February 18, 2024
First Sunday of Lent (Year B)
As we begin our Lenten journey on this first Sunday of the season, we are reminded by the readings that it is a time of repentance. We see it in the Noah story where the earth and its inhabitants are cleansed by the great flood. Some see this story as a prefigurement of the repentance offered through Baptism (1Pt 3:21). We also hear about repentance from Jesus in the Gospel when, after his temptation in the desert, he travels to Galilee to begin his ministry proclaiming, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mk. 1:15).
This “time of fulfillment” which Jesus speaks about in the Gospel is another important aspect to consider as we pursue our Lenten repentance. It connects to the relationship established by God with Noah in the First Reading and culminates at the cross. It is a vital component of God’s plan of salvation for humanity – the covenant relationship between God and God’s people.
We see this covenant established with Noah in the book of Genesis (Gen. 9:8-15). Noah and his family have survived the flood along with the animals that were loaded onto the Ark forty days earlier, before the rain began. God makes a covenant with Noah, promising to never again allow a flood to devastate the earth. As a sign of this covenant God sets the rainbow in the sky promising Noah, “When the bow appears in the clouds, I will recall the covenant I have made between me and you and all living beings, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings.” (Gen. 9:15).
However, despite this intervention of God in the world with the hope that Noah and his family might return humanity to its intended state of holiness, sinfulness and the need for redemption continue to dominate. So, God turns His attention to one man, Abraham, from whom will arise the chosen nation of Israel. God now extends the Noahide covenant into a special relationship with Abraham and offers him a three-fold promise of land, nation, and blessing, revealing to Abraham that with him lies the solution to the entire human predicament (Gen. 12:1-9).
Years later, God hears the cries of bondage of the descendants of Abraham enslaved in Egypt and remembers the covenant made with Abraham (Exod. 2:11-22). By using Moses and Aaron, God delivers the people from slavery in the great liberation of the exodus from Egypt. At Mount Sinai, the Israelites are offered a special relationship with God, a reinforcement and extension of the Abrahamic covenant.
Yet, unlike the covenant established with Abraham, the Mosaic covenant comes with conditions attached. The people must now agree to a set of stipulations which will make them a holy nation worthy of residence in the Promised Land. After their agreement to the terms of the covenant, a ratification ceremony takes place where Moses sprinkles the blood of a sacrificed animal on the people saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you according to all these words.” (Exod. 12:8).
Once the Israelites become established in the Promised Land, after a series of ineffective judges, God gives in to their demand for a king. Saul is the first king anointed to the throne but because of his disobedience to the covenant, God rejects Saul as king and chooses a young shepherd, David, as his replacement.
Although not without fault, King David becomes recognized as one of the most loyal and steadfast servants of God. When David expresses the desire to build a Temple for God in Jerusalem, God tells him that it is God who will instead build a house for David. God promises to raise up an heir from David for whom he will build an everlasting dynasty and royal kingdom (2Sam. 7:1-17). The Mosaic covenant now evolves into one in which the people begin to anticipate the arrival of this chosen one, or messiah, to shepherd the nation of Israel.
Because of the permanent dynasty promised to him, every new king of Israel is hoped to be the anointed one of David’s line. However, instead of a succession of faithful, effective kings in David’s line, we find the nation of Israel fall into apostasy under a series of ineffectual and irreligious leaders. Despite the warnings of the prophets, men of God sent to Israel and their leaders, the nation now divided by civil war falls first to Assyria in the Northern Kingdom of Israel (722BC) and later to Babylon (582BC) with the destruction of both Jerusalem and the Temple in Judah. The demise of Jerusalem marks the end of independent control of the Promised Land as the lives of the chosen people drastically change forever. Now more than ever is there the hope for a savior promised by the Davidic covenant.
One prophet in particular, Jeremiah, prophecies during this pivotal time period in the nation’s history. Although Jeremiah condemns their crimes, he manages to offer a spark of hope that God will restore the prosperity of the people and return them to Jerusalem (Jer. 30:1-24). As part of this promise we see a further and perhaps the most significant development of the covenant.
This is how God describes it: “See, days are coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. They broke my covenant, though I was their master. But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days. I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” (Jer. 31:31-33).
Unlike the covenant with Moses, and later David, the “New Covenant” will not rely solely on observance of the Torah and rituals for worship. Rather, it will have an added dimension. It will be a covenant “written on the heart” of every person as a unique relationship with God. It is one which will allow each individual to have personal access to God, as well as singular culpability for their own transgressions.
There is one other time where we hear about this “New Covenant.” It happens when Jesus shares the Passover meal with his disciples at the Last Supper. He takes the cup of wine and gives it to them saying, “Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Mt. 26:27-28 cf. Mk. 14:24).
The New Covenant will now become ratified, like the Mosaic covenant, with blood. But this time it will be with the blood of Jesus shed on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. It is the way in which the promises made by God to Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jeremiah now come to fruition through the royal Messiah and Son of God.
It is the same covenant that Christians encounter and receive in the celebration of the Eucharist, through the life and person of Jesus and completed through his crucifixion and resurrection. It is the offer of a personal relationship with our Lord and Savior open to all who come to faith. And it is the culmination of God’s plan of salvation which we celebrate after our Lenten repentance on Easter Sunday, the “time of fulfillment,” proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospel.
