St John the Evangelist RC Church Tadworth

God’s love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son so that we could have life through him. [1 John 4:9]

In a year in which we celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his monumental work, it was inevitable that once again the old controversies should be revived and re-examined.

You may say, well, yes - of course Evolution as conceived by Darwin is just a theory. Science, as we understand the term today, consists of theories. That’s the basis of the scientific method. Objects are observed and analysed and ‘theories’ are born. They are regarded, albeit provisionally, as true, unless and until later observations require the theories to be modified. In some situations apparent contradictions can arise between a scientific theory and our understanding of some religious dogma or other. Note the adjective ‘apparent’ and the word ‘understanding’ in the foregoing sentence. So what! Both can change with the passage of time. Einstein once said: ‘Religion without science is blind. Science without religion is lame.’ And what of the Bible? St Paul writing to the Christians of his day in Rome said: Ever since God created the world, his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made [Romans 1:20]. From this it can be inferred that the evolutionary process is from the beginning a spiritual as well as a physical process.

In this Article, to illustrate the development of God’s revelation of his divine nature, Aidan draws on a number of biblical texts which highlight some of the covenants to be found in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. The word ‘covenant’ appears in some 350 verses of the Bible and, as in English, implies a solemn agreement between two parties.

In chronological order, if one passes over the stories of creation and the flood in the very early chapters of Genesis, one can cite the Covenant with Abraham as highly significant and indeed as imposing obligations on God himself on the one hand and on Abraham and his descendants on the other.

But did Abraham’s descendants keep their side of the bargain? If not, God was free to modify his former covenant, even treat it as null and void. But, as we shall see, God never abrogates a covenant in its entirety, but may well see fit to renew it in modified and even more generous and loving terms.

If we move forward to their deliverance from their oppression by the Egyptians as recorded in the book of Exodus chapter 32, we learn that the Israelites started to quarrel with Moses and not for the first time complained of conditions in the desert. Then in Moses’s absence on the mountain they made a golden calf which they acclaimed as their god, and the Lord in his anger vowed to destroy them. However Moses interceded for them, and God relented.

Shortly after that we read in chapter 34 that Moses prayed: ‘If now I have found favour in your sight, O Lord, I pray that you come with us. Although they are an obstinate people, pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.’ And the Lord’s response in the words of a fresh Covenant: Before all your people I will perform marvels, such as have not been performed in all the earth or in any nation; and all the people among whom you live shall see my work; for it is an awesome thing that I will do with you [Exodus 34:9,10].

In Abraham’s time God was revealed only as a tribal god, the tribal god of Abraham and his offspring. That appears still to have been the broad conception in the time of Moses but, with the benefit of hindsight perhaps, do we sense a step forward towards the revelation that the God of the Israelites is the one God of all creation?

Yet even in the time of David and his son Solomon, God was addressed as the God of Israel. When he assembled the elders of Israel and all the heads of the tribes, the leaders of the ancestral houses of the Israelites, in Jerusalem to bring up the ark of the covenant out of the city of David, which is Zion, Solomon recalled the Covenant made with his father in these words: Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who with his hand has fulfilled what he promised with his mouth to my father David, saying, 'Since the day that I brought my people Israel out of Egypt, I have not chosen a city from any of the tribes of Israel in which to build a house, that my name might be there; but I chose David to be over my people Israel.'     [1 Kings 8:15-17].

Then Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands to heaven: ‘O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and steadfast love for your servants who walk before you with all their heart, the covenant that you kept for your servant my father David as you declared to him; you promised with your mouth and have this day fulfilled with your hand. Therefore, O Lord, God of Israel, keep for your servant my father David that which you promised him, saying, 'There shall never fail you a successor before me to sit on the throne of Israel, if only your children look to their way, to walk before me as you have walked before me.' [1 Kings 8:25].

