodus story or a return from exile story?  “This ambiguity is probably deliberate: Israel’s ancient traditions structure Israel’s understanding of the present and its vision of the future.”

Making the Resurrection Turn

This timeless moment, a thin place where past and future, heaven and earth all come merging together in our vision could be the place to help your congregation make the resurrection turn in their own thinking. What comes into view and what fades away to a buzz in the background when we think of the moment when death is defeated, when Christ is raised in newness of life and so too, according to Paul, are we? The past deaths of those we cherish and dearly miss every day is woven into a more-present-promise of reunion at the last day. The shame of being sinned against and the guilt of our own sinning are stripped from our shoulders, pooling at our feet as new robes of righteousness are wrapped around us. Can your congregation name, for themselves, what the resurrection holds together, even as it moves them from old to new and from darkness to light. From stuckness to stepping forward, regret to hope and from lament to praise.

CEP also has commentaries on Acts 10:34-43:

from 2017, Doug Bratt: https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2017-04-10/acts-1034-43-3/

from 2020, Stan Mast: https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2020-04-06/acts-1034-43-5/

from 2023, Scott Hoezee: https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2023-04-03/acts-1034-43-9/