TKELLY Gethsemani Homily Retreat Friday 210122
The section from the Epistle to the Hebrews that the liturgy offers us today is something of a major turning point in the author’s presentation and in the whole history of the relation between God and humankind. It is about the need for a new Covenant. The word “new” is crucial. Covenant and all that it implies is essential to the relation of the Chosen People to God. Yahweh the God of Israel was not like the neighbouring God’s and had a long existence before his relation to the Chosen people. The whole meaning of the story of Sinai is that the two parties Yahweh and the Chosen People were totally independent and at Sinai they became welded together. The two parties entered a Covenant, a voluntary agreement. The Covenant came upon hard times and there was an effort at rededication but it was seen that the written document of the Covenant was imperfect and opened to being tampered with. With the disaster that brought the end of Judah the hopes of the Prophet Jeremiah for a new covenant were revived and gave utterance to one of the greatest passages from the Old Testament which is the text of today’s first reading. The failure of the written Covenant had shown Jeremiah that something deeper and more durable was needed if there was to be a valid union between Yahweh and his people. The only way God could secure the allegiance of His people was to set His laws within their mind, and inscribing them upon their hearts. The terms would be the same: “I will be a God to them, and they shall be a People to me”.
This new Covenant will be new in various ways. It will be universal that all will be included. In the Jewish tradition there was that split the Gospel so often witnesses between the observant Jew and the “People of the Land”, the ordinary people who did not fully observe the Law and were completely despised by the observant Jews. The fundamental difference will be that the New Covenant will be written upon the hearts and minds of the human persons. God will be obeyed not because of terror of punishment but because the people love Him. The new covenant puts the person in relation with a God who is still a God of justice but whose justice has been swallowed up in his love. The tremendous thing about the New Covenant is that it makes the relationship of the person to God no longer dependent on the obedience of the person but entirely dependent on the love of God. As our author says “what has become obsolete and has grown old is close to disappearing”.
Jeremiah in his prophecy of the New Covenant did not mention the place of sacrifice. Our author will fill-up the missing gap – later!
Has the profundity of this new relation touched our lives?
Our Gospel text is the opening of the second main section of the Gospel of Mark. As the first opened with the called of a group of disciples, this section begins with the call of the Twelve. In Mark’s Gospel although the call of the twelve seems very important they do not seem to have a special place in the ministry. They are present but often included among a wider group of disciples. The narratives of the call and commissioning are important but their real place is to symbolize the nature of all discipleship.
The Gospel text reads, “Jesus went up the mountain and summoned those whom he wanted and they came to him.” They are to be with him and they are to be a people on a mission. Being with Jesus and being sent by him are two distinct activities. The mission of Jesus – proclaiming the Gospel of God confronting the power of evil and healing is the mission of all who are disciples of Jesus.
The list of the Twelve is incorporated in a context over which falls the shadow of the cross. They are on a mountain and it is from the Mount of Olives that he leaves the disciple to go to his Passion and Death. The call of the twelve ends with the phrase about Judas, “who was the one who betrayed him”. It seems to indicate that being with Jesus will catch the disciples in the same complex of betrayal, suffering and death. The twelve present diverse personalities. It is really a motley group: Peter, the “rock” who emerges as very unreliable; the sons of thunder whose ambition for power causes in-fighting among the disciples. There are Greek names and Semitic names. One chosen ultimately rejects Jesus and the group and turns them over to the officials. The diversity and the fragility of discipleship are a part of church life throughout history and in our times.
“Jesus summoned those who he wanted and they came to him” is the way Mark introduces the call to discipleship. There is something disconcerting about that passage. Could it mean that some are not wanted? Is it saying that one does not come forward unless he is summoned? In the context of the first reading we know that we are called to the new relationship to God and that God’s love is for each of us, how it is expressed is what has many variations.