So once more, the people’s side of the bargain was to the effect that they should walk before the Lord as David had. That was in the very early days of the first millennium BC. One may suppose that by the time of the Babylonian exile brought about by Nebuchadnezzar in the middle of the 6th century, the faithfulness of the Israelites had once more dwindled. However, as the Deutero-Isaiah tells in chapter 45 - in the section of the Book of Isaiah that has been named The Book of the Consolation of Israel - Cyrus ‘whom God had grasped by his right hand’ decreed not only to release the exiles but to restore their ruined Temple in Jerusalem. Although God is still appropriately described as the God of Israel, monotheism is now dogmatically affirmed and the fatuity of belief in other gods is demonstrated by their impotence. Emphasis is laid on the fathomless wisdom and providence of the God of Israel.

Listen to the sonorous words attributed to God himself addressing Cyrus: For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name though you do not know me. I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no god. I arm you, though you do not know me, so that they may know, from the rising to the setting of the sun, that there is no one besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make good fortune and create calamity; I the Lord do all these things. Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation may spring up, and let it cause righteousness to sprout up also. I the Lord have created it [Isaiah 45:4-8].

So time passed, and indeed as the Gospels record there was yet another re-building of the Temple. This time by the great Herod of the Nativity stories. We do not need to recite how Jesus viewed the goings on in the Temple of his day nor his attitude towards many of the Scribes and Pharisees. How, we may ask, did God then regard the validity of his Covenant with the Jewish people? Not all of course did Jesus condemn. Yet praise indeed for the Centurion: Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. [Matthew 8:10]. Later in the region of Tyre and Sidon in the case of the Canaanite woman Jesus himself seems to have been somewhat taken aback. Till then, he appears to have thought his mission was only ‘to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’. Confronted by the earnestness of the woman’s appeal for her tormented daughter he exclaimed: Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish. And her daughter was healed instantly [Matthew 15: 22-28].

And so we come to the eve of his betrayal when Jesus inaugurates for his followers a ‘New Covenant’ - a covenant in his blood. In the words of St Paul in the earliest account we possess of the Last Supper, we read: In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me [1 Cor 11:24].

What, may we ask, are the conditions to be observed by those to whom this New Covenant is offered? In the first instance the words were addressed to the disciples present in the ‘upper room’, but clearly intended for all those who were to become followers of ‘the Way’ [cf Acts 9:2], Indeed from the earliest days the breaking of bread, as the eucharistic meal came to be called, was to be a sign of unity - unity in Christ among the body of the faithful.

If this New Covenant is a covenant in the blood of Jesus, may not this be the significance of the twofold presence of Jesus in the Eucharist: his presence under the sign of consecrated bread - food to nourish us spiritually - and of consecrated wine which like the blood in our own veins not only cleanses us from impurities and waste material but also enlivens us. Deprive any part of the body of blood and it dies. I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you ..... for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink [John 6:53,55].

To conclude, Aidan would draw the reader’s attention to a little book Manifesting God by Abbot Thomas Keating. In a beautiful chapter he likens the truly inspired life to which we are all called to a dance with none other than God himself. ‘If you have ever seen a couple who are superb ballroom dancers, you will recall that their steps are in complete synchronicity. They twirl and turn and stop and start - always at the same time. Their bodies are so closely interwoven you would think they were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle interlocked with each other. Divine Love is our dance partner and invites us to respond in the details of everyday life as to the movements of a dance. Everything one does - walking, sitting, breathing, speaking, working, playing, eating, sleeping - is manifesting the dance. Together with God we co-create the dance. The Creator remains the leader and sets the time, place and pace for each movement that he wants to share with us.’

As the Passion led to Resurrection, so Resurrection leads to Life - the ‘life’ referred to in John’s First Letter. So this Eastertide seek to dance with God the Divine Dance of life on this earth.

Thomas Keating   Manifesting God - Published by Lantern Books, One Union Square West, Suite 201, New York NY10003     ISBN 1-59056-085-X

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