Daily Prophets
Day 131
“In those days and at that time, declares God, the people of Israel together with the people of Judah shall come and they shall weep as they go to seek the Lord their God. They shall…come and attach themselves to God by a covenant for all times which shall never be forgotten. In those days…the iniquity of Israel shall be sought and there will be none; the sins of Judah, none shall be found, for I will pardon those who survive.”(Jeremiah 50:4,5,20).
This is Jeremiah’s prophecy regarding the fall of Babylon and the return of the Jews to Jerusalem and Judah. Now, when Babylon is captured, all the captives who are descendants of Jacob will once again come together and stay together.Their first act after this reunification is to seek God. No longer are they going to argue over who is right, no longer are they going to be seduced by false gods nor the mendacity of their leaders and priests. They are going to seek God, the God of their fathers and mothers, God who led us out of Egypt, God who brought us to Canaan, God who made a covenant with us and has kept it. This coming together with a singular purpose and as one people, one mind, one spirit causes them to weep with joy at their reunion with each other and the anticipated reunion with God.
The covenant will be new for them, it is the same Covenant that God made with us at Sinai, I believe, and the same as God promised our ancestors. The difference in these verses is that there is no more hedging on it, no more looking for loopholes, we will live life on God’s terms, not ours from this day forward. We will not forget this covenant, we will teach it to our children, we will put into action the words of the V’ahavta prayer. We will constantly remind ourselves and each other to Shema, to hear the call of God to us each and every day. We will take care of the stranger, the poor and the needy as we have been all of these and God, as well as fellow humans, has cared for us.
The “reward” for returning and re-covenanting is that we will begin with a clean slate. The last verse above is the coming together of God’s hope and our dream, to be clean and to be pardoned. God doesn’t want our shame nor does God want our blaming each other. God’s desire is for us to live together, find ways to agree to disagree when there are differing opinions and focus on our shared values, our shared dreams and our shared connections with each other and with God. God wants to pardon us so we can leave the past in the past and see today and every day as new, with the opportunity to do T’Shuvah for past errors, see our positive actions and move forward without the baggage of yesterdays weighing us down.
Rabbi Heschel teaches: “The rule of Babylon shall pass, but God’s covenant with Israel shall last forever…The climax of Jeremiah’s prophecy is the promise of a covenant which will mean not only complete forgiveness of sin, but also a complete transformation of Israel.”(The Prophets pg.129-130). I am stuck on the first sentence of Rabbi Heschel’s, we people forget the truth that history as taught us; authoritarian rulers always come to an end and God-conscious people of faith last forever. Every nation has suffered a downfall because they became fat and left God and the covenant. While we are still waiting for a complete transformation of Israel (the people not the country) we are able to experience the complete forgiveness of God and our fellow humans when we ask for it and change our ways.
In recovery, we know that we have to make a covenant with God/higher power/universe in order to stay right sized and not buy into the lies our minds tell us. We come together with others in recovery because we realize we need other people to help us seek and find God, seek and find our way out of situations that used to baffle us, seek and find our way to a truer and better version of ourselves. We know that if we forget this covenant, if we do not seek forgiveness when we miss the mark, joy when we hit the mark, forgive another(s), allow ourselves to be clean of shame and blame, we will fall off our path and become captives again. In recovery, we begin our days with prayer, meditation and commitment to live the spiritual principles God/higher power has given us one grain of sand more each day.
I know the joy of reunification, I have experienced it with family and friends. I also know the relief and joy of being forgiven and being clean and new each day. I also know the sadness of being ostracized and exiled because some people forget the covenant with God and will not accept my T’shuvah. I am blessed by God with being renewed each day and the faith God has in me (and you) to fulfill a little more of our covenant each day. I also realize God’s pushing me to grow my own sphere of influence and move from my zone of comfort to do more for people who feel like strangers in their own skin and life, for these poor and needy people who do not see their light, their brilliance and continue to be bogged down in shame and blame. I/we have to liberate ourselves from the prison of what was, what ought to be and move together to the freedom of doing what God desires and accept our being welcomed and wanted by God and each other. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark