One of the dangers of attempting to speak a word from the Lord - you know, that bit about “proclaiming the message ... convincing, rebuking, encouraging, with persistence and patience” - one of the inherent hazards of striving to do this is the subtly developed attitude that God works only from the outside in, rather than from the inside out, in the lives of people.

            Communicating a word from God, wherever and however it is done, runs the risk of being just another byte of information “out there” in an age of information overload. By its very definition, “information” is a package that originates and is received from outside of oneself. It is data arranged “in” a “form” (in-form-ation).

            We are daily bombarded with all sorts of data, so much so that, out of necessity, we put up filters and hear only what we want to hear. It’s human nature.  We can absorb only so much of all the information coming at us every moment of the day. Those who consciously give “form” to the data know this, and seek out ever-new ways of sneaking it past our filters, of “tickling the ear” so to speak, so that we itch for more, for good or for ill.

            For instance, the Ravens stadium downtown was built with blank spaces purposely placed within view of television cameras covering the event. In the past such spaces would be plastered with advertisements which would remain the same throughout the game. Now, through the wonder of technology, that data can change from quarter to quarter as electronically it is given a different “form” on the screen. The people attending the game only see a blank wall, but the people watching at home see in the same space an ad for Coca-Cola at the first kick off and one for Chrysler in the final seconds, with a multitude of others in between.

            Not only advertisers do this, the same is true of the evening news, and how it is packaged (that is what “form” it is put “in”), as well as a class in school. Believe it or not, teachers are (in part) marketers of information, seeking to place data and how to interpret it “in” a “form” which might capture the attention of students, an increasingly difficult task. Oh, and by the way, preachers are also very aware of the “form” “in” which we place what we are called to share.

            However, there is a difference between sharing information that seeks to tickle the ear and real communication which touches the heart. One of the inherent risks of seeking to speak a word for God is the attitude that God works only from the outside in, rather than from the inside out, in the lives of people. To understand this “proclaiming the message” - whether it’s done from a pulpit by someone called to preach, or happens in daily conversation on the part of each one of us - when we see this only as information addressed from the outside needing just the right “form” to sneak inside, then we have (I believe) missed what the gospel of Jesus Christ is all about, and why it is good news.

            In this morning’s Old Testament reading, the prophet Jeremiah offers up a good word to the children of Israel. That is most welcome, for most of what he has to say in the rest of this work we’ve attributed to him is pretty bleak. God’s people have blown it in the eyes of the Lord. They’ve lost track of the covenant. The commandments have become little more than information on the evening news, placed between reports of war on the north, south, and eastern fronts.

            Instead of themselves taking on the form of the tablets, of living out the commandments - not as some external order from a foreign dictator, but as an internal voice from a living relationship with the great “I am who I am” - instead of taking on the form of the tablets, being sons and daughters of the law, they have allowed the Torah to become just another word. Human nature being what it is, they have put on their filters and hear only what they want to hear. Only that which makes the ears itch gets through.

            Jeremiah speaks a word which doesn’t tickle. It hurts. Much of this work we call “the book of Jeremiah” is about plucking up, breaking down, overthrowing, and destroying the nations of Israel and Judah. It is a prelude to exile, a time when God’s people are re-formed. That is, exile is not so much a time when data from God is arranged in the best form possible, though that indeed did happen in Babylon. More importantly, exile is a time and place when and where those whom God loves passionately take on a new form themselves. They are trans-formed, not merely in-formed.

            Amid the harsh words Jeremiah spoke, over which he himself grieved rather than gloated, are found words of comfort and promise from God. Listen, again:

“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.”  (31:31‑32)

             A covenant is based not on a written contract, full of words that can be manipulated, but on a living relationship that is not to be manipulated. When God’s people, here conceived as like a bride, played fast and loose with the words of their relationship with God, seeing it as merely one contract among many contracts, the very heart of God was broken. However, even as this “husband,” so to speak, sent his beloved bride into exile, God did not cut the tie. The time of exile in Babylon was to be a time for renewing the covenant. This was not a pre-nuptial agreement being rewritten - tinkering with, or re-forming the words of the contract while in exile. No, it was a time for trans-forming God’s people. Listen again:

“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 each other, "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.” (31:33‑34)