52. COVENANT
Get out of your country
1. - The great biblical experiences show God´s way of doing things, his action in the midst of history. The Council puts it out: “God revealed himself to his people, with deeds and words, as a living and true God. In this manner, Israel experimented God´s way of doing things” (DV 14). This is also valid today, since “This applies also today, for whatever is written, was written for our instruction (Rom15, 4). Besides, the great biblical experiences lead to the encounter with Christ. They give testimony of Him. Jesus said to the Jews: “You search the Scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them: they, of course, testify on my behalf” (Jn 5, 39).2. – In the general frame of a disperse humanity (Gn 3 – 11) we approach the origins of Israel (12 – 50). An emigration is the beginning of an immense adventure, not only of the people elected by God, but also of all those who sit in Abraham’s, Isaac´s and Jacob’s table (Mt 8, 11). When Abraham comes out from Ur of Caldea a new religion is born, the religion of the Covenant. Man finds himself in relationship with God, in dialogue with him, he listens (at last!) the noise of God´s steps by this world’s garden (Gn 3, 8). This fundamental biblical experience is expressed with the ordinary formula of the Covenant: God “is with us” (Ex 3, 14; Mt 28, 20).
3. – Under the Covenant situation, Abraham experiments God´s action in history. God assumes his destiny: “Get out of your land and go to the grounds I will show you” (Gn 12, 1), Abraham leaves his roots, which come from Babel’s disperse humanity, Babylonia’s Hebrew name (Gn 11). He overcomes the radical temptation: “you will be like gods”, with its impact over the family, the work, the death (Gn 3). Abraham listens God´s word and leaves his land, his people, his clan. He gives up the safety that all of these offer, but his exit means liberation. A brand new people start up through him, which is born from God´s hands. Like at the beginning.
4. – Abraham’s figure (towards 1800 b. C.) belongs to the frame of a known history, His name, his movements, his habits, his way of living, are placed in the context of the Aramean ´s migrations from Mesopotamia, Babel’s land. Abraham follows the route of the caravans looking for pasture for their flocks. They are nomads. Perhaps they would like to settle in farming grounds. They cannot write or read, but they pass on familiar experiences from sons to grandsons. The narrations are easy to remember, since they are related to places that the caravans find during their displacements: the oak wood, the mount, the well, the steppe
5. – Abraham’s tradition gathers diverse experiences. This, for instance: Abraham and his nephew Lot, since their flocks have increased, have problems of space and problems of relationship, up to be oblige to part: “Don’t let there be a dispute between you and me, nor between my herdsmen and yours, since we are brothers. Isn’t the whole land there before you? Let us part company. If you go to the left, I will go to the right; if you go to the right, I will go to the left” (Gn 13, 8 – 9). Abraham gives Lot the opportunity to choose the zone he prefers. Lot takes with the (apparently) better zone, Jordan’s river meadow, Sodoma ´s land, fertile like God´s garden. Abraham takes the land that he did not choose, but that God chose for him. By the way, are we in the land that God chose for us?
6. – The meeting among Abraham and Melquisedec has a deep religious meaning of ecumenical scope, universal. It, besides, presents a model of priesthood that is not precisely the Leviticus. Melquisedec (king of Salem, Highest God priest) perceives God´s action in the history in Abraham’s favour. He offers him bread and wine as a hospitality gesture and he blesses him saying: “Blessed be Abraham by God the most High, maker of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High who has delivered your enemies, into your hands!”(14, 19) The new priesthood of Christ according to the model of Melquisedec (Psalm 110) will have here its precedent: “Sacrifice and oblation you do not desire… Here I come as the scroll says of me” (Psalm 40; Hb 10, 5 – 7)
7. – In the oak wood of Mambré, in the hottest part of the day, Abraham is seated before his tent. He raises his eyes and he sees some walkers stopped near him. The walkers are three (18, 2), then they are two (19, 1). It is not a hesitation of the text, like some say. One of them is God, the main walker (18, 3. 10. 13 y 17 – 32). What the song says, it happens: “When we call brother to the stranger, God himself goes in our own way”. In the walkers Abraham perceives Lord´s presence, who walks with them. He tells him “My Lord, if I have found favour in your sight, do not pass your servant by” (18, 3). He takes them in, he offers food to them, he talks with them. The Lord says: “At this very time next year I will return and Sarah by then will have a son” (18, 10). At the end, the Lord disappears (18, 33). The other two continue their way and they arrive to Sodoma. Lot takes them in his home. The walkers leave this message: “Do not look back and do not stop anywhere in the plain. Flee to the mountains” (19, 17). The foreigners must be respected but Sodoma´s inhabitants atempt against them. The zone that Lot chose is of a volcanic type and it is fully devastated. Lot with his daughters flees from the catastrophe. His wife looks back and she becomes a salt statue (19, 16).
