There are a lot of things in my life (and in yours) that simply happen automatically. My heat comes on and goes off automatically. My alarm clock and radio are automatic. Our weekly contribution to church is automatically taken from our checking account, as is our mortgage and the payments on our son's school loan.

There’s more! The podcasts I listen to are automatically downloaded to my computer and then to my iPod. My computers automatically back up their files and programs. Holly's car shifts gears automatically (though mine does not, and especially not my motorcycle!).

What else? Well, there are some things that that I hope happen automatically. I hope I say “please” and “thank you” automatically (or nearly automatically). I hope I kiss my wife and say “I love you”--not without thinking but, nonetheless, without prompting. I hope I pray and love God automatically--again, not without thinking but, most certainly, without prompting. And I hope I am faithful.

And that brings me to today's first reading.

We read Jeremiah 31 every year on Reformation Sunday but, I must tell you, this year I'm hearing it with new ears. You see, it sounds like God is looking forward to a time when certain things will be done automatically which once were far from automatic.

The LORD says, “The time is coming when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the old covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt. Although I was like a husband to them, they did not keep that covenant."

“Although I was like a husband to them, they did not keep that covenant.” We might like to think--we might like to hope--that faithfulness is automatic (or nearly automatic) but it is not. Believe me, I know! My own parents’ marriage broke up because of unfaithfulness. And, while God remained faithful and committed to them (“I was like a husband to them”), God’s people were not faithful in return (“they did not keep that covenant”).

So, in our reading from Jeremiah, God looks forward to a time when faithfulness will, indeed, be automatic, as automatic as the heat in my home and my weekly offerings to God. God says, “The new covenant that I will make with the people of Israel will be this: I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. None of them will have to teach a neighbor to know the LORD, because all will know me, from the least to the greatest. I will forgive their sins and I will no longer remember their wrongs. I, the LORD, have spoken.”

My friends, we believe we live in the time of this new covenant. We believe we are the people of this new covenant. So, let me ask you: there are a lot of things that are automatic in your life. Is faithfulness to God one of them?

Is God describing you in this passage? “The new covenant that I will make with the people of Israel will be this: I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. None of them will have to teach a neighbor to know the LORD, because all will know me, from the least to the greatest. I will forgive their sins and I will no longer remember their wrongs. I, the LORD, have spoken.”

what do you think? Is God’s law automatically written on your heart? Do you automatically know God’s will and--more importantly--do you automatically do it? Do you automatically know God and--more importantly--are you automatically part of God’s faithful people?

I ask these questions because we believe we live in the time of this new covenant. So, what’s going on? Where is the faithfulness--the nearly automatic faithfulness--that God looks forward to in our first reading?

I recently taught a course in the Adult Forum on the New Perspectives on Paul. One of the texts we focused on was today’s second reading from Romans. For years that passage has been a proof text that we are saved by faith and not by works.

We are saved by faith and not by works. But, the new perspective on Paul asks, whose faith saves us?

Most people--including me--have assumed (and been taught) that it’s my faith in Jesus and not my works that puts me in a saving relationship with God. And so, year after year on Reformation Sunday, we’ve read, “But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, ... the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.”

This year we did something different. This year we read that passage from a different translation, a translation that sheds a new perspective on this all-important text.

It starts out the same. “But now apart from the law the righteousness of God ... has been disclosed–-namely, [and here comes the difference:] the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe.”

We are saved by faith and not by works. But, whose faith saves us? Who is God looking forward to in that passage from Jeremiah? “None of them will have to teach a neighbor to know the LORD, because all will know me, from the least to the greatest”?

It isn’t us! It’s Jesus! “Now apart from the law the righteousness of God ... has been disclosed–-namely, the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe.” We are saved by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. It is Jesus’ faith that saves us, not our own.

Earlier, I spoke some of the things that are simply automatic in my life and in yours. The heat or the air conditioning comes on automatically. Heck, some cars automatically turn on their lights the moment you start the car or when its dusk or the windshield wipers go on.

Is Jesus’ faithfulness like that? Is Jesus’ faithfulness to God automatic like that?

Hardly! Yet sometimes we treat it that way. Sometimes we think that, because Jesus was both God and human, he had no choice--no alternative--but to be faithfully obedient to God.

The gospels describe something different. Given the same doubts, the same shortcomings and weaknesses as any of us, Jesus nonetheless remained faithful and obedient to God. Jesus gave God the human faithfulness that God had been seeking from the beginning of time.

We are saved by faith and not by works. But it is Jesus’ faith that saves us; Jesus’ faith that ushers in the new covenant announced by God.

We, in turn, are called to faithful obedience to Jesus. There are many things in life that happen automatically. Faithfulness is not one of them. It is a choice we make every moment of each and every day.
In Jesus’ name. Amen!