It might have been early in your schooling years when you first learned the alphabet, the Pledge of Allegiance, the multiplication tables, the Gettysburg Address, or any of a number of Robert Frost poems like “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” or “The Road Less Traveled”... Many of us grew up and learned things “by heart” in school...

Or perhaps you can recall those things you learned “by heart” at home with your family - nursery rhymes, a bedtime lullaby or a special grace before the meal at the family dinner table...

Perhaps you can recall learning “by heart” certain prayers, hymns, or biblical verses at church or at church school - the Lord’s prayer, the 23rd Psalm, the Doxology or those hymns that we learned (almost by osmosis really) - hymns whose words we remember down through the years - whether we’ve sung them recently or not... Do you ever wonder how many things we know “by heart?”

We use that term “by heart” to indicate things we learned by rote - by repeating them over and over again - until they become so deeply ingrained in us that they truly do become part of us, part of us deep within somewhere, so deep within us that we might even say they get written on our hearts ...

The prophet Jeremiah invites us to ponder what it might mean to have a covenant written on our heart - a covenant with God that would go with us everywhere and always… a covenant that could never be lost or stolen… a covenant that could never be forgotten or misplaced… a covenant that would be within us and a part of us through all time...

Jeremiah reminds us that over and over again through history God offered a variety of covenants to God’s people … Sometimes those covenants got forgotten… Sometimes those covenants were sorely neglected… Sometimes those covenants just didn’t seem to hold people faithful to God – and it wasn’t God who forgot these covenants… It was the people who forgot God…

Jeremiah reminds us that it is up to us to repent – to turn around & return to God… It is up to us to strengthen and renew our relationship with God… God is always there waiting for us… We are the ones who need to return to God... Jeremiah suggests that God wants to write a covenant on each of our hearts so that we might just remember our relationship with God and keep faith with that covenant forever! Have you even thought of your faith as a gift from God? Have you ever considered that God has somehow perhaps already written something indelibly on your heart?

As I mentioned in my introduction the Hebrew people did believe that the heart was the center of the will, the intellect, & the spirit. In Jeremiah’s time, some 600 years before the birth of Christ, the heart was the center of human life & the place where our spirit resides… Even knowing as much about the human body as we know here in the 21st century we still get that the human heart is a most powerful and vital organ in the human body… I bet if we polled this congregation and asked each of you – where does our spirit reside? – many of us would point to our hearts rather than our heads…

Jeremiah wanted folks to understand that God could transform human beings at the very core of our being... God did offer us a way for us to know God by offering us his son, in human form… With the arrival of Jesus Christ, God did offer us a new covenant. With Jesus - God gifted us a new covenant…

With Jesus God gifted us a human being who lived among us & who experienced life as we do, yet a human being who ultimately would not ever be broken or ultimately destroyed… Jesus is the new covenant, the one who connects with us - deep within – so that we might never again forget our connection with God…

During the six weeks of the Lenten season we often use the language of the Psalms which invite us to open up our hearts! During Lent we often suggest folks take time to do some spring cleaning of our faith! During Lent we are often reminded to repent & return to God… to refocus our faith… as we move along our faith journeys… as we move with Jesus toward Jerusalem…

And today we hear Jesus himself remind us that without losing his life he cannot bring about the new covenant that God offers us... Jesus knew his death was necessary for God to bring about a new covenant with us, God’s people.

Jesus is quite clear when he uses the grain of wheat metaphor: Like a wheat seed falling to earth and dying in order to bear fruit, so too he would need to willingly let go of his life to manifest God’s love… Jesus was not seeking to glorify himself... Rather Jesus was seeking to glorify God… That’s what we mean when we say that Jesus’ passion became a manifestation of God’s character...

Today on this fifth Sunday of Lent we draw closer and closer to the events of Holy Week...

Next Sunday will be Palm Sunday, the entry way into Holy Week, the doorway into the events of Jesus’ last days on this earth...

We hear Jesus struggle to remain obedient to God in spite of his own misgivings and his troubled soul… Yet Jesus trusted that God’s faithfulness would in the end lift him up - both onto the cross and beyond the cross... Jesus seems to understand that by willingly giving up his life on a cross and willingly allowing himself to be lifted up onto a cross… that he will be lifted beyond the cross to a new and everlasting unity with God…

Today we are confronted by one of the strange paradoxes of our faith: that we are each brought to new life by Jesus’ death on a cross... I know I struggle to make sense of the strange paradox that God’s son came to this earth - to live among us and to die on a cross for us - so that we might be gifted the promise of eternal life… I struggle to understand that Jesus’ heart was indeed God’s heart…

Today we are pulled closer and closer to the inevitable events of Holy Week. We may wish we didn’t have to go there at all…

The events that we remember in the next few weeks remind us that renewal is costly… Jesus knew that until that metaphorical grain of wheat fell to the earth that it could not produce something new... And one of the questions for each of us as we move along our own faith journeys is: what must die in our lives for something new to be reborn?

Any gardener knows without a doubt that old growth has to be pruned away so that new growth and new life can emerge – right? ... What is the old growth in each of us that needs to be pruned away so that something new can happen? What will it take to renew our hearts in this springtime of 2009, here in Rocky Hill, CT? What hard choices do we each need to make in our lives that will let God to put a new and right spirit within us? What must each of us do to renew and refocus our lives for the living of these days?

As a congregation, as Rocky Hill Congregational Church United Church of Christ, as we begin an important time of transition together, what do we need to do to make room for something new to grow here? In this time between settled pastors here at this church and as we together move into a new future – what must we let go of & what must we let die so that something new can be born here?...

This intentional time of transition, what we call interim time for this church, does offer some unique opportunities for spring pruning… for renewal… for growth… for change… Times of great change are not something that most of us usually intentionally seek out… Even Jesus admitted to his own misgivings and his “troubled soul” as he faced into the challenges that he knew were to come… Jesus also knew that sometimes the time is right for certain things to happen and Jesus trusted that God was with him every step of the way… As we all know from the challenges that life has offered each of us: sometimes our darkest hour can give way to new hope…

Sometimes walking through the pain, the suffering, and the changes does bring us to a place of new opportunity and a “change of heart” full of hope and promise... I am privileged to walk with you during this interim time and to help you prepare the soil of this Body of Christ, this church, for the future and all it holds...

The story of our Christian faith reminds us that we draw our strength from knowing that out of trials, pain, suffering, & change often comes great promise, new life & new beginnings...

In the coming days we prepare to stand before the cross of Jesus Christ again...

In the coming days we gather together to remember and connect the events of Jesus’ final days & his death on a cross for us to our lives...

We will continue to struggle together with the paradox that by his death Jesus brought us new life...

Let us continue our journey together… toward Jerusalem.

Let us continue our journey together… and invite God to write on our hearts the Good News of the risen Christ…

Let us listen carefully for where God calls us to go - as individuals and as a congregation - as we move into the future together...

Let us keep our hearts open to God’s Spirit that moves amongst us always... Amen