Meaning of ‘new covenant’!
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In Mark 14 when Jesus is sharing his Passover meal, he takes the cup and says this is my blood of the covenant. To understand what this means, we need to go back and follow where else this word occurs in the bible leading up to this moment in the upper room.
I think it’s fair to sum up the theme of covenant in the Bible as this: God makes committed relationships with uncommitted people. God wants to makes relationships with humans. Those relationships he formalises in deals which the bible calls ‘covenants’. This means that God codifies the relationship, he sets boundaries, and he has expectations. Now if this is making you worried, let me tell you God’s expectations are for the relationship: To be our God, for us to be His people, to dwell among us. Pretty basic stuff you need for a relationship. God defines the relationship as just us and him living together.
So how does God go about making relationships with humans? Well God starts small, he makes friends with a couple called Abram and Sarai, he tells them how much he loves them, how he wants to give them a whole family and make them a whole nation and gives them land and a purpose to bless the world if they would follow him. He even sits down with them for a meal when he tells them they’re pregnant. Then later he renews the deal when their son and their grandson (the very proof that what he promises comes true), and God renames the grandson Israel and Israel’s family grows and grows while they are living as slaves in Egypt. And when God rescues them out of Egypt, he formalises his deal with them on a mountain, and gives them the law, which is like a prenuptial agreement between God and his people to lay out the expectations and consequences for entering into this relationship. The law takes up a lot of the beginning of the Bible, but it is God’s expectation that if we’re in this relationship, we’ll look like and act like Gods people, and again the whole purpose is for God to dwell among everyone. And again he eats a meal with the leaders of Israel on the top of a mountain. Finally, even further along in the story, when this tribal group become a kingdom and they get their first (proper) king David, God makes ANOTHER deal with David about how he will make his family line into a dynasty, an everlasting global kingdom of Gods love and his people led by one of David’s kids.
But like I said at the start God makes committed relationships with uncommitted people. Abram and Sarai try to start their family through the abuse of a slave called Hagar. The Israelites immediately make a fake statue and worship that instead of God. And David steals a women, gets her pregnant, and kills her husband. So many times humans have failed to live up to our end of the deal with God.
Yet God is committed, he’s in this till the end, he doesn’t go back on his word, he just loves us too much, so he says in the book of Jeremiah:
“The days are surely 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 that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, 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 put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
Jeremiah 31:31-34 NRSV
Then, hundreds of years later, God renews his covenants once more as he comes to meet his people in the person of Jesus. This human who the gospels tell us is a child of Abraham, Israel, and David. When Jesus turns up on the scene in Mark 1:15, he tells people: it’s here! Gods everlasting kingdom is here, turn from what you’re doing and believe the good news!
Jesus begins to disciple a group of people by showing them what it was like to live according to the covenants, fulfilling the purpose to bring Gods kingdom on earth. And towards the end of his life, Jesus invites his friends to share a meal. It is during this meal that Jesus takes some of the bread and some of the wine and says:
“Take; this is my body.” Drink: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”
Mark 14:22-24 NRSV
Jesus establishes the prophesied new covenant through his blood. How does that work? Well as in the old covenants, the deal is sealed by blood, which was simply a symbol for life. God’s solution to introduce this new covenant had to involve someones life. And so Jesus comes along as both God but also human and he gives his life to fulfil both ends of the deal. Jesus fully obeys God and follows all his laws, he lives in perfect relationship with God. Even in his final moments facing the road before him Jesus says: if it were possible, remove this cup from me. But not my will but yours. Because the only person who could fix this relationship was someone from both camps, someone who was both God and human, someone who was fully committed to make it work. And so this God-human gives his life to establish a new relationship between God and humans.
And how does Jesus celebrate this new relationship? With a meal! The meal of meals! The Passover meal that was already full of symbolism of the escape from slavery in Egypt and Gods covenant with Israel. And who does Jesus invite into this meal of meals? His friends, the 12 disciples.
So what are these disciples like? Surely they must be great and faithful friends to have made it to this meal? Well there are a few words in this chapter (Mark 14) that echo back to Jesus’ teaching about not falling away during persecution (4.17), denying yourself (8.34), and not falling asleep (13.35-7), and here in this story we see all of them fail. Each one of them fail to live up to Jesus’ expectations of friendship with him. In particular Jesus’ criteria for friendship with God which is summed up in that Gethsemane prayer: not what I want, what you want. And it’s kind of sad, because well to be fair to the disciples they just wanted him alive.
We see in the story that the covenant meal is flanked by these two betrayals. It is during the meal that Jesus says that one will betray him, and then after it when he says to the rest of them that they’re all gonna fall away. And you know what that means? Jesus made committed relationships with uncommitted people! He showed committed love, loyal love that fulfilled all Gods promises and commitments, yes and amen in Jesus. Jesus was committed to his friends even to death, and death on a cross. Jesus worked with these guys for years and even though they failed him at his worst moment, he was committed to see them once again in Galilee. So for us, no matter how uncommitted we feel, Jesus is committed to us. And whether we’ve been walking with Jesus for years or just days, our relationship with Jesus never ends, we must always walk with him and listen to him and be filled with his loyal love. Only then can we begin to build with that love with those around us.
How do we go about doing that? Just as Jesus shows us: make committed relationships. Set expectations, have desires, eat dinner together! Commit with someone to pray, to read your Bible together. Commit to respecting each other. To love another even when things get tough. To stay up late on the phone and go through life together. To take communion together!
When we feel ourselves becoming uncommitted, either to God, or to our people, I want us to remember this meal, this cup, this blood, that Jesus gave his life so that he could fulfil God’s loyal love. God’s commitment to be our God, to make us his, and to live with us! Because if you take this meal you declare the new covenant, that He is your God, that you are his person, and that He lives in you!
