Sunday, April 2, 2006
Sermon: “Beyond the Ten Commandments”
Scripture: Jeremiah 31: 31-34
Reverend Larry Gerber
“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. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors … “ (Jeremiah 31:31-33).
A new covenant. A new contract. A chance to change.
Israel was at a crossroads, and whatever choice was made, nothing would ever be the sameSounds like a no-brainer. I’ll change. I’ll change. No you won’t. In fact, if you got this phone call in which you were told, “Change or die,” odds are 9 to 1 that you won’t.
Of course, you’ll say, “Yes, I’ll change.” And of course, you’ll begin to make those changes in lifestyle, eating habits, recreational pursuits and so on. But it’s not long before your enthusiasm tapers off, and soon you’re back to square one. No change. No chance.
Case in point: People who’ve had heart bypass surgery, most definitely a life-and-death matter, are directed by their doctors to change their eating habits, stop smoking, exercise, significantly alter their lifestyle. They know they should make those changes — know that they’ll die sooner than later if they don’t — yet multiple studies have shown that in just two years after such major surgery, 90 percent of these patients have not significantly altered their behavior. Change is just too tough.
Changing people’s behavior isn’t just a costly health care issue. It’s an issue for businesses, where companies go belly-up every day still chanting the mantra, “We’ve always done it this way.” Corporations spend millions each year on consultants to bring in new practices and promote change, but any changes made are, at best, short-lived and, at worst, rejected out of hand.
And, of course, we know how responsive some churches are to change (that would be, generally, NOT). Perhaps you know, as well as I do, about some ministers who were forced into a new career (like selling life insurance to change-resistant heart patients) because they changed the order of worship or moved the pulpit or the piano 10 feet. (I heard about one pastor who got fired for moving the piano from the left side to the right side; next pastor did the same thing, only he moved it so slowly, no one noticed. Probably not a true story, but close enough.)
It’s not that we’re uninformed. In a culture where we have more than we can process about good choices, better quality of life, advanced health care, professional consultants, counselors, and about a bazillion reasons to do so, the fact is that, more often that not, we simply can’t change — even if it means that our bodies, our businesses or our churches are going to die.
The answer to change lies in understanding the nature of change itself. Part of the problem is that we most often view change as something we do — an activity or habit that must be altered. We tend to approach change issues such as heart disease or other behaviors with facts, analysis and information — with the left brain. We think about changing something in ourselves, but thinking is only one part of the process.
What we’re missing, says John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor and expert on organizational change, is the right brain. “Behavior change happens mostly by speaking to people’s feelings,” he says. “In highly successful change efforts, people find ways to help others see the problems or solutions in ways that influence emotions, not just thought.”
Dr. Dean Ornish, founder of the Preventative Medicine Research Institute in California, agrees. Rather than tell a heart patient to change or die — Ornish focuses on helping them tap into their emotions. He realizes that death is too frightening to think about for most people, so denial and depression are the cognitive result. After all, who wants to live longer if they feel sick and depressed? On the other hand, Ornish convinces his patients that feeling better is the goal, believing that those who feel better live longer. “Joy is a more powerful motivator than fear,” he says.
What these change experts have discovered is something that God has known all along. If you really want to change people’s behavior, you need to give them a story, an identity, a relationship that is “emotionally resonant.” In Jeremiah 31, we read how God, through the prophet, seeks to reframe the experience of a people notoriously resistant to change by offering them not another set of rules, but a relationship.
It’s no secret that God’s frozen chosen were (and are) resistant to change. Go back to Exodus and you’ll see that even after God had parted the Red Sea and brought them out of slavery in Egypt, the people began to fight the change and wanted to go back — the known being far less uncomfortable than the unknown, even if it was making bricks! At Sinai, God framed for them a covenant on tablets of stone — clear directions and rules for change which they immediately began to ignore and started dancing around a golden calf.
Repeatedly throughout their history, both as the nation of Israel and as the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah, God’s people have a hard time really buying into the change that’s good for them and are constantly wanting to be like those around them, their idols and pagan practices being the dominant frame of the day. Even when they are threatened with exile, destruction and death, they can’t seem to make the change and follow God for any consistent length of time.
So here, in Jeremiah 31, we read that God is going to take the initiative to reframe the issue and call for real change. The old covenant, the one at Sinai, the one written on tablets of stone was, in effect, a left-brained approach to change — facts, information, commandments. That covenant was broken because the people couldn’t adapt themselves to it fully, couldn’t conform. Like an addict who tries hard to bolster the willpower to change, the people of God were powerless to make those difficult lifestyle changes on their own.
So God turns to another approach. Rather than write another legal prescription or warn them of impending doom, God will “put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (v. 33). The program of change, says God through the prophet, won’t be posted on the wall or carried around in a box to be thought about, but will be installed in their “hearts” — their emotions, their hopes and dreams. God was updating the covenant, reframing the relationship, moving from commandments to conversation, from rules to relationship. No longer would they simply know about God as an external agent who calls for their obedience, but they would know God with their emotions, their hearts and their very lives. God was offering a new opportunity for the people to change from a pattern of failure to a relationship of forgiveness (31:34).
Jesus would later embody this new covenant, this reframing of the story. While the Pharisees and others around him would continually press for the rules, Jesus was constantly calling people to engage God through a relationship rather than through religious ritual. He said, essentially, to know me is to know God — to follow me is to follow a new path, and to be in God’s presence, to experience God’s grace is the way to real change. He painted a picture of a future filled with joy for those who would be transformed in this way.
Problem is that many individuals, churches and religious organizations are still working with their old frames. The constant debates in our churches and judicatories about rules, religious practice, theology, polity and sin keep us firmly entrenched. We talk a lot, argue a lot, generate tons of information, but nothing seems to change and, worse yet, the lives of God’s people don’t change much either.
Time to embrace a new story, another covenant — the one God has been calling us toward all along. God wants us to know him, not just argue about what we know about him. God’s word through Jeremiah is a call for us to move from the left brain to the right brain, from our heads to our hearts, from cognition to communication, from religion to a relationship with God.
Wonder how that would change things in our spirits, our selves and our churches?
• “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” When we partake of the elements of Holy Communion, it is an attempt to change ones thought from thinking to feeling; from brain knowledge to heart knowledge; from a religion to a relationship with their God. Take and eat in remembrance of me. Feel the power of canceled sing; feel the warmth of Jesus’ love; feel the love, not the law. Let us prepare to partake of Holy Communion, with our hearts, not our head.
Source: Deutschman, Alan. “Making change.” Fast Company, May 2005, 53-62.