This week I was going over the verses in the 11th chapter of 1 Corinthians that we use regularly for our communion services, when for some reason the word “covenant” stuck out to me. I started to think about the meaning of the word. My understanding was that it was simply a promise made between two people who were really serious about it. I made a covenant with my wife when we got married. I was serious about being married to her and certain promises were made. I decided to look a little deeper.
The first usage of the word “covenant” is in Genesis 9 when God established a covenant with Noah and all of his offspring after the flood subsides. In this covenant God gave every animal and plant to mankind for food, reiterated His blessing from the Garden of Eden that mankind should be fruitful and multiply, and gave the symbol of the rainbow as a promise that He will never again flood the entire Earth. The covenant is remarkably one sided. God had everything to give and His generosity wasn’t dependent on humanity’s behavior.
In Genesis 15 God makes a covenant with Abraham and his descendants. There we see a different sort of covenant.
The word for “covenant” is related to the Hebrew word for cut. When someone wanted to make a covenant they would say “Let’s cut a covenant” because in its more ancient form it involved cutting apart an animal. When God formalized His covenant with Abraham, He instructed him to take some animals, cut them in half and separate the halves. As it traditionally went, both parties made their promise while through the halves, symbolically stating they were so serious that if either broke the terms of the covenant “may they be torn apart like the animals they walked through”.
Again, this covenant between God and Abraham was remarkably one sided. In fact, so much so that only God, in the form of a torch and a smoking pot, walked through pieces of the animal. He did not have Abraham pass through. The entire responsibility for that covenant rested solely on God and His astounding, unwarranted generosity and love for Abraham. There was nothing that Abraham could have to deserve this blessing from the Lord, and nothing he could have done to break the covenant.
In ancient times, covenants in this manner (of walking between the halves of an animal) were often made between two nations, between two kings, or between a king and his subjects, but never between a divine being and mortals. Until Abraham’s God, until our God. Other gods were so high, so aloof, so far above humans. Why in the world would they ever make a covenant with mankind as a whole let alone one man and his offspring? Why would any deity bind themselves and their actions to what they saw as stinky, dirty, mortals in a quasi-legal agreement, especially when it was that one-sided in favor of the mortal? It was bizarre. It was ridiculous.
The other form of “covenant” in the near east was a different way of creating a binding agreement by tearing apart an animal was in eating together. If you shared food with someone it meant they were under your protection, that you were at peace with that person. One would not eat with enemies or people who offended them; Only with those they were in communion with.
And so we find the New Covenant; Jesus sitting down for the Passover meal with his disciples who represent humanity. God inviting us into communion with Him, no longer enemies through the sacrifice of Jesus being broken and torn apart. When Jesus broke the bread He tore it apart, ripped it in half, and what did He say? “This is my body…”. He is the sacrifice, torn apart to make the New Covenant possible. In this New Covenant, as with Abraham, God alone passed through…
Just as with Noah, and Abraham we did nothing to deserve this love, this grace. This covenant is remarkably one sided, driven by a bizarrely magnanimous love. Like those men, we also moved in faith. We heard God’s call and came, and have received far more than we could have hoped, dreamed or imagined.
Again, it’s ridiculous. An all powerful God who doesn’t actually need us, who is so high above our understanding, so far greater in every possible way, moved by love He came down, took dirty, stinky, mortal form, and made a covenant in His own blood…allowed Himself to be torn apart, to save us who could not save our selves, and asks only for us to come, follow Him and reap the unparalleled benefit. This is part of what we remember here today.
Finding Narnia 
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