WRITTEN ON OUR HEARTS
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
March 20, 2021
When I was a young child and our family went to visit our
grandparents in a fairly small town, my siblings and I would spend a lot of
time playing in the little park that was near the house. At the entrance to the park there was a
quaint wooden sign, hand stenciled in calligraphy and artfully mounted on a
post. I still remember what the sign
said, word for word, just three little phrases:
“To enjoy but not destroy. To linger, but not litter. To
rest but not molest.”
In just a few charming sentiments it explained how people
were to behave themselves while in the park. It was so simple it was almost poetic. And it was really no more than common decency, and common sense. And it was all that was necessary, really.
By contrast, I recently looked up the ordinances for
behavior in the city parks in Minneapolis. There are exactly 36 of them, each carefully footnoted with reference to
specific Park Board legislation. They
too mention mostly things that fall under the heading of normal, respectful
human conduct in a shared public space, but apparently that now needs to be
officially articulated in a rule book.
It includes, for example, the outlawing of deliberately
defacing park buildings and property, or the picking and cutting of flowers and
trees, or disturbing birds’ nests, or trapping wild animals, or speaking to
others indecently, or having a dog unleashed, or firing off explosives, or even
having an ice fishing hole that’s wider than ten inches.
Presumably all those prohibitions came about because some
people actually did those things and then attempted to say that they didn’t
know it wasn’t allowed. So now they
know, or they are at least capable of knowing and responsible for knowing. Personally I have never felt it necessary to
pour over the regulations before stepping in to a city park. Like that little sign from my childhood, the
basic requirements for being a thoughtful person in public are not too hard to
understand.
And that’s something of the same sentiment that the prophet
Jeremiah is setting before us today in the first reading. The ancient Israelites had been given what
they regarded as a great gift from God when the covenant was established
through Moses and the prophets who came after him. But then the original ten commandments grew
to become a very large and burdensome code of laws-hundreds of them touching
every aspect of life. The followers of
God found it nearly impossible to keep them all-and some of them didn’t want to do so. And rules of that early
covenant were strict: God promised to
bless the people so long as they kept the law. But God would punish the people if they failed. And they failed- early and often. And God was true to his word.
It was a fair trade off, at least in theory. People would receive the rewards of their
behavior. But God was strong and just,
and the Israelites quite often were neither. The situation seemed fairly hopeless until Jeremiah arrived with good
news from God. It is news of the new
covenant, one that would lighten the load of having to know and understand each
and every one of those laws through memorizing a book. God was not doing away with the law. He was merely making it more easy to understand,
because it was no longer a list of ordinances coming from out there somewhere. It was now going to be coming from “in here”,
what he calls the “writing upon our human hearts”. It is a covenant that would require us simply
to listed to the most authentic voice in the depth of our being- that is, God,
to recognize it and to follow it. Not so
much a list of external commands any more as it is a deep and sure knowing of
what is right and just and true, and good, and faithful. Not so much a mastery of information as an
honest human encounter. ‘All, from least
to greatest, shall know me, says the Lord.”
But that isn’t the only good news here. Jeremiah goes on to assure the people that
God will be a forgiver, even when the Israelites fail to uphold their
end of the covenant agreement. No more “quid
pro quo”, no more strictly allocating rewards and punishments in response to
human behavior. The scales are now
tipped toward mercy rather than toward balancing accounts payable, at least for
those who seek & ask for mercy.
And there is even better news for the gentiles-that is almost
all of us, as Jesus teaches us in the gospel today. The gentiles are those who had never been
Jews as part of their Christian journey, and therefore would never have come to
know all the conscriptions of the original covenant of Moses. Now they don’t have to, they must instead
probe for the word of God written on their hearts. John’s gospel tells us that the people who
were wishing to see Jesus were Greeks-which is to say gentiles or gentile
converts, and Jesus tells them “My father will honor whoever serves me,” Jews
or Greeks, slaves or Free, male or female.”
The task of any follower is honestly to discern what that
writing on the heart is calling us to be and to do, and very often it is a call
simply to be people of virtue, of common decency and even of common sense. God’s word never asks us to become something
other than the most excellent human beings that we are summoned to be. Jesus himself showed us that when he was here
with us “in the flesh” (as Hebrews says it). He not only revealed what God looks like when he becomes human, but also
what humans look like when they get closer and closer to God.
So this “writing on the heart” is not merely a feeling we
have, but an awakening to what we are summoned to be. It’s not hard to discover, but it’s not easy
to carry out…especially because it involves suffering. Jesus showed us that too. It must. No true divine writing on the heart spares us from necessary
self-sacrifice which is why it cannot be discovered alone. We don’t need a ton of rules in order to do
it. We just need to keep our eyes fixed
on our Lord.
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