Covenantal People

As we celebrated the National Day of Thanksgiving for the blessings of God upon our country, and especially for our national heroes who helped shape the destiny of our country, my thoughts settled on the theme of Covenant. I believe we are a covenantal people. God made a covenant with our patriarchs in faith, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Those covenants were unconditional. They had no stipulations for them to be effective. In His magnanimity, God entered into covenant with the Patriarchs.

How did covenant work? When an emperor established a covenant with his vassals, he stipulated what the vassals must do to stay in the covenant. If they collaborated with him, he would allow them to co-exist. The punishment for revolt is annihilation of the erring vassal and his land annexed to the empire.

The emperor provided protection so the vassals could safely live within their territories, had their freedom to practice their religions and had their limited but autonomous governance. The vassals, on their part, provided an outer ring of security to the empire and collaborated with the expansion plans of the emperor by providing troops to go to war or to safeguard the empire’s borders. They provided some tax to appease the emperor.

God made a covenant with His Chosen People through Moses. This covenant was different from the covenant He made with the Patriarchs. God chose Abraham because he was righteous and entered into covenant with an individual righteous person. But God covenanted with the people of Israel though they were not righteous. He did this as fulfilment of His covenant to Jacob. It demanded that the people become righteous, like their patriarchs, who received individual covenants. In that sense, it was a conditional covenant. They must become holy as their Lord God is holy. If they maintained their holiness by hearing His voice, obeying His commandments that He gave them through His servant Moses, and worshipped Him alone, then He gave them a new possibility of belonging to Him. He will be their God and they shall be His people.

Because this covenant through Moses is conditional and is given to those who are not yet holy, it gives us hope that we could be included in this covenant and become Covenantal People like the sons of Jacob were. It is true we are not the people of the Promise as Israel would consider herself to be. But we are the people of the Promise by our salvation.

God made a promise of a Saviour to our first parents, Adam and Eve. We who are the fruits of that promise can truly be called People of the Promise. If we are People of the Promise, then like Israel, we are Covenantal People. But the covenant also implies co-existence and collaboration just like a civil covenant between the emperor and his vassals.

God desired to co-exist with man. Until the Sinai covenant with Israel, God lived upon the mountain where Moses met God and conversed with Him. God wanted to dwell amid man, but man must become holy in order for God to dwell in his midst. So God gave them His commandments to guide their lives and make them holy. Then he established his tent in the midst.

Our celebration of National Thanksgiving contains these two elements of co-existence and collaboration, too.

Israel experienced God as their God; very personal, very involved in their lives, very intimate with them that they knew they were specially chosen by Him and favoured by Him over all other races and nations. When they were not people, He sent them a saviour in Moses to set them free from slavery and gain nationhood, regain the land promised to their forefathers and find their identity. Their experience of His closeness made them say He is Emmanuel, the God who is with us.

Our celebration of the National Heroes reminds us that our experience of God is not much different from that of Israel. Our God was intimately connected to us. He gave us leaders like Moses to set us free from slavery to gain nationhood and an identity. By His faithfulness He showed us that He is Emmanuel, our God who is with us.

Our collaboration with Him is enabling the continuity of His life in us. Our gratitude to Him is shown in making His gift appreciated and cared for. In the way we care for one another as His image and likeness, as His existential presence in the world today, the way we care for the beauty of our land and preserve it, the way we appreciate the laws of the land and follow them as ways to guide our lives. These are our acts of gratitude.

Rev Fr Thomas Dynetius