The heart of Israel’s faith was the Law given them by God.
God was so holy that to look upon him meant death for sinful man. He manifested
himself as thunder, lightning, earthquakes, smoke and fire, even, it seems,
volcanic eruption. It was by obeying the Law he gave through Moses that Israel
could keep the command of God: “Be holy, for I, the Lord your God am holy.”
Israel was meant to be a holy nation, through which God would reveal himself to
the world.
It is a matter of record that Israel did not live up to this
vocation. Slowly but surely, God’s people, and the land he gave to them, were
divided and destroyed by the powerful nations around them as they came to rely
less and less on Him. Eventually, in 587 BC, the last remnant of Israel,
including its capital, the holy city of Jerusalem, was destroyed, and its
people scattered across the Babylonian Empire.
At about this time, prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel began
to see that the Old Covenant with God had broken down irreparably. A covenant
written on tablets of stone had produced hearts of stone. They looked forward
to a New Covenant, written on the hearts of humans beings, a covenant within,
so to speak. In the words of Ezekiel (Chapter 36), “I will take you from among
the nations, and pour clean water over you, and cleanse you from all your
defilements. I will take out from your chest the heart of stone and give you a
heart of flesh, and cause you to walk in my commandments. You shall live in the
land I gave to your ancestors. And you
shall be my people, and I will be your God.”
For Christians, the presence of God is no longer terrifying.
We see him and know him through a person; the person of Jesus Christ. “He who
has seen me has seen the Father.” And the new covenant he brings is sealed in his blood, shed upon the cross for us. We
celebrate it in the words of Jesus himself at the Passover Meal which was his
Last Supper, the very first New Passover: “Take and eat…take and drink…this is my body…this is my blood…do this in memory of
me.” Through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, we become heirs to the
promises of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, promises fulfilled in and through Jesus’
saving death. It is when we come before Jesus in sorrow for our sins that he
forgives us and purifies our hearts.
“Deep within you I will plant my Law, writing it on your hearts…” This
is the promise he has fulfilled for us. We have but to ask, but to listen, but
to obey, and the New Covenant, the Law
of Christ, will be written on our hearts, too.
Fr. Phillip
