Cutting a Covenant

The key to understanding the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament lies in the word “covenant.”  All of the characters, all of the stories, all of the prophecies, all of the various pieces of wisdom are founded upon the notion of covenant.

The very first covenant that God initiated appears in the story of Noah and the ark.  After the flood, God sets a bow in the sky and promises that never again will the earth and its inhabitants be completely destroyed.  That covenant, coming as it does before the figure of Abraham, was a covenant made between God and all of the people of the earth.  The symbol of this covenant is a bow.  While most of us have come to believe that it is a “rainbow” that God has caused to appear in the sky, it could also be interpreted to be the bow that we know of as a weapon of war.  God hangs up a bow as if to say that never again will God and the people of the earth be at war.

In today’s first reading, we read of the second covenant that God initiated.  This time the covenant is made between God and Abram (Abraham), a covenant between God and the people of Israel.  The symbol of this covenant is the stars of the sky.  God promises that if Abram is faithful to the covenant, his descendants shall outnumber the stars.  Using an ancient covenant formula, Abram slaughters a heifer, a goat, a ram, a dove, and a pigeon.  God and Abram walk a path between the slaughtered animals, thereby saying, “May this be my fate if I forsake this covenant.” 

While the slaughter of animals may make us a bit uncomfortable, this covenant points to a future covenant which will be founded upon the slaughtered flesh of God’s own Son, executed by being hung on a cross.  Substituting human flesh for animal flesh, God enters into a covenant with us through the death and resurrection of Jesus, identified as God’s beloved Son in the Gospel reading today.  Just as Abram and God were signifying the seriousness of their covenant by the slaughter of innocent animals, the final covenant made between God and all of humanity is sealed in the slaughter of his innocent Son.

The covenant of Abram and God is not the final covenant of the Hebrew Scriptures, and the covenants of the Hebrew Scriptures.  God will make yet another covenant with the children of Israel at Sinai after the Exodus and the escape through the Red Sea.  However, like the two covenants that precede it, the covenant of Sinai will also prove inadequate.  It is the final covenant of the Christian Scriptures, the New Covenant in Jesus, which will save us from the slavery of sin and will redeem us so that we can live for all eternity in the presence of God.  God’s promise continues to this day as we approach the annual celebration of that covenant sealed by our baptismal promises.  God will not forsake us.  God remains faithful to the Covenant even though we may stray from its path.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator