The Hope of Unity - Reflections on Jeremiah 31:1-6, Easter Sunday, Year A
by John C. Holbert on Friday, January 30, 2026
Easter, 2026, will be celebrated against the backdrop of a deeply divided world community. Russia is still, after over four years, warring with Ukraine; Israel has decimated Gaza and rebuilding there will be counted in decades, not to mention the continuing suspicion and fury generated by the two years of harsh conflict; US America has made enemies of former long-time allies, rattling swords against Denmark, Greenland, Canada (!), among others. And within our own borders, the administration in Washington has attacked, and even killed, our own citizens and deported countless immigrants, some of whom were themselves US American citizens. 2025-26 has been a time of near constant conflict. The joyous sounds of “Hallelujah” will be somewhat blunted in the face of such turmoil.
Still, we will celebrate this most holy of Christian days, singing and shouting our belief that death will not have the final word in our world, but that life will triumph in the end. I know the vast majority of you will head for the Gospels of Matthew or John to ground your Easter proclamations, but I would urge you to have a look at Jeremiah 31, too, for there you will discover a context not unlike our own 2026 one, as well as an exciting response to a world riven in pieces by armed forces and deep ideological divides.
There is no way to pinpoint the exact timing behind the creation of this small lection from Jeremiah. We know that the prophet himself witnessed the end of Judah in 587BCE when the Babylonian king/general Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and herded the major leaders of the city—the king and his court—off to Babylonian exile. The prophet was taken off to Egypt, where he apparently died, though we have no final proof of that. If Jeremiah had any hand in the composition of chapter 31, it was surely written as a future hope, the hope of a unity of people that Jeremiah did not see in his lifetime. It was, of course, not uncommon for prophets in Israel to envision future events that they would never witness. They were not predicting these events, but envisioning them, believing as they did in a YHWH who would surely and finally act on the behalf of the chosen ones, and would not leave them divided and hopeless. That is the sort of vision that Jeremiah paints in chapter 31.
“At that time, says YHWH, I will be the God of all earth’s families, and they shall be my people” (Jer.31:1). This sentence is reminiscent of that crucial verse from Genesis 12, when YHWH promises Abram that his blessing, given by YHWH, will provide blessings to “all the earth’s families.” That very early promise of YHWH is made fresh again in Jeremiah’s oracle many centuries after it first was spoken. “Thus says YHWH, ‘Those who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel moved toward rest, from far away YHWH appeared to them: I have loved you with an unending love; that is why I have persisted in chesed’” (Jer.31:3). That famous Hebrew word, so consistently used as a description of the ways of YHWH, is nearly untranslatable. The NRSV’s “steadfast love” is not a bad rendering, but I rather like my own “unbreakable love,” a passionate connection that simply will never be shattered.
It is that constant love of God that lies at the very heart of the message of Easter. There is finally no death so dead that God cannot breathe life into it! And the result of that love is the ultimate unity of all things. The oracle reminds all that the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians centuries before, but now, says the prophet, vineyards will again by planted in Samaria (the capital of that now-vanished country), and sentinels will call out on the hillsides of that place, and say, “Come! Let us go to Zion (the southern kingdom of Judah), to YHWH, our God” (Jer.31:6). It is too easy to conclude that this piece was written by a southerner, demanding and predicting the unity of Israel on Judean terms. After all, Zion is the site of Jerusalem’s temple, and the place where YHWH is most likely to be found, those Judeans said. However, the essence of this passage is not to hold over former northern people the success of the southerners, who have won the right to demand that all must worship in Zion henceforth. That is not the point, precisely because there is no more Zion when the prophet presents his vision; Nebucadnezzar has made an end to it!
The point is that all peoples will once again become one people; the rift in the kingdoms, having occurred in 922BCE at the death of King Solomon, is now in the past, and all of YHWH’s people will now again be one. And so, in the face of lingering division and intense rancor, YHWH wills unity and hope. And so it is this 2026 Easter for us. In the face of our many divisions and painful rejections of one another, of our wanton and ferocious angers and our wielding of the swords against our supposed enemies, God wills shalom. It is our Easter conviction that wars will cease, that death will be vanquished, and that new life will spring up from the dust of death. Happy Easter!