About 600 years before Christ, the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed:

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….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. [1]

 

This notion, of God writing the law on the hearts of the people, was revolutionary.  The Jewish religious authorities believed that the divine law had been given by God to Moses and this law was fixed for all time. It defined what was holy and acceptable and what was not. This law, as interpreted by the recognized authorities was final. There could be no challenge to it.

The Jewish leaders believed that God had given the law, called the Torah, to Moses at Mount Sinai. The Torah consisted of two parts: written and oral. The written Torah was recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures, called the five books of Moses. But in addition, there was an oral Torah, which was also binding. This too came from God and had been preserved by tradition.

The Jews took the law very seriously. After all, it was God who had dictated it. The observation of the commandments of the Torah ensured salvation.

The Jews were highly nationalistic. They believed that they were the chosen people and they looked down on non-Jews, called gentiles, whom they considered to be heathen. So Jeremiah‘s proclamation that God would write the law in men’s hearts was a radical departure from tradition. In other words, Jeremiah said the law was not what was written in the five books of Moses or even  what the religious authorities asserted to be tradition, but rather it was to be an affair of the heart, something each individual could know personally in his own heart and soul.

The Jewish priests, along with the Pharisees and the scribes, held the Jews in a terrible oppression of rituals and laws, an oppression that was even more onerous than that of Roman political rule. These legal traditions, as interpreted by the religious authorities, dictated the details of every area of both personal and social life.

So it was revolutionary when Jeremiah said, on behalf of God, “I will put my law within them and I will write it on their heats; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

Jeremiah also boldly asserted that Yahweh was not simply the God of the Hebrews, but rather the God of the entire world, of all nations and peoples. He dared to say that that God was not on the side of the Jews in their wars with other peoples. He said, “Righteous is our Lord, great in counsel and mighty in word. His eyes are open upon all the ways of all the sons of men, to give everyone according to his ways, and with the proper fruit of his deeds!”[2] 

When Jerusalem was besieged by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, Jeremiah advised that the city should be surrendered. The civil rulers and priests regarded this counsel as treason and blasphemy; they threw Jeremiah into the miry pit of a dungeon.

Six hundred years after Jeremiah was cast into the pit, another prophet arose in the land proclaiming a radical message, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus taught that “God is love,”[3] and also that “The Kingdom of God is within you.”[4]  He proclaimed that “God is your heavenly Father,”[5] and that “you are all brothers.”[6]  God’s love need not be coaxed through some ritual or sacrifice, for “The Father himself loves you.” And rather than our approaching God with “fear and trembling,” [7] Jesus assured us, “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”[8] And one enters the kingdom simply by accepting that God is his Father. “Whosoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it.”[9] More important than the specific rules of the Law of Moses were “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.”[10] And the greatest commandment is to love.[11] [Matthew 22:36-40] “Goodness flows from the fullness of the heart.” [12]

Jesus was not bound by the rules laid down by the religious authorities. He allowed his hungry disciples to pluck ears of corn from a cornfield and eat them, even though it was the Sabbath.[13] When the Pharisees saw this they complained, “Look your disciples are doing what is forbidden on the Sabbath.”[14] And when, on the Sabbath, a man with a withered hand asked for healing, Jesus healed him.[15] He said that “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”[16] When a Pharisee was surprised that Jesus did not wash before a meal, he said, “You clean the outside of the cup and plate, but inside you are full of great wickedness.”[17] They also criticized him for eating with sinners, but Jesus said, “I come not for the righteous, but for the sinners.”

And like Jeremiah, Jesus’ message was not just for the Jews but for the entire world.

So it is little wonder that Jesus’ fate was no better than that of Jeremiah. The religious authorities of his day could not tolerate one who broke the law when the spirit moved him and proclaimed that salvation was not just for the Jews, but for all. Jesus was crucified.

But, as we know, he had the last laugh. He was resurrected. And after his resurrection, he appeared to Mary Magdalene and told her, “I go to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God.”[18]