Day 261: A New Covenant

Photo by Alfred Aloushy on Unsplash

I confess that I’ve always struggled with the Old Testament. I once tried to do one of those “read the Bible in a year” programs, working through a bit of the Old Testament, New Testament, and Wisdom books every day. I made it as far as the Book of Joshua. When the Israelites were celebrating their utter destruction of a rival civilization, well …

I couldn’t see how this book could lead a world in which cultures on every continent have deemed themselves righteous and used that conviction to terrorize others. As an immigration lawyer, my job is to help survivors who flee such conflicts pick up the pieces and start over here, where it hasn’t happened recently. From a distance, all such convictions look evil (and I certainly know that plenty of them have been orchestrated by “Christians”).

Today’s reading from the Book of Jeremiah (31:31-34) offered an answer:

The days are coming, says the LORD, 
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 fathers
the day I took them by the hand 
to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; 
for they broke my covenant, 
and I had to show myself their master, says the LORD.
But this is the covenant that I will make 
with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD.
I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; 
I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives
how to know the LORD.
All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD, 
for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says (John 12:23-28):

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
Amen, amen, I say to you, 
unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, 
it remains just a grain of wheat; 
but if it dies, it produces much fruit.
Whoever loves his life loses it,
and whoever hates his life in this world
will preserve it for eternal life.
Whoever serves me must follow me, 
and where I am, there also will my servant be.
The Father will honor whoever serves me.

“I am troubled now.  Yet what should I say?
‘Father, save me from this hour’?
But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.
Father, glorify your name.”