Covenant Confusion

In this episode, Fr Richard Healey reflects on the themes of contracts, covenants, and the relationship between God and Abram as depicted in Genesis. He begins by prompting us to consider our experiences with contracts in daily life, contrasting them with the unspoken nature of friendships. He then delves into the profound covenant between God and Abram, highlighting God’s unwavering commitment despite Abram’s imperfections. Drawing parallels to the Lenten season, he encourages us to embrace God’s transformative love and grace, urging us to trust in His promises and open our hearts to His divine guidance.

00:00:00 So when was the last time that you signed a contract? I mean, it was probably more recent than you kind of think, because pretty much any time you sign up to any online service, there’s all those little boxes that you have to to tick to say that you agree to all the terms and conditions and you accept all of those. Or anytime you buy something or anytime you sign up for a mobile phone, or any time you sign up to a new provider for electricity and so forth. All of these things involve contracts. Some of them are obviously more significant than others. And of course, there will be contracts that you remember with great fondness. Maybe the contract when you purchased your first house. You know, that’s a really significant moment in anyone’s life, being able to finally take possession of a house. Or maybe it’s the time you got married. And so when you sign the marriage certificate and you agreed to the requirements and the conditions of the marriage. But what about the last time you signed a contract with a friend? Did you sit down and kind of write a contract to to say what the terms and conditions of the friendship we’re going to be? Probably not.

00:01:19 Because in friendship, we just presume that a lot of things are going to be taking place. So when you have a contract, there’s something that is solid and good about it. But there’s also something that’s kind of sad because there’s the presumption that things might go wrong, that things might fall apart. And so you need to agree to these things beforehand. Signing a prenuptial agreement, working out who’s going to get what if the marriage falls apart? It’s not a very Catholic thing to do. It’s not an agreement that is entering into marriage. The full sense of that. I’m not used to having to do that in friendship. So when we find this first and most significant of the covenants that the Lord makes with Abram is still cool. That it hasn’t had the change of name just yet. It’s kind of got that mixed quality. It’s quite lovely in that the Lord is is wanting to trust Abram into this promise that he’s called him into, but it also reminds us that Abram hasn’t yet proven himself to be trustworthy, like he left the land of the earth of the Chaldeans.

00:02:34 He left. We went with his family to Iran, to about halfway from Iraq, around the Fertile Crescent, coming back down towards the Promised Land. But he wasn’t exactly faithful and truthful in all the things that the Lord said to do leave your land, your father and your father’s house leave everything behind. But instead Abraham comes. Yes. He leaves. He goes along the way, but he brings lot’s his nephew, and he brings a whole lot of possessions along the way. Then both of those things will get him into trouble as he is unfaithful. He arrives in the Promised Land. He arrives in Canaan, but there’s a bit of a famine. So the first thing he does after arriving in the land that the Lord told him that he would receive as an inheritance, he takes off and goes down to Egypt, and when he’s there, he realizes that his wife, Sarah, even though she’s reasonably old at this point, he’s saying, well, you’re still a very beautiful woman. Other people might want to possess you, and I might get killed as a result.

00:03:36 And so he sets Sarah up rather than being his wife. He says, well, say you’re my sister so that I won’t go into trouble. So it’s a pretty slimy kind of thing that Abraham is doing. And then there’s all the negotiations as he comes back into the land and there’s battles and and all of that. And so here in Genesis 15, we already see that God needs to cut a covenant with Abraham, that Abraham won’t be able to do this himself. He’s still doubting, he’s still questioning, you know, how can I be the father of a great nation when Sarah and I still go Childless. And so there is all of that background when the Lord first tells him, let’s go outside. Let’s go outside the tent and look up at the sky to count the number of stars, if you can. And the presumption is that there’s so many stars up there that it’s impossible to to count them all. But if you are actually paying attention in our first reading, you’ll notice that there are two references to the sun going down, and both of them are after this moment.

00:04:43 So presumably when the Lord takes Abram outside the tent to look up into the sky, it’s the middle of the day, and all you see of the number of stars in the middle of the day is just one you. All you see is the sun. The rest of the stars, of course, are there, but our eyes aren’t able to see them because the one sun is so bright that it overwhelms the rest. And of course, Abram will be the father of one son, Isaac, the father of laughter, the father of joy. He will have another son with the servant that he brought back from Egypt on that first sojourn. Ishmael. But here he’s only has the one son of the promise. And so all of this is the background. And so he’s still saying, how will I know all this will come true? How? You know, give me a sign. And so what does he say? Go get these three animals, slaughter them, cut them in half. And so he knows that this is what is about to happen.

00:05:43 The two birds and a cart that is laid one side of the other. And so if you’ve got the carcasses of animals on one side and the other, you know that by breaking the covenant, by not being faithful to the covenant, that what happened to those animals will happen to you, that this the breaking, the cutting of the animals and the separation into the two halves is a very physical, visceral reminder of the mess involved in human relations. It’s bloody. It’s it’s there’s all of the guts and everything spilling out. So that sense of this is the consequence if we’re not faithful to the covenant. And normally when you cut the covenant, both parties would walk between the two halves. But in this instance, the Lord instead puts Abraham into a deep sleep. The last time we saw someone falling into a deep sleep was back in Genesis two, with the creation of the woman from the man. The Adam has to be put into this deep sleep (tahdemah). It’s a it’s this profound sense where, you know, in that that rem state of sleep, when you’re unable to move all your muscles shut down.

00:06:52 It’s that state of this deep, profound sleep where you’re not able to do anything, you’re completely without control. And so he forces both Adam and then Abraham to go into this deep sleep, because God is the one who’s doing all this. And when the sun finally sets, God himself alone in the form of this flaming kind of torrent walks through the middle of the animals, because God will take on the responsibility of the whole of the covenant, he will be sure that he will be the one that will ultimately be responsible to whether this is faithfully kept. He will take on all the responsibilities of the covenant. He will take on all the consequences of the failure of the covenant. All of that falls not on Abraham, not on us, not on the people that descended from Abraham, but simply on God. It’s a profound moment of the God who knows our infidelity. He knows our that we’re not able to be trusted. He knows that we’re not worthy of any of these things, and yet he still acts in this sovereign, beautiful way to bring about this transformation.

00:08:01 The God is inviting us to experience that profound sense of love, even though we’re unworthy. Even though we’re not trustworthy, even though we we know that we will break the covenant again and again. The Lord puts us into this state of stupor so that we can receive his grace and his blessings. The Lord is able to open to us this incredible gift of his goodness for us as we continue our journey through these days of lent. Let’s allow the Lord to do that same work within us, even though we may be aware of our infidelity, even though we may be aware of the weird things that kind of happen in our brains, that we’re not faithful and we’re not solely given to God, the Lord wants us to find this joy and this delight, this freedom in him. And this Paul says in a second reading today that he wants to transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body. The Lord is wanting to do this by the same power that he brought, and transformed the dead body of Jesus into the living, resurrected body of the Lord.

00:09:07 He’s bringing this same power to work within us, and God will do this because he’s loving us and calling us into life. So no matter where we are, no matter what we’ve done, let’s faithfully allow God to do this work in us so that he can transfigure us and change us to be the very pattern of His Son, our Lord.