8. – A family problem. According to the uses and abuses of that time, Abraham had two wifes, the free and the slave, Sarah and Agar. God´s word assumes Sarah´s desire and Abraham must do what his wife says: “Send his female slave and her son away” (21, 10). Abraham felt very sorry, but God told him: “Don´t be worried about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to Sarah and do whatever she says... from the son of your servant I will also form a nation, for he too is your offspring” (21, 12 – 13)9. – In Mount Moriah, Abraham is ready to do an atrocity, every time has their own: to sacrifice his own son, if God asks him to do so. Abraham sees a ram in the weeds and he sacrifices it instead of his son (22, 13). He will not forget that place. He called it: “The Lord provides” (22, 14). The Lord confirms his promise: “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the sea shore (22, 16 – 17). Total disposal, like that of Albino Luciani. Before becoming a priest, he spent several days in the monastery of Verdana in the Dolomite Alps. The morning he left the monastery the prior asked him: “ What do you expect the day after tomorrow, when you become a God´s priest?” “Nothing, he answered, I abandon myself in his will: he will do with me what he want”. The prior told him: “Only if you abandonment is total, God will do with you great deeds. In the abandonment and in the full disposal to God you will become fully concious of yourself; your identity is a misterious fact, it has its roots in the heart of the Lord Christ who has chosen you” (Bassotto, 55)
10. – God´s mediations are very diverse. Abraham wants to look for a wife for his son Isaach by means of his servant among the daughters of his own land., The servant goes to Mesopotamy, to the family city, and meets Rebeca beside the well. He made a prayer to the Lord: “I am standing at the well while th girls of the city are coming to draw water. Now I will ask them like this: ^Please tilt your pitcher so that I may drink^. Now, the first girl who say: ^Drink and I will water your camels as well^, let her be the one yoiu have chosen for your servan Isaach” (Gn 24, 13 - 14). The servant told Rebekah: “Please let me drink a little water from your pitcher”. She allow him to drink. And she added: “ I am going to water your camels as well, until they have had enough” (24, 17 – 19). The servant began to see clearly. Rebekah comes out to belong to his master´s family. The young girl ran to her mother´s house and related all these things. The servant was teken in that home. The family received the story: “ This is God´s doing” (24, 50). They ask the young girl´s opinion, and she says: “I will go” (24, 58). And she initiated her way towards Isaach´s tent.
11. – Let´s see Jacob´s, Isaach´s son, dream. Fleeing from a familiar dispute, Jacob stops in a place (Bethel, God´s home), in the stepe of Canah. The sun had set and he took one of the stones that were there to use it as a pillow. He had a dream in which a ladder stood on the earth with its top reaching the heaven. God´s messengers were going up and coming down. The Lord was there, in the high. The voice in the dream said: “The land in which you sleep, I give to you and your descendants” (Gn 28, 13). Jacob´s dream is accomplished in Christ, true God´s temple. “ You will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the son of man” (Jn 1, 51; 2, 21). All nations will be blessed through him (Ps 72, 17).
12. The God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, says Jesus, is not a God of the dead, but of those alive; for him all are alive. The saducee do not believe that the dead resurrect and they object with the case of the woman who marries seven times: in the resurrection, of who will she be the wife? Jesus answers: “In the resurrection from the dead, there is no more marriage, neither they will take wife nor they will take husband, and they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels, and they are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. And that the dead resurrect even Moses showed it to be true in the passage about the burning bush, when he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. For he is God of the living and not of the dead, and for him all are alive” (Lk 20, 35 – 38).
13. The saducee are in error since they do not understand neither the Scriptures nor God´s power (Mt 22, 29). Jesus says that Moses already had indicated it when he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob” (Ex 3, 6). He is a God of those alive. Jesus associates the knowledge of the living God and the experience of the resurrection. People was amazed. It is not only the soul´s immortality. It is a new creation that is already being born: “The time arrives (we are already in it) in which the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God y those who hear it will live” (Jn 5, 25), “neither the eye saw nor the ear herd what God prepares for those who love Him” (1 Co 2, 9), “the just men will judge the nations (Sb 3, 8), “they will shine like stars during the whole eternity” (Dn 12, 3), “the Lord takes in his hands our destiny” (Ps 126), also in the death.
14. What matters is not the natural inheritance, but the faith and the conversion. John the Baptist says it: “And do not think that it is enough to say: We have Abraham for our father. I tell yuo that God can raise children for Abraham from theses stones” (Mt 3, 9). Something similar says Jesus: “If you are sons of Abraham, make Abraham works (Jn 8, 38). Paul affirms that the believer people is born from Abraham´s faith, “father of all of us, as the Scripture says: I have constituted you father of many nations, our father in the eyes of That in whom he believed, of God who gives life to the dead and calls non-existing things so that they exist” (Rm 4, 16 – 17)
15. Covenant means God´s love to men: “God loved us first” (1 Jn 4, 19). God´s love goes before us. Covenant also means men´s love to God. Love to God is the first and main commandement (Dt 6,4 – 9). The pharisee suspect that God puts the stress in the second commandement and that he underestimates the first. That is why they ask him to put under a test: “ Master, which is the most important commandement of the Law?” (Mt 22, 34 – 40). Jesus answers them: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and the most important of the commandements. But after this there is another one very similar to it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. The whole Law and the prophets are founded on these two commandements” (Mt 22, 34 – 40)
16. Certainly, when the rich youngster nears Jesus and he asks him what he has to do to inherit eternal live, Jesus answers: “You already know the commandements”. And he tells him those referred to the neighbour: “Do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not raise false testimony, honor your father and your mother” (Lk 18, 20). The pharisee accuse Jesus of curing on Saturday (Mt 12, 14) and to his disciples to do on Saturday what is not legal, of picking some heads of wheat to eat the grain. What really happens, says Jesus, is that the pharisee do not understand the meaning of: “It is mercy I want, not sacrifice. (Mt 12, 1- 14)
* Dialogue: ¿Do we live the experience of the Covenant?
- we come out of our land; we go to another country
- we recall the oak wood, the mount, the well, the stepe...
- we understand the Scriptures and God´s power: he is not a God of the dead, but of those alive.
- mercy I want, not sacrifice.