The New Covenant
Sermon 30 August The Thirteenth Sunday After Trinity
Readings: Jeremiah 15. 15-21; Romans 12. 9-end; Matthew 16. 21-end.
Theme: The New Covenant
Covenants
Covenants come in many distinct kinds. Some of them are simple agreements between two parties. They can take legal, political, and religious connotations depending on the specific situations in which they occur.
In biblical terms, a covenant describes the promise of an enduring and loving relationship between God and God’s people, which will make us fruitful. From Abraham, Noah, and Moses onwards, we are told of the ways in which God selects people and makes covenantal agreements with them. God promises to bless his people, but this comes with responsibilities on the part of the people. It is because God commits to us that the people should live in a way which bears this commitment out as Paul will announce in the second reading.
The Demands of the Covenant
In the gospel for today, Jesus sets his sights on the journey to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem. A journey which will result in his death and resurrection and redeem a pattern of broken promises with God on the part of the people that had accompanied the history of Israel. Such a pattern of infidelity begins with the first fratricide of Abel by his brother Cain and results in the punishment of the great flood and repeats in the disobedience of the Israelites to the law given to Moses on Mount Sinai that will be continually condemned by the prophets.
This pattern was one of God making a covenant with God’s people but the people continually failing to realize their commitment to the law of the covenant. In order to remedy this behaviour, God instructs the people through difficult experiences. In the context of the first reading from the prophet Jeremiah, this will mean the deportation of a group of the people from the promised land to Babylon, in which they will be deprived of their Temple, King, land, and cult.
Jeremiah himself, though experiencing suffering and hardship, is protected by the Lord because he is God’s chosen instrument to announce to the people that a new covenant will be made directly between God and Israel, and rather than the old law being written on stone tablets the new law will be written directly on people’s hearts (Jer. 31. 31-34).
This time, the law of the covenant will be personally known by everyone as it will be an immediate access to God through the heart. The reading from Jeremiah announces that though things will be difficult for Jeremiah and the people for a time, God will act in a decisive way to redeem them.
The promised redemption intimated at by Jeremiah is understood by the New Testament to be the law of the new covenant. This is the covenant which Jesus seals with the ‘new Israel’ following his Passover in Jerusalem. It will be the new Passover deliverance from the bondage to sin that will transform death into new life.
The New Covenant
This new covenant will have similarities and differences with the covenants previously made during Israel’s history. It will be similar in that it will be forged through a sacrifice. This was how covenants were sealed in the ancient Near East. They were made by a sacrifice, usually the immolation of an animal such as a lamb.
However, unlike these former covenants, this sacrifice will be directly sealed by the sacrifice of the Son of Man, Jesus the Messiah. This is why the New Testament and the Christian liturgy refers to Jesus as the “Paschal Lamb:” “The lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” This “lamb” was sacrificed to seal the new and everlasting covenant made during the Passover festival in Jerusalem.
However, the disciples do not understand this. They are still hoping that Jesus will redeem God’s people in some other way than through his paschal suffering and death. Peter even takes Jesus aside and rebukes him for suggesting that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer at the hands of the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes.
Yet, because of the infinite love that God has for us, the journey to Jerusalem will take place. Through this Passover, the burden of sin from previously broken covenants will be removed, and the new covenantal blessing of eternal life in the resurrection is offered. This will transform the wages of sin; namely, death into the very means through which Jesus will inaugurate the kingdom of those living in the life of the resurrection. It is this covenant that Paul tells us grafts gentiles into God’s chosen people as part of the ‘new Israel’ to serve all.
Covenantal Selection for Service
Our response to this new covenant should be to follow the pattern that Paul sets out in the second reading. This is one of faithful covenantal love because of the gift of the redemption that God shows both Jews and gentiles alike in Christ.
While God selects particular people, God does this in order to share with all people the message of God’s covenant. This is why the Jewish people were selected. They were not selected for preferment, because they are deserving of special treatment, they are selected so that all people may come to know the love of God’s covenant. This is the vocation of the ‘new Israel.’ It is a selection for service, so that all people may come to know the love of God’s new covenant in Christ.
Only through the personal engagement between God and God’s people through the vicissitudes of the history of Israel, do the people come to realize that. They had initially viewed their selection as one of favour. However, as the prophetic tradition proclaims and the New Testament demonstrates, God has selected Israel so that all people may come to know the one true God. The new covenant is thus one of expanding circles of inclusion and of all people coming to know that God commits to them so that they may commit to serving God and all of God’s creation, especially our sisters and brothers in the same flesh.
Yet now, following the death and resurrection of Christ which precedes the gift of the Holy Spirit, it is in the depths of our hearts that this new covenant will be written. That is how all people can recognize the truth because it lies in the new law of love that the conscience of all healthy human hearts knows to be true.
