A New Kind of New

A New Kind of New--September 15, 2016

"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 when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt--a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: 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. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to one another, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more." [Jeremiah 31:31-34]

I'll bet you have been there before.  Someone has wronged you, hurt your feelings, dropped the ball, let you down, disappointed you, or otherwise broken relationship with you.  It could be your close friend, a family member, a coworker, a spouse, a child, a parent, whomever.  Anyhow, the damage has been done, and the other person knows it.  In fact, the other person is well aware it's their fault, and wants to get back on your good side.  And so in an attempt to assure you that you won't get hurt again, if only you'll forgive, they speak these seven words: "It'll be different this time--I promise!"

But you know better.  Maybe you have had to learn it the hard way from being let down before.  But you know better. You know that often, the people who let you down, flake out on you, or otherwise disappoint or hurt you, are going to be the repeat offenders in your world.  And you have learned, surely, that any sentence that begins, "It'll be different...THIS time..." has a credibility problem right out of the gate. 

It's not that people can't change... but more honestly by our sheer inertia and resistance to being uncomfortable, people usually don't change.  And so the people who have flown off the handle at you before are likely to do it again.  And the people who have betrayed your trust are... you guessed it, likely to do it again.  The ones who ignored your feelings, trampled on your heart, broke a promise to you, or whatever else--they are likely to do it again, regardless of whether they insist that "this time it will be different."  So often those words are offered up like they are a get-out-of-jail-free card, when in actuality, we should take them as more of a warning to remember all the "other times" that led up to this moment and all the times that "this time it will be different..." only to end up right back in the same rut and the same hurt.

So yeah, you and I surely know what it's like to be more than a little skeptical when someone offers up the lone sentence, "THIS TIME... it will be different."  Because we know what it is like for "this time" to end up like "all the other times."  And because as the old line attributed to Einstein says, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again exactly the same way and expecting a different result."  If nothing changes, then nothing changes.  You and I know it because we know what it is to be let down by those big (empty) promises.

But we also know it because we know what it is like to be the ones making those big empty promises, too.  We know, if we are honest, that the sentence, "It will be different...this time" has been on our lips, too.  We have let down other people who counted on us, made grand sweeping assertions that we would never make the old mistakes again, and then we have been the ones to fall back into the same old patterns. Honestly, we are part of the problem, as well as all the other people on our lists of disappointments and fickleness.

So there may well be good reason for us to be hesitant when we hear the hope of a new kind of starting over.  We have heard it all before--both from others who let us down, and from our own mouths before we let others down--and it has been empty talk.  It is hard, then, to know what to make of God's promise of a new kind of new beginning--a new covenant, Jeremiah calls it.  Our inner cynic wants to start out saying, "How is this going to be any different than every other utterance of 'This time it will be different' that turns out to be just more of the same?"

What we need is a new kind of new.  What we need is something that really will make this time different.

And that is what God offers.

"I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah," God says.  "It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt--a covenant that they broke..."

God knows that every time we have broken relationship with God, we have been the ones to insist, "Oh, but God, we promise--we'll never do that again.  We'll be good... this time!"  And we have been the ones who let God down.  If the basis of our relationship with God is our ability to keep our promises and never mess up again, we are doomed.  And since God is not a fool, God knows that we are bound to slide back into making "this time" another version of "last time" and of all the times that came before.  So if God's love for us is dependent on us getting our act together and proving that we won't ever mess up again, we should give up hope.

But this is where God gets clever.  Jeremiah says that God has created a clever end-around strategy to remove the issue of our consistent mess-ups.  God will create a new kind of covenant altogether.  We won't go back into the old system that we kept messing up. We won't go into any kind of system that depends on our getting it right.  God creates a new kind of new--a new covenant that is grounded in God's own unconditional love.  God creates a new kind of starting over that happens by grace. 

"I will remember their sin no more," God says.  That is, we are done with keeping track of all the letdowns and disappointments of the past. God is not holding them against us. And more to the point, God has determined to love us regardless of whether we change or don't, regardless of whether "this time" really is different or is just more of the same.  God's faithfulness will not depend on our actions or choices--it will be there, no matter what.  That is grace--that is the only thing that keeps us from the despair of thinking that "this time" will be the same as all the other times before.  Grace makes the difference, because grace short circuits the idea that I have to prove myself before I can be loved again.  Grace says, "You don't have to show me you have changed before I love you.  I just love you."

In all the world, in any other relationship, be it personal or professional, you will not find that kind of newness.  To some degree every other relationship in our lives has some level of conditionality--of, "I'll only love you if you love me first, or love me back at least."  That is what makes every other relationship in our lives precarious and every other utterance of "This time... it will be different" something of a gamble to believe.

But God creates a new kind of new, because God's new covenant with us in Christ simply does not depend on our behavior.  We really have started over with God, because the forgiveness doesn't hang on our getting it right first.

Grace makes all the difference.

Lord Jesus, bring your new kind of newness to us today.  We need it.