Our reading today from the prophet Jeremiah is one in which the Hebrew people, not knowing what else to do in terms of addressing their predicament, decide to blame it all on God. They believed their problems to be the result of their sins and the sins of their fathers. Of course, one person's sin does indeed affect other people, but all people are still held personally accountable for the sin in their own lives (Deuteronomy 24:16; Ezekiel 18:2).

This theme would later be taken up in the New Testament as the writers of the gospels brought forth a new idea that a person's sin, whatever that sin may have been, could and would be forgiven in and through Jesus Christ, who became the ultimate expression of a new covenant for us all.

The Hebrew people found themselves, once again, in an untena…