Old Covenant >>> New Covenant (1)

Towards Better Things

Saturday, January 10 2015, The Australian ran this line:

“The Weekend Australian today published a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed arguing with Jesus...  The ... newspaper published the cartoon by Bill Leak entitled "Let us pray" in which Jesus is holding up the Koran and telling Mohammed: ‘I've told you this needs a sequel’, an indirect reference to the Bible which has an Old and New Testament.  To which Mohammed, brandishing a newspaper with the headline "World at War", replies he can't return to human form right now because he would be "crucified".

That last line, of course, is a reference to what happened to Jesus when he produced a “sequel”.  Though he didn’t write it – he lived it.

I’m not interested in the religion or the politics of the issue; but I am fascinated by the fact that cartoonist Bill Leak (who passed away in 2017) understood that there was and is an ‘old covenant’ and a ‘new covenant’.  [Covenant, like Will, is another word for Testament.