Covenant People
The OT lesson emphasizes God’s Covenant with Abraham, and hence to us, his descendants. God’s promise to Abraham and to his chosen people invests them with a sacred responsibility. Our understanding of Covenant changes over time. M. Scott Peck in his book, A World Waiting to be Born, traces the changing concept of Covenant through the Bible itself, from God’s promise to Noah after the flood never again to destroy the world, to the Ten Commandments for his chosen people, to the New Covenant offered by Christ and preached by St. Paul, not restricted to a specific group now but open to all people. Even Jesus, in his confrontation with the so-called “uppity woman” at the well, came to realize that God’s mercy and compassion were available not just to the people of Israel, but to all those who truly trust in God. Thomas Berry in his book Dream of the Earth explains how mankind’s misunderstanding of the covenant relationship, seeing our species as special and superior over the rest of creation, has led to our negative attitudes to nature, leading us to exploit and subdue the earth in the mistaken notion that we were exercising God’s will, building God’s kingdom by forcing nature into our own image. The consequence of our misunderstanding was “to negate the natural world as the locus for meeting with the divine.”
“We don’t think ourselves into a new way of living; we live ourselves into a new way of thinking.” — Richard Rohr
Berry’s comment reminds us that the Bible portrays the Divine within natural images: God meets Her people in the wilderness, at a mountain; God speaks to them “from a cloud”; God confronts Moses in the form of a “bush burning but not consumed,” at one and the same time, earthly and holy. Creation is God’s first incarnation. All life is holy. All creation is divine. As fish swim in the sea, so we live and move and have our being in the Divine. If the human species dies out on this planet, it will not be God the Creator destroying humankind as in the story of the great flood, but rather mankind not assuming attitudes consistent with God’s true covenant. God is as faithful and true as the sun that rises every morning. If we are to save the environment, it is necessary to change our attitudes, and such changes are profound, reaching to our fundamental spirituality.
What is very important to understand about this covenant is that we cannot separate worship of God from the divine way of life. To quote Richard Rohr, “We don’t think ourselves into a new way of living; we live ourselves into a new way of thinking.” We know God by engaging in divine activity. Christianity traditionally understands God as a personal God and like any person the Creator has divine attributes which we can recognize: “where love is, God is.” Many Biblical passages make it clear that we know God if we live in love. To be God’s covenanted people we must act as mediators of the divine to the world by our attitudes and actions: “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Following the way of the cross, knowing God and knowing the divine way, are one and the same covenant.
Perhaps the best way to get a handle on just what it means to be the people of the Covenant in 2022, we could recycle and reuse Paul’s words from the epistle today: “setting your mind on earthly things.” In light of the environmental crisis facing us, it is necessary for us to “set our minds on earthly things.” Humus is the Latin word for earth. Humanity comes from earth (“dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return”). Humility is being close to the earth, hence, earthiness, honesty. In other words, we must see the earth with Divine eyes and realize it is precious in God’s sight. To fulfill our covenant with God, we need to care for Creation, not subdue it or “have dominion over it,” but love it. “For God so loved the world that he gave . . . life.” Rev. Lauren Van Ham wrote recently, “Unfathomable harm has come from misinterpretations of scripture . . . which never meant that our species had God’s blessing to use our power over other forms of life, but rather to take full responsibility for the power we have been given, to use the privilege we hold as humans, to care for all Creation and to develop intimacy with all beings.” To be God’s covenanted people is to live Christ’s way of selfless love so that others might live abundantly, including the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, indeed, the very sea and air which bring forth life.