“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” (Jer. 31:31).
There are times in life when we realize something has to change. Sometimes it’s personal, when we say, I can’t keep living this way. Sometimes it happens in a family, a community, a congregation, or a whole church (as it did in the Protestant Reformation), when we see the old patterns no longer work.
Sometimes an entire society recognizes the ways we have organized our common life have produced division instead of community, fear instead of trust, exclusion instead of belonging, and we know something has to change.
The prophet Jeremiah spoke to such a moment. Catastrophe had befallen his people, the nation had been divided, and the government had failed. The best and brightest people were held captive in a foreign land, and the old structures that seemed so permanent and dependable had collapsed like a house of cards.
Into that brokenness, Jeremiah heard God deliver a promise: “The days are surely coming.” Not the days are over. Not you have failed, and there’s no hope. Not go back to the old ways and pretend nothing happened. God said, the days are surely coming. There’s a future that what you see around you cannot predict. There’s a hope of renewal. A new relationship with God and neighbor is on the horizon.
It’s a simple idea anchored in the living God: God is always making all things new. God speaks to people who have every reason to despair and tells them, Your present circumstances don’t get to have the last word. And we need to hear that.
Sometimes we believe faithfulness is about preserving the past or preserving what is now. We assume that if something is old, it must be sacred; if something is familiar, it must be sacred; and if something is new, it might be threatening. But Jeremiah raises another vision. God says, “I will make a new covenant.” God is not boxed in by traditions or expectations. God is not limited by our institutions or our perceived resources and abilities. God is not finished simply because one chapter has ended and we don’t yet see the next.
God’s faithfulness doesn’t mean nothing changes; it means God continues, through the changes, to lead us toward new life. Sometimes faithfulness requires change. A congregation may need to change the way it welcomes people or plans a budget or organizes its resources. A whole church may need to recognize that its practices have been corrupted and need to be reformed.
A community may need to confront an injustice or a system of injustices it has too long ignored. A family may need to break a pattern that has been passed down for generations. And individuals may need to admit that some beliefs, habits, resentments, or fears that once protected us are now keeping us from becoming the people God calls us to be.
The question is not simply, “How have we always done it, and how can we keep doing it?” The question is: “Where is God leading us now?” Our faith is full of this movement toward newness. Jesus told us not to put new wine into old wineskins. Paul wrote about our becoming a new creation in which everything old has passed away and everything has become new. Revelation imagined God saying, “See, I am making all things new.” From beginning to end, the Christian story is a story about God’s capacity to bring life out of death, to bring something new out of what appears finished.
Maybe someone here today needs to hear that personally: Your past is not the end of your story; a mistake is not the end of your story; a disappointment is not the end of your story; a broken relationship is not the end of your story; a church’s history is not the end of its story; the failures of our society or government are not the end of our story. Jeremiah heard God say, “The days are surely coming,” and with each new dawn, we have the opportunity to start over and step into a new story.
You may have heard the story of Mrs. Peterkin, who poured herself a delicious cup of coffee and then discovered she had put salt into it instead of sugar. Here was a major crisis, so a family conference was held, and the chemist, a very wise man, was called in. He put in a little chlorate of potassium, but the coffee tasted no better. He stirred in a little bichlorate of magnesia, then some tartaric acid and hypersulphate of lime. Still, it was no better.
The chemist then tried, in turn, some oxalic, cyanic, acetic, phosphoric, chloric, hyperchloric, sulphuric, boracic, silicic, nitric, formic, nitrous nitric, and carbonic acids. Mrs. Peterkin tasted each, but it still wasn’t coffee. After another round of experiments, this time by the herb lady, Elizabeth Eliza took the problem to the lady from Philadelphia, who said, “Why doesn’t your mother just pour a fresh cup of coffee?”
When life seems a bitter brew, remember God’s promise: there is hope. The days are surely coming when God’s promise will dawn upon us. It doesn’t come with a five year plan or a detailed blueprint. There’s no assurance about the results of the next election. But there is this promise: God is not finished with us. God is not finished with you or me, not finished with the church, not finished with our communities, not finished with the world.
With each new day there are new possibilities: relationships to repair, wounds to heal, injustices to confront, people waiting to discover that they belong, that they are valued, that they are loved. And there are still parts of our own hearts where God has already started making all things new. There is still another cup of coffee in the pot. Just pour it.
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