Friday, June 6, 2014

Friday, June 6, 2014

Jeremiah 31:27-34

“Within them I shall plant my Law, writing it on their hearts.” (31:33, NJB)

This description of God’s new covenant — God’s pact or relationship with humanity —always strikes me as radically different from what many zealously religious people would envision. While today’s literalists and fundamentalists emphasize a certain adherence to and interpretation of our scriptures, this selection from Jeremiah seems to imply that religion taken to its farthest moves beyond scriptures and teachings to an inner sort of disposition or wisdom. So, if I can be a little mischievous, one might come to the conclusion that a true fundamentalist should be throwing out the Bible, based on our passage today. (I think Tom Yoder Neufeld from Conrad Grebel University College is the person who cheekily put this thought in my head, so I will give the credit to him.)

Joking aside, today’s reading brings to mind a couple of sayings from the Desert Fathers, the early Christian hermits and monks.

In Scetis a brother went to Moses to ask for advice. He said to him, “Go and sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”

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Evagrius said that there was a brother who had no possessions except a Gospel book and he sold it in order to feed the poor. He said something worth remembering: “I have sold even the word that commands me to sell all and give to the poor.”

[selections from The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, Trans. Benedicta Ward (London: Penguin Books, 2003).]