We are a Covenant People – Deuteronomy 6:1-9; Luke 22:14-20

We are a covenant people.  What comes to your mind when you hear that statement. Do you picture a group of people around a document that everyone is signing? Do you picture a group of people gathered in a secret place making a pact with one another? Do you picture a group of people standing together and repeating words that bind them to one another in a common cause?

Each picture in one way or another describes what the word covenant means as we find it in the books of the Old and New Testament.  While there is never an actual document that is signed by all the people, their verbal assent to the tablets on which God’s ten commandments were inscribed is in effect a signing of a covenant between God and the people of Israel.   And while the commandments inscribed on stone were a visual record for the people, they could not be carried with them in their daily life.  And so, the people were commanded to write the laws and commandments and wear them as bands on their hands, as emblems on their foreheads and to put them on the doorposts of their homes.  They were to recite them to their children and remember them as they arose in the morning and when they lay down at night.  Such reminders would keep the words of the covenant ever before the people and remind each of them of their personal responsibility to the One to whom they had given their pledge of faithfulness.

Today we would think of what is called Morning Prayer and Nighttime prayers. But what is being spoken of here to the people of Israel are words that are meant to impress upon them that the relationship being forged between God and the people is not one to be taken lightly or dismissed from their everyday existence.  The very life of the people depends on their faithfulness to the covenant.  Of course, we know very well that faithfulness to the covenant is something that was anything but consistent and the life of the people and the nation reflected that inconsistency.

Remaining faithful to the vows we make in life is challenging.  Our commitment to one another in relationships of marriage, family, friendship, and employment is ever in need of our attentiveness and care. We can and are tempted to neglect the vows we make, to fracture the covenants to which we have given our assent.  Such times of temptation may seem to offer us something that we feel we are missing or something we feel is more worthy of our time and attention, but in the end it usually brings us misery and regret.  Losing our focus, fracturing the covenants we make in life with God and with one another, this is a fact of our human condition. And right from the beginning, God was more than aware that we would struggle to fulfil our side of the covenant. God knew the challenges we would face and that we would find ourselves failing at different times.  This is one of the reasons why community gatherings such as this one are so important to those of us who have chosen to be in covenant with God and with one another. These gatherings help to refocus our attention back to that decision, back to that relationship and helps to restore the balance in our lives that we can often find ourselves losing.

So here we are in this time and this place surrounded by the witnesses to the covenant we share together, a covenant that binds us to the God revealed to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to the God revealed to the prophets of old, to the kings of another time and to the disciples who followed Jesus, and to all those who through the course of history have proclaimed the words of faith: The Lord is our God; the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart.

Note that Moses says to the people: Keep them in your heart. For the people of that time, the heart was the very centre of their being. That was the place where your greatest treasure was kept. If the commandments of God, if love for God were in the heart, they would be treasured and lived from the depth of their being. If in their head, they would find their thoughts wandering and eventually new ways of thinking and seeing would creep in.

The heart is where our true self lies. As the blood that courses through our bodies is sent by the heart to enliven each part of us, so the commandments of God are to be sent to every part of our being and enliven us to be the people of God.

In Luke 22, the Last Supper that Jesus shared with the disciples is recorded. In that account we hear Jesus speaking of the sacrifice that he will make. It will demand of him his body and his blood. It will demand of him his heart and his soul. But that sacrifice will change the covenant forever.  It will no longer be just a covenant of law and commandment – even a law written on our hearts. It will now be a covenant sealed not with words but sealed with blood.  This covenant will ensure that we will never again need to worry that our weaknesses, our loss of focus, our stumbling, will cause us to lose our relationship with God.

For this is a covenant not sealed with stone but sealed with blood. It is a covenant that can be remembered each time we break bread at home or here in community. It is a covenant that can be remembered each time we raise a cup – be it wine or whatever may fill it. For this is a covenant of grace, a covenant of mercy, a covenant of love.

As we approach the table of our Lord today, let us pause to consider what God has prepared and acknowledge the covenant that has been made with us through the sacrifice of Jesus. O taste and see that the Lord is good!

AMEN