the human life and death of Jesus. The way God does what we cannot and will not do is to come himself as one of us, and keep both sides of the promise himself. Hebrews and John both make clear that the undertone of anger and pain in Jeremiah’s words of comfort is a proper echo. Hebrews’s picture of Jesus crying and begging is hard for us to face, but it is the inevitable cost of the failure that Jeremiah highlights. Today’s passage from John follows directly on from the triumphant entry into Jerusalem.