Jeremiah 36:1-8, 21-23, 27-28; 31:31-34, CEB
“1 In the fourth year of Judah’s King Jehoiakim, Josiah’s son, this word came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 Take a scroll and write in it all the words I have spoken to you concerning Israel, Judah, and all the nations from the time of Josiah until today. 3 Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about every disaster I intend to bring upon them, they will turn from their evil ways, and I will forgive their wrongdoing and sins. 4 So Jeremiah sent for Baruch, Neriah’s son. As Jeremiah dictated all the words that the Lord had spoken to him, Baruch wrote them in the scroll. 5 Then Jeremiah told Baruch, “I’m confined here and can’t go to the Lord’s temple. 6 So you go to the temple on the next day of fasting, and read the Lord’s words from the scroll that I have dictated to you. Read them so that all the people in the temple can hear them, as well as all the Judeans who have come from their towns. 7 If they turn from their evil ways, perhaps the Lord will hear their prayers. The Lord has threatened them with fierce anger.” 8 Baruch, Neriah’s son, did everything the prophet Jeremiah instructed him: he read all the Lord’s words from the scroll in the temple.
“21 The king sent Jehudi to take the scroll, and he retrieved it from the room of Elishama the scribe. Then Jehudi read it to the king and all his royal officials who were standing next to the king. 22 Now it was the ninth month, and the king was staying in the winterized part of the palace with the firepot burning near him. 23 And whenever Jehudi read three or four columns of the scroll, the king would cut them off with a scribe’s knife and throw them into the firepot until the whole scroll was burned up.
“27 The Lord’s word came to Jeremiah after the king had burned the scroll containing the words written by Baruch at Jeremiah’s dictation: 28 Get another scroll and write in it all the words that were in the first scroll that Judah’s King Jehoiakim burned.
“31 The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. 32 It won’t be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant with me even though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 No, this is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my Instructions within them and engrave them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 They will no longer need to teach each other to say, “Know the Lord!” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord; for I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sins.”
God's Patchwork of Grace
Have you ever tried to delete your past? Maybe you’ve purged old social media posts, shredded embarrassing photos, or desperately wished you could unsend that angry email. As we gather just days before Thanksgiving, maybe you are dreading certain conversations around the holiday table, wishing we could erase past hurts or start fresh. An ancient king once thought he could delete God’s message by burning a scroll. But what he discovered – and what we’ll explore today – is that God specializes in taking our attempts at deletion and turning them into opportunities for new creation.
Picture ancient Jerusalem: a prophet hunched over scrolls, carefully recording God’s words. These weren’t just any words – they were living messages of hope during one of Israel’s darkest chapters. When King Jehoiakim burned these sacred scrolls, he didn’t realize he was part of a larger story. God simply told Jeremiah to write it again. Like a quilter who creates something new from worn fabric, God was stitching together a fresh beginning. This moment points toward an even greater renewal: the new covenant fulfilled in Jesus, where God’s word would no longer live on scrolls but in human hearts. Today, as we explore Jeremiah’s story, listen for how God might be writing new chapters in your own life.
Over these past weeks, we’ve witnessed a beautiful pattern emerging in scripture. Two weeks ago, through Jonah, we saw God’s boundless generosity extending even to Nineveh, despite Jonah’s initial reluctance. Last Sunday, we encountered Isaiah’s transformative moment in God’s presence, where like a carefully chosen piece of fabric, he was selected for divine purpose.
Today, Jeremiah shows us yet another facet of God’s persistent love. While Jonah ran from God’s call and Isaiah eagerly responded, Jeremiah faced fierce opposition to God’s message. Yet in each story, God’s grace prevails. The burned scrolls, like Jonah’s resistance and Isaiah’s unworthiness, couldn’t thwart God’s plans. Instead, these apparent setbacks became opportunities for God to demonstrate an even greater truth – that divine love persists, finding new ways to reach human hearts. This pattern culminates in God’s promise to stitch divine law directly into our hearts, creating an unbreakable bond of love.
As we encounter this text, remember that the year is 605 BCE, and Jerusalem teeters on the brink of catastrophe. King Jehoiakim, a puppet of Egypt, leads Judah in rebellion against Babylon – a decision that will prove disastrous. In this crucible of political tension and spiritual crisis, God commands Jeremiah to create a written record of divine warnings and promises. Like a master quilter marking patterns before the first cut, each prophetic word carries purpose and significance.
