The LORD God took the initiative in establishing a personal relationship with man; he selected and called, he led and in his leading he made a covenant with his servant, Abraham. We have looked at this pledge of God, giving Abraham the assurance that what the LORD promised, he most certainly would accomplish!

In Genesis we discover that this is a covenant for all time; "I will fulfil my covenant between myself and you," says the LORD God, "and your descendants after you, generation after generation, an everlasting covenant, to be your God, yours and your descendants’ after you." (17: 7, NEB)

For Abraham’s part, and for his descendants after him, he must keep the covenant, generation after generation. And Abraham is told how he is to accomplish this: they are to circumcise themselves and this will be the sign of the covenant, between God and man. Circumcision is not the covenant, but the sign of the covenant. It directs our attention towards the covenant. But the covenant itself is a pledge and directs our attention to the promise of which Abraham sought assurance of the LORD’s intention.

The pattern is clear: Every male among you in every generation shall be circumcised on the eighth day… (v. 12). But, as in the case of so many rites that become institutionalized, the practice shifted the focus from the promise of the LORD to the simple execution of the rite itself. In other words, gradual disregard to the promises left the rite an empty sign. There was a need to revitalize the relationship and to invest it once again with the meaning that was first associated with it. Moses addresses the people... What then, O Israel, does the LORD your God ask of you? Only to fear the LORD your God, to conform to all his ways, to love him and to serve him with all your heart and soul. This you will do by keeping the commandments of the LORD and his statutes which I give you this day for good. To the LORD your God belong heaven itself, the highest heaven, the earth and everything in it; yet the LORD cared for your forefathers in his love for them and chose their descendants after them. Out of all nations you were his chosen people as you are this day. So now you must circumcise the foreskin of your hearts and not he stubborn any more... (Deuteronomy 10: 12-16, NEB)

The message is clear. The expectations are clear and reasonable. And the assurance of being God’s chosen is not in doubt. But Moses sees that the reality of the relationship with the LORD has to be internalized — it requires a change of heart. The sign of this relationship is seen in covenantal language: you must circumcise the foreskin of your hearts and not be stubborn any more. The relationship does not rest on the external rites alone but on the internal appropriation of the reality of this relationship. Now here we have both good news end bad news. First for the good news: no longer is the rite defined in the limited scope of maleness but opens itself for the whole of God’s creation, for man as well as woman. Each one has to prepare the heart, to have a sense of internalizing the promises God has made. In this new creative act, in this Eighth Day association, in this redemptive promise realized in Jesus’ resurrection (on the Eighth Day) we perceive a new humanity without distinction in relation to the living LORD God.

The bad news, temporary as it is, facing the Israelites is that with a physical rite people knew what to do. No matter how diluted the meaning of the sign, the Israelites nonetheless knew how to fulfil the external rite of the covenant, superficial as it had become. But we are never challenged without first being given the means of fulfilling God’s expectations of us. Moses, in his concluding remarks to the Israelites enlarges on what has gone before: When these things have befallen you, the blessing and the curse of which I have offered you the choice, if you and your sons take them to heart there in all the countries to which the LORD your God has banished you, if you turn back to him and obey him heart and soul in all that I command you this day, then the LORD your God will gather you again from all the countries to which he has scattered you. Even though he were to banish you to the four corners of the world, the LORD your God will gather you from there, from there he will fetch you home. The LORD your God will bring you into the land which your forefathers occupied, and you will occupy it again; then he will bring you prosperity and make you more numerous than your forefathers were. The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul and you will live. (Deuteronomy 30: 1-6, NEB)

Great is our relief to discover that that which the LORD God instructs, he will accomplish! As he calls Israel to renewal so he provides the means for that renewal. He will bring us to the relationship he intends for us to enjoy with him. The condition of the heart is not a stipulation that applies only to some. The LORD’s prophet Jeremiah cautions us lest we find ourselves not applying the LORD’s injunction as broadly as we should: The time is coming, says the LORD, when I will punish all the circumcised, Egypt and Judah, Edom and Ammon, Moab, and all who haunt the fringes of the desert; for all alike, the nations and Israel, are uncircumcised in heart. (Jeremiah 9: 25-26, NEB)

Regardless of the observance of the outward rite, all mankind is cautioned and urged to repentance and renewal. All mankind, both Gentile and Jew is summoned to a relationship that can be accomplished by the inward appropriation of the LORD’S promise. There is nothing magical here; nothing bordering on superstition. Each one knows the condition of his heart. And each one knows the need to deepen not his understanding but his relationship with the living LORD God.

Jeremiah goes on... The time is coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with Israel and Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them out of Egypt. Although they broke my covenant, I was patient with them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with Israel after those days, says the LORD; I will set my law within them and write it on their hearts; I will become their God and they shall become my people. No longer need they teach one another to know the LORD; all of them, high and low alike, shall know me, says the LORD, for I will forgive their wrong doing and remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31: 31-34, NEB)

The declared intention of the LORD assures us of several promises: that he will make a new covenant with the descendants of Abraham, that he will set his law within us and that he will write it on our hearts. He’s not referring to the muscle in the chest cavity that pumps the blood throughout the body but rather the very center of our lives on which we build and grow. Then, he goes on to say, we will no longer have to teach one another to know the LORD because each one will know thy LORD as the One who forgives us and remembers our sin no more.

We all know a considerable amount about the LORD, really. Probably more than we imagine. But it is not sufficient to know about the LORD, but rather that our knowledge would be of him by our perception of how he has been operative in our lives. And that is accomplished when we come into a personal relationship with him.

Saint Paul echoes the words of Jeremiah: Circumcision has value, provided you keep the law; but if you break the law, then your circumcision is as if it has never been. Equally, if an uncircumcised man keeps the precepts of the law, will he not count as circumcised? He may be uncircumcised in his natural state, hut by fulfilling the law he will pass judgement on you who break it, for all your written code and your circumcision. The true Jew is not he who is such in externals, neither is the true circumcision the external mark in the flesh. The true Jew is he who is such inwardly, and the true circumcision is of the heart, directed not by written precepts but by the Spirit; such a man receives his commendation not from men but from God. (Romans 2: 25-29, NEB)

The expectation that the LORD would deal with us inwardly is held by faithful men of God generation after generation. It is held by Moses and later by Jeremiah and even later still by Paul. There is a sense of expectancy about what they have to say and we experience that feeling when we begin to take them seriously. The LORD initiates and ever a period of time establishes his new covenant with us in the life of Jesus. Paul, writing his first letter to the Corinthian fellowship, says: For the tradition which I handed on to you came to me from the LORD himself: that the Lord Jesus on the night of his arrest, took bread and after giving thanks to God, broke it and said: "This is my body, which is for you; do this as a memorial of me." In the same way, he took the cup after supper, and said: "This is this new covenant sealed in my blood. Whenever you drink it, do this as a memorial of me." And Saint Paul goes on to add… For every time you eat this bread and drink the cup you proclaim the death of the Lord, until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11: 23-26, NEB)

The covenant is the restoration of the relationship by the forgiveness of our sin. What has been accomplished in our lives by Jesus’ death is the forgiveness and healing that can come from him alone. And if we know this, not simply on an intellectual plane but within our hearts as well, then we do indeed give Thanksgiving, Eucharist to the LORD God who has accomplished this for us.

The principle operative here is the sacramental system whereby God by his Spirit sanctifies the People of God, not some expressions of it, not for those who feel they need it, but for all of us who enter this relationship in response to the LORD’s call on our lives.