000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

146 Fifth Sunday in Lent/Year B
always harassed Israel). We easily become grumpy when faced with
detours. The Israelites trot out their standard gripes: no food, no water,
and this miserable manna (see Pentecost/Year A). The Lord sends poisonous
snakes among them as punishment, as a result of which “many
Israelites died” (v. 6). At this point, Moses prays for the people, and the
Lord instructs him: “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and
everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live” (v. 8–9).
Numbers makes a pun in “serpent of bronze” (nehash nehoshet); the
terms are closely related. The bronze serpent was later set up in the Temple.
Second Kings 18:4 says that Hezekiah “broke in pieces the bronze
serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had
made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan.” Hezekiah regarded it as in
violation of the commandment against images. That is another way to deal
with idols: say no to them.
Fifth Sunday in Lent/Year B
Jeremiah 31:31–34
This passage occurs in the part of Jeremiah that was spoken during the
exile as a Book of Consolation. The prophet looks forward to God returning
the people from exile in Babylon and to restoring the life of the community
in Palestine in every respect. Today’s text introduces the best
known concept (in Christian circles) from the book of Jeremiah, the new
covenant.
When the people return home, Jeremiah foresees God repopulating
the house of Israel (the northern part of the land) and the house of Judah
(the southern part of the land) with generous numbers of people and animals
who together can work the land and make it fruitful (Jer. 31:27).
They can count on God to keep this promise because the exile itself is witness
to the fact that God controls history (31:28).
The community has had a saying, “The parents have eaten sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge,” meaning that the effects of the
sins of one generation are passed to the next. The sins of an earlier generation
(e.g., idolatry, injustice) caused the exile, but the children of that
generation (who did not sin to the same degree) had to bear the exile as
well. However, in the new world, God will make that principle disappear.
“All shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes
shall be set on edge” (Jer. 31:29–30). Each generation will rightly suffer
the consequences of its own sin, but consequences will not be passed to