Jeremiah 31:27-34
October 19, 2025
The days are surely coming, says
the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with
the seed of humans and the seed of animals. And just as I have watched
over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so
I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord. In those
days they shall no longer say:
“The parents have eaten
sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
But all shall die for their own sins; the
teeth of the one who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.
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. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their
ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a
covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says
the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of
Israel after those days, says the Lord: 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. No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, “Know
the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the
greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember
their sin no more.
******************************
Let
me be very clear. Not only does this
passage from Jeremiah say this, but Jesus himself addresses the same issue: God
does not impose punishment or guilt on someone for their parents’ or
grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ sins; nor does God punish somebody by
taking it out on their children.
Yes,
there are places in the Bible where that belief is indeed expressed. Right there in Exodus, in the second of the
Ten Commandments, it says,
“I the Lord am a jealous God, punishing
children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of
those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of
those who love me and keep my commandments.” [Exodus 20:5b-6]
But what I hear there is that the Lord is 250 times
more ready to love than to condemn.
If
you want to push it even further, it isn’t even safe to say that when someone
is struck by tragedy that they have somehow brought it on themselves – unless, of
course, you are ready to say that somebody born with a disability or suffers an
injury in the cradle somehow deserves it.
Jesus certainly did not go along with that. John’s gospel tells us how
“As he walked along, he saw a man blind
from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his
parents, that he was born blind?’” [John 9:1-2]
The want to assign blame or at the very least identify
some cause for his suffering and his parents are obvious suspects.
“The parents have eaten
sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” [Jeremiah
31:29]
Jesus wouldn’t go for that, either.
Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his
parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in
him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day;
night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am
the light of the world.’ When he had said this, he spat on the ground and
made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to
him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). Then he went and
washed and came back able to see.” [John 9:3-7]
Jesus is more interested in relieving the man’s
suffering than explaining it. He’s more
determined to heal and to help than to make sense of it. Even if it takes stuff as grimy as spit and
mud, he will get his own hands dirty to do it.
Okay,
now let’s confuse matters again. Jeremiah
does speak in future tense.
“In those days they shall no longer say:
‘The parents have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
But all shall die for their own sins; the
teeth of the one who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge.”
[Jeremiah 31:29-30]
There are ways that the evils of the past reach out
and poison the present. I don’t even
have to take that as a metaphor. Toxic
waste dumps tend to encourage cancer in people living near them, even when they
were officially closed long ago. The
pollution we ourselves pour into the atmosphere will still be causing
destruction centuries from now. Broadening
the meaning, though, one sin or one injustice can open the door to cycles of
hurt and anger that turn into cycles of revenge that infect the lives of
generations. Just ask the Indians and
the Pakistanis. The day that Jeremiah
foresaw, where (and he announces it as good news)
“all shall die for their own sins”
[Jeremiah 31:30a]
still lies far off.
We bear responsibility for ourselves along, yes. But we endure the consequences of the past.
So how
are we to sort out where the line is where our responsibility begins or
ends? I’m not sure we ever could figure
that one out. A few years ago it became
at least an occasional practice to open public events with a “land
acknowledgement”. For instance, where we
now sit is on the land of the Lenni-Lenape, and that means (for some of us) recognizing
that our own direct ancestors pushed them out.
Yet other ancestors arrived here afterward, many forced out of their own
native land, with no awareness of the people here for 12,000 years previous to
their arrival. With no intention to commit
harm, they benefited from harm done by someone else. Stephanie Perdew, who is on the faculty of
Garrett-Evangelical Seminary (one of our United Methodist schools) out in
Illinois, looks at the situation and how at a community Thanksgiving service “…often
a Native American from the community is asked to give a land acknowledgement or
read a poem.” She says,
“I’ve been asked to be that person more than once,
because I’m a tribal citizen who is also a Christian minister. And more than once, I’ve declined. Inviting a Native person helps perpetuate the
myth of the first Thanksgiving, of a happy harvest meal shared between the
tribal people of the Eastern Seaboard and the settlers of the Plymouth
Colony. The Native person is invited to
participate in a performance of shared gratitude, glossing over the question of
whether the arrival of the Pilgrims was entirely innocent.”[1]
Ouch. I just
want to eat my turkey in peace and enjoy my cranberry sauce without it setting
my teeth on edge. Can’t we just talk
about reparations for slavery instead?
More
and more I can hear the wisdom in the words, “I don’t know.” Yet more and more I find myself relying on the
way that having the answers to everything is not what we are here for anyway. What sets us right with God, with the world,
and with ourselves is never going to be anything we do or some kind of magic
formula we say. It hasn’t got anything
to do with understanding or making sense of things. What sets us right is letting God love us, as
he has done in his Son, who took on our limitations himself, and as he does
when the Holy Spirit that they share reaches out to stir us up to seek righteousness
but also to know God as merciful and kind.
He is a God who says,
“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. No longer shall they teach one another or say to each other, ‘Know
the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the
greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and remember
their sin no more.” [Jeremiah 31:33b-34]
[1] Stephanie
Perdew, “A Day of Mourning Each November” (The Christian Century, vol.
142:11, November 2025), 32.
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