Jeremiah gets right to it. “The days are surely coming…’

I know, the Scripture puts these words in God’s mouth but work with me here. Jeremiah is the messenger, and he is adamant that there is change in the air.

Enough bad news. Enough doom and gloom (for which, Jeremiah is famous across generations) It’s time for something completely different.

There is talk of covenant…and broken covenant…and a new covenant. So much talk. The people are known ‘covenant breakers.’ But God is no quitter.

The curious thing about Jeremiah is that God resolves to do better – to put law and desire and knowledge of the divine within the people – where it can do some good. We are not given a task to perform, or a formula to follow. God will do this.

And for as much as God’s desire is for the people to be completely changed by this new proposal, the key to it lies entirely with God’s own attitude. The people will do this (says God through the prophet) because I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more. The sweet notion of divine forgetfulness – what a concept. What a gift.

But what does it mean?

God will be known, and that knowledge will be liberating. That’s what Jeremiah declares will happen. And we nod and smile and point to Jesus – don’t we.

We get smug. We quote Jesus: “Here is the new covenant, sealed with my blood.” We eat and drink and raise our hands to heaven, sure that we’re on the right track.

But Jeremiah is not looking to Jesus – that’s our idea. Jeremiah calls for a renewed relationship with God – one that reimagines divine judgement and turns our thoughts towards divine, eternal love.

And that’s why we are so quick to listen when Jesus echoes these ideas, and when the various authors of the New Testament – and the ancient sages of the Christian Church declare Jesus to be the fulfillment of what the Old Testament is trying to tell us. Because Jesus is living into the ideal version of these Old Testament hopes and dreams.

So, it turns out that Jeremiah was paving the way for Jesus – and that’s cool – but Jesus is reflecting Jeremiah’s hopes to a new generation in his own, unique way…like with this strangely relatable parable.

The judge is a jerk – but that’s what happens when we put powerful people in position to make decisions about other people’s livelihood and wellbeing. Someone has to preside over the disputes that occur when power is distributed in strange ways in society.

Much is usually made of the persistence of the widow, but I don’t think that really matters. People who are hungry for justice are best if they are persistent, and that usually tells you all you need to know about the state of the world they live in. A persistent pursuit of justice suggests a distinct lack of justice in ordinary circumstances. (why else would you need to be so eager in the pursuit of justice?)

The widow is a real tiger, and the judge finally relents – and what does Jesus say?

Jesus says that God is immeasurably better than this jerk of a judge…and still people don’t acknowledge God. Will the Son of Man find faith?

Good question, Jesus.

Surely there is faith in the persistent widow. There is faith that justice exists – even though it is slow to come and doesn’t always seem to prevail. There is faith, Jesus, for many of us who keep our heads up and carry with us an expectation of joy and delight – of grace and peace – of holy hope.

But Jesus’ question raises the most unsettling idea of all – that there may be faith in the actions of this jerk of a judge. Perhaps it’s not the kind of faith we should admire – but in this self-satisfied judge there seems to be a faint glimmer of goodness. It turns out that even the worst of us knows how to do what is right.

Should we celebrate when someone does the right thing for the wrong reasons? I would argue that we should. Jesus lays out a challenge: can we look past our prejudice and see the divine presence – the knowledge of God that (Jeremiah says) will be found ‘from the greatest to the least.” Can we open our eyes to the future Jeremiah proclaimed – the future Jesus represents?

Jesus’ question should trouble us. He suggests that the time has certainly come, and we are in danger of missing it. Our judgement of one another makes it easy to ignore the persistence of God, whose grace is woven into the fabric of Creation. Our urgent cries for justice threaten to close our ears to the whispered words of change, to blind us to the glorious glimmers of hope and to the evidence of faith that are all present in the most unlikely places.

Our call to follow Jesus is a call to that kind of radical attention. The invitation to love our enemies (and all that other seemingly impossible stuff) is designed to help us see what else is really present. In the midst of the misery and muddled sense of right and wrong, God is present – grace is out and about – love is there, and Jesus dares us to see it – to celebrate it – to ‘have faith’ in a faithless world.