The passage unfolds in two distinct panels. The first narrative shows Jeremiah’s obedience in recording God’s words and the king’s defiant response. Jehoiakim’s act of burning the scroll, piece by piece, symbolizes his systematic rejection of God’s message. Yet just as a quilter can create beauty from scattered scraps, God instructs Jeremiah to write again, adding even more to the original message. This defiance-and-restoration pattern appears throughout Jeremiah’s ministry, foreshadowing the book’s larger themes of judgment and hope.
The second panel, written years later, reveals God’s ultimate response to human stubbornness – the promise of a new covenant. This isn’t just a patch over the old one; it’s a complete transformation. The image of God writing directly on human hearts echoes earlier covenant language while introducing a radical intimacy in the divine-human relationship. This promise finds resonance in Ezekiel’s vision of new hearts and reaches its fulfillment in Christ’s words at the Last Supper: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.”
The passage’s power lies in its revelation of God’s persistent love. Despite human resistance, symbolized by the burning scroll, God’s word proves indestructible. Like a determined quilter who sees possibility in every scrap, God takes our acts of rebellion and transforms them into opportunities for deeper relationship. This text stands as a testament to divine patience and the unstoppable nature of God’s redemptive purpose.
Think about that moment when you delete an important text message in anger, only to wish you could take it back. Or perhaps you’ve watched your child tear up a drawing that didn’t meet their perfectionist standards. Maybe you’ve even experienced the heartbreak of losing years of work when your computer crashes without a backup. These modern moments echo Jehoiakim’s burning of God’s words, revealing how human frustration can lead us to destroy something valuable.
But God’s response to the burned scroll speaks directly to our experiences today. Just as a grandmother teaches her granddaughter to mend a torn quilt, adding strength to weak spots and beauty to worn places, God takes our moments of resistance and transforms them into opportunities for growth. When that student faces rejection from their dream school, God writes a new chapter. When that busy professional feels their carefully laid career plans crumbling, God’s promises remain unchangeable.
The beauty of God’s new covenant isn’t just that it’s permanent – it’s personal. Instead of rules written in textbooks or saved in cloud storage, God promises to write divine love directly on our hearts. Think about the difference between memorizing your passwords and remembering your grandmother’s recipe for chocolate chip cookies. One is information you store; the other is knowledge that becomes part of who you are. That’s what God offers: not just information about divine love, but a relationship so deep it transforms our very being. In our world of deleted texts and crashed hard drives, God’s promise of an unbreakable connection speaks profound hope into our lives.
The good news is that God never runs out of fabric for new beginnings. Just as Jeremiah’s scroll was rewritten with even more words of hope, Jesus Christ embodies God’s ultimate message of love – one that can’t be destroyed, deleted, or diminished. Through Jesus, we see the fulfillment of God’s promise to write divine law on human hearts. Every time we share communion, we celebrate this new covenant, sealed not with ink but with Christ’s own life.
When Jesus sat with his disciples, breaking bread and sharing wine, he didn’t hand them a scroll of rules to memorize. Instead, he gave them his very presence, transforming their hearts from the inside out. This same transformative love is available to us today. The master quilter’s greatest work wasn’t meant to hang on a wall but to wrap around our lives, warming us with divine grace and inspiring us to extend that warmth to others.
This week, I invite you to live into this good news in three specific ways. First, take five minutes each morning to sit quietly with God, allowing divine love to write new patterns of grace in your heart. Second, identify one relationship that needs mending and take a step toward reconciliation, remembering how God persistently rewrites our story. Third, support our quilting or sewing ministry – whether by purchasing a quilt, learning to quilt, knit or crochet, or simply praying for those who will be wrapped in these tangible expressions of God’s love.
God’s word isn’t meant to stay locked in ancient scrolls or even in modern Bibles. It’s meant to be written on our hearts and lived out in our communities. When we allow God’s love to transform us from the inside out, we become living testaments to the power of divine grace, piecing together a legacy of faith that will warm generations to come.
God’s love can’t be deleted, destroyed, or diminished. Not by burning scrolls, not by crashed computers, not even by our own resistance. As we prepare to gather around Thanksgiving tables this week, remember that God is constantly writing new chapters in our story. The divine quilter takes our scattered pieces – our mistakes, our hurts, our attempts to start over – and stitches them into something beautiful. Your life is part of this greater pattern, this endless story of grace. The question isn’t whether God is writing – it’s whether we’re ready to turn the page.
Will you pray with me?
Divine Author, write your story of grace in our hearts this week. As we gather with family and friends, help us share your undiminished love through words and actions that can’t be erased. Amen.
