This week’s Old Testament Lectionary is Jeremiah 31:31-34.

This week we witnessed hope. Thousands of young people walked out of classes in protest against the epidemic of gun violence that plagues our nation. Their voices emerged in the wake of the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, erupting from a group of teenagers who dared to speak the unflinching truth and spreading throughout the nation, from high schools, to elementary schools, to colleges.

These young people have shattered a national malaise of hopeless despair with a vision that the world could, in fact, be different. For too long the situation has seemed impossible. The NRA has seemed too powerful. Legislators have seemed more interested in reelection than the sanctity of life. When not even the deaths of 20 elementary children in Newtown could move the government to act, many of us lost hope. We resigned ourselves to a world in which gun violence would be the norm.

And yet this week, there was hope. Young people became our prophets, pointing us to the possibility of a better world.

Hope in a Time of Despair

This moment of hope resonates with the words of the prophet Jeremiah, who also held forth a vision of a renewal. In a time when all hope was lost, Jeremiah pointed the way to a future in which justice would prevail among the people.

Like the youth of today, the prophet Jeremiah wrote in a time of desperation, when the future of his people was very much in doubt. He wrote in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The city was decimated by violence. Many of the elites had been killed or taken into exile in Babylon. The temple lay in ruins. The promises of God seemed to have failed.

Into that despairing world, the prophet Jeremiah dared to speak a word of hope—a word that yet resonates during our own uncertain times. He envisioned a new world taking shape out of the old, instigated by the relentless fidelity of God.

The Relentless Fidelity of God

In Jeremiah 31:31-34, the prophet reports God’s words to the people. Four times in the passage he repeats the phrase ne’um YHWH , which means “a declaration of Yahweh.” While the NRSV translates the phrase as “says the LORD,” the Hebrew phrase conveys a greater degree of confidence. The word ne’um refers to a declarations that can only be made by God—the word is never used of humans in the Bible. Further, he speaks using the proper name of God, Yahweh.

This is the biblical equivalent of God saying, “My name is Yahweh and I approve this message.” Even though the situation appears hopeless, Jeremiah reports that God has committed the divine Self to restoring the people. Change is coming, Jeremiah insists. You can believe it.

In 31:31, God announces a new covenant, using artistically crafted in language. In the Hebrew word order, the declaration reads,

I will make

with the house of Israel

and with the house of Judah

a new covenant.

God’s action initiates this new covenant, and God’s action consummates it. “I will make…a new covenant.” These words surround the houses of Israel and Judah, enfolding them in a covenant that is God’s action alone. While the people may not be able to see a future for themselves, God sweeps them into a new future made possible only by God’s unfettered grace.

A Community of Justice

To fashion this new future, God declares, “I will put my law (torati) within them. I will write it on their hearts” (33:33). While the NRSV translates torati as “my law,” it really means “my Torah.” The term refers not to a legal code, per se, but to a way of life embodied in the Torah—the five books of Moses. While God declares a new covenant, its essence emerges from old, old Torah of God, revealed to Moses at Sinai.

That Torah envisions a community in which the care of the most vulnerable takes precedence over corporate profit margins (Lev 19:9-10). That Torah establishes a society in which the courts treat people justly (Lev 19:15). That Torah requires that all debts be forgiven so that no one falls into the trap of generational poverty (Deut 15:1-6). That Torah insists that immigrants must be treated with respect (Lev 19:33-34) and that everyone must love their neighbor as they love themselves (Lev 19:18). That Torah demands that all land be periodically returned to its original owner so that no one can accumulate property while their neighbors become homeless (Lev 25:8-18). The renewed community, grounded in God’s Torah, is to be a community of justice.

Written on Their Hearts

What distinguishes the new covenant envisioned by Jeremiah from the old covenant delivered at Sinai concerns God’s role in fulfilling the covenant. Before, God had inscribed the covenant on tablets, and the people had sworn to observe it. Now God declares that

I will put my Torah within them, and
I will write it on their hearts, and
I will be their God, and
They will be my people (31:33)

All of the action in this verse again belongs to God. God puts the Torah within people, God writes it on their hearts, God becomes their God. Only after these divine actions does the verse shift focus to the people, and then only to declare that “they will be my people.” In this new covenant, God moves toward the people and makes them God’s own.

God claims the people by placing the Torah in their hearts and in their minds. This new covenant will not take the form of a written legal code. Rather, God will give the people an innate capacity to live out the justice and righteousness that that the Torah demands. The people will do justice and love kindness as second nature, because it has been inscribed upon their hearts.

As a result, it will no longer be necessary for people to teach one another the law or to insist that another person should “Know the LORD” (31:34). Rather, God says, “they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.”

As Jose Miranda has shown, for Jeremiah this “knowledge of God” means something more than an abstract religious affirmation or confession of faith. Elsewhere, Jeremiah describes knowing God this way:

Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages; who says, “I will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms,” and who cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar, and painting it with vermilion. Are you a king because you compete in cedar?

Did not your father eat and drink and do justice righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy, then it was well. Is not this to know me? says the LORD. (Jeremiah 22:13-16)

For Jeremiah, knowing God means judging the cause of the poor and needy. Knowing God means prioritizing the well-being of the oppressed and downtrodden over enriching oneself. Knowing God means making sure everyone is housed before anyone expands their upper room. It means paying people fair wages rather than exploiting their labor. It means living in solidarity with the poor, not seeking the company of kings.

The community of this new covenant will share these values of justice and righteousness “from the least of them to the greatest” (31:34). Jeremiah envisions a people bound together by a commitment that all people should be treated with human dignity and respect. It isn’t that all distinctions will be eliminated—there will still be “least and greatest”—but there will be justice and dignity for all.

Hope for a New World

For the people of Jeremiah’s day, these promises must have sounded impossible. The people were exiled, the city in ruins. The world seemed broken. Yet Jeremiah dared to proclaim a covenant renewed, a world revived, a future resurrected. In the midst of a broken world, Jeremiah declared God’s endless fidelity, which brings forth life in the midst of death and despair.

So, too, have the young people of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School—and young people from nearly 3,000 schools that participated in National Walkout Day—shown us that a new future is possible. A future without gun violence. A future in which children don’t have to fear for their lives when they walk in the doors of their schools or walk out the doors of their houses. They have shown us a vision of a future in which we are no longer beholden to special interests like the NRA but in which the care of the most vulnerable becomes our most important value.

In a world shrouded in death, these young people have called forth life. While theirs is not a religious movement, it nonetheless calls forth the possibility and power of resurrection. To a culture enthralled by death and paralyzed by fear, they have dared to proclaim that a new life is possible.

What more important word is there for the church in the season of Lent? We linger in this season of repentance, anticipating the victory of Christ over the grave. We proclaim the victory of life over death. We declare that the power of unceasing love overcomes every apparatus of death, whether the cross or the AR-15. Whenever death seems to have won the day, our task is to join our voices with those who yet have the audacity to point to the possibility of new life.

Never again! He is risen indeed!