Two Sunday’s ago, in Old Testament scripture, we heard about God’s covenant with Moses – a covenant that calls for a mutual exchange of fidelity between God and the human race. With this covenant God gave us his law so that we might respond to God’s faithfulness with our own.
Today, through the prophet Jeremiah, we hear God speaking once again about covenants. God tells us that because the human race had broken the original covenant, because the human race was not able to keep its promise and remain faithful to God’s law, God will make a new covenant, an everlasting covenant, one that cannot be broken by humanity’s unfaithfulness (Jeremiah 31:31-34).
Rather than condemning the human race because of our waywardness and transgressions, God decides to give us another chance. But this time, God goes beyond giving us his law. God knows that in our weakness we have trouble obeying his law – that, left to our own devices, sinful humanity has no chance of holding up its end of the bargain. So, rather than making the covenant fully dependent on our obedient response to God’s law, rather than putting salvation in our hands alone, God decides to help us out.
And in the gospel of today’s Mass, we hear Jesus speak of this new covenant, the new promise extended to us from God. With the new covenant, our redemption is now more in God’s hands, and less in ours. We no longer have the burden of perfect obedience to God’s law in order to be redeemed. The burden is now shifted to Jesus.
In today’s gospel we hear Jesus talk about this. We hear Jesus forewarning his disciples of the sacrifice that he must undergo for the salvation of all of humanity. Jesus – the proverbial “grain of wheat” – must fall to the ground and die in order to bear the fruit of our redemption. It is Jesus – “lifted up from the earth…and drawing all of us to himself” who achieves the redemption that we cannot achieve for ourselves (John 12:20-33).
Through Jeremiah, God tells us that with this new covenant – with Jesus’ selfless act of redemption – God will “forgive our evil doing and remember our sins no more”. With this new covenant, God’s immeasurable love for the human race shines forth. The light of God’s love eliminates the darkness of our sin. No longer are we alone in our struggle. No longer are we dependent on ourselves in our quest to remain faithful to God. We now have Jesus who reconciles all things for each and every one of us. Jesus’ sacrifice wipes the slate clean for us, over and over again.
And what is our end of the bargain? For starters God asks us to believe in the promise of the new covenant – to believe in what Paul proclaims in today’s scripture – that Jesus, God-incarnate, is our redeemer and our “source of eternal salvation” (Hebrews 5:9). God asks us to acknowledge how this new covenant, sealed in Jesus sacrificial death and resurrection, reveals the great love that God has for us. God asks us to trust in this love – in what Jesus himself tells us – that God gave us Jesus, not to condemn us, but to save us (John 3:16). God asks us to open our hearts and minds to this great love and allow God to work in us, so that our belief manifests itself in the way we live our lives.
Indeed, our belief must inform our lives. With our faith firmly placed in Jesus’ saving power, we must go out into the world and be that “grain of wheat” for others. We must “lose our life” as we serve others. We must put the needs of others before ourselves. We must share all the good things that God has given us to help others achieve the wholeness that God intends for all. And we come to realize that we do all of this not simply out of obedience to a set of laws like those in the old covenant, but more so in response to the great love that God has for us as revealed in the new covenant. We come to realize a most profound truth – that we love, because God loves us first (1 John 4:19).