A Covenantal People

THE WORD IN LENT

Saturday, First week in Lent - March 12, 2022

Deuteronomy 26: 16-19; Matthew 5: 43-48

One of the self-identities that has come down from the earliest times of our faith, that is even from the Old Testamental times, is the fact that we are a covenantal people. What does it mean being covenantal people: it means there is a mutual pledge of fidelity between the two parties, which here are, the Lord and us. The Lord has pledged to be our God and we have pledged to be God's people. But there is one more element of a covenant - the condition of that pledge or the external sign of that pledge! In our
covenant with the Lord, it is typical love.

The love that is typical to this covenant is brought in by God, as God's very own nature, that nature in which we are called to share. It is not merely governed by a rule or a law, though it involves rules and it is a law. It is all about placing the other at the centre, placing the other before me, placing the other always in the advantageous position. It is diametrically opposed to the typical relationship promoted by the world of business and gain. 

It is not about what I gain, what I can achieve or how I can promote myself; it is about what I can give, what I can render more meaningful and how I can reach out to the other, without counting the cost or the returns. This is the typical love that is taught by God, in they way God relates to us, in the way God has revealed Godself to us, and in the way that God wishes us to live, because we are created in, and called to live by, the image and likeness God, which is love. 

There is a central reminder that is offered us, which can serve us whenever we are frustrated, whenever we are discouraged, whenever we lack the sense of our being - and it goes thus: we are a covenantal people!