A Homily for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity

After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.

CJeremiah, 31:33

In order to be clear about what Saint Paul is saying in this morning=s epistle lesson, it will be helpful to reread part of the passage, beginning a bit earlier in the second letter to the Corinthians and reading from a modern translation.

Do we need a letter of recommendation to you or from you? You are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all, shown to be a letter of Christ administered by us, written not in ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are hearts of flesh. Such confidence we have through Christ toward God, not that of ourselves we are qualified to take credit for anything as coming from us; rather, our qualification comes from God, who has indeed qualified us as ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life.

You Christians, Paul says, are people who have God=s covenant written on your hearts, and so your lives, as Christians, serve as a letter of recommendation on behalf of anyone who would preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The new covenant, the covenant made by the one oblation, once offered, of Jesus Christ upon the cross, is not like the old covenant between God and Israel made on Mount Sinai. The terms of the old covenant were external; they were carved in stone and written in ink. But the terms of the new covenant are internal, communicated to the believer by the Holy Spirit.

The idea of a covenant written on the heart may seem strange. We expect our contracts to be at least written down, even if not literally carved in stone. But Paul is here alluding to one of the great messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, communicated by God in the darkest days of the Jewish people, when they were defeated and in exile. Many, probably most, of the Christians of Corinth, to whom this letter was first addressed, were familiar with the great prophecy of Jeremiah:

Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, . . . but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, AKnow the LORD@: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

In the seventh century before Christ it was widely accepted by the Jewish people, and expressly proclaimed by the prophet Jeremiah, that Israel=s humiliation and subjugation at the hands of the gentiles of Assyria and Babylon (which is to say, of Iraq), were punishments imposed by God for Israel=s disobedience to God=s commandments. God had made a covenant with Israel, that if Israel kept his commandments, they would be his people and he would be their God, and that he would protect them from their enemies. But Israel broke the covenant; in particular, Israel violated the first commandment: AI am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have none other gods but me.@ And when the pagan armies of Mesopotamia swept through, the Israel that had deserted God was no match for them.

But Jeremiah prophesied a new covenant, not written on stones, which could be broken, but written on the hearts of the people. And Paul, in his letter, tells the Christians of Corinth (and, therefore, us as well) that we Christians are the people who bear this new covenant in our hearts.

Continuing his point of contrasting the new covenant with the old, Paul alludes to the story told in the thirty-fourth chapter of the second book of Moses, which we call AExodus@:

The LORD said unto Moses, AWrite thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.@ . . . And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. And it came to pass, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony . . . that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him. . . . And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face. But when Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he took the veil off, until he came out. And he came out, and spake unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded. And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face shone: and Moses put the veil upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

Whenever Moses returned from speaking with God, his face glowed with a bright and shining radiance. It was so bright that his brother Aaron and the children of Israel could not bear to look at it, and so, when he spoke with the people, Moses covered his face with a veil. Moses did not write the law (either the ten commandments or the more than six hundred other commandments), but he was the minister or Adeacon@ of the law; he received the law from God and taught it to the people. And even in this role of minister, his face took on that terrible radiance.

Paul compares the Moses=s role, as minister of the old covenant, with our role as ministers of the new covenant, and that comparison depends on what Paul says about the law that Moses brought. The law could not save the people, either individually or collectively. The law told the people what God expected and required of them, but it could not give them the ability to keep its requirements, and so, in the end, the law condemned those who tried to live by it. That is why Paul says that the letter of the law Akilleth,@ and that the administration of the law was a ministry of death.

The Spirit, on the other hand, is life-giving, because God, by his Holy Spirit, confers his grace on the people of the new covenant, both to enable them to live in accordance with the new covenant, and to assure them that their shortcomings are not condemned, but forgiven. And this is in accordance with the prophecy of Jeremiah, who foretold a new covenant, written on the hearts of God=s people, in accordance with which God forgives our iniquity and does not remember our sins. Paul goes on:

If the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, was so glorious that the Israelites could not look intently at the face of Moses because of its glory that was going to fade, how much more will the ministry of the Spirit be glorious? For if the ministry of condemnation was glorious, the ministry of righteousness will abound much more in glory. . . . For if what was going to fade was glorious, how much more will what endures be glorious. Therefore, since we have such hope, we act very boldly and not like Moses, who put a veil over his face.

Moses was the minister or Adeacon@ of the law, and by reason of his ministry his face shone so brightly that the people could not bear to look at it. And yet that ministry of the law was to fade away, even as the radiance of Moses=s face faded over time. The veil that Moses wore covered what was, after all, a transient and fading brightness.

Paul says that we, who have the word of God written in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, should shine even brighter than Moses did. We are the ministers, or Adeacons,@ of the new covenant. Moses, who spoke with God and wrote down the laws of the old covenant, radiated a brightness in accordance with that ministry. We, who are become temples of the Holy Spirit, and who have the new covenant written on our hearts, should radiate a brightness in accordance with our ministry, which is greater and more enduring than that of Moses.

Our ministry, as Christians, is not after all, our own ministry, but that of Jesus Christ, of whose body we were made members at our baptism. And the ministry of reconciliation, that God committed to his Son is carried on by the Church, which is both the mystical body of Christ and the blessed company of all faithful people.

Moses covered his face with a veil to conceal the brightness of his face. Paul says that we Christians may be bolder than Moses; we should not cover the brightness of our lives with a veil, but should shine in the world, so that our lives become beacons, bringing other people to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Moses=s face shone with reflected brilliance; but our lives should shine with the light of God from within.

As our Lord himself said: AYe are the light of the world.@ ALet your light so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father, which is in heaven.

Church of Saint Mary Magdalene

Orange, California

14 August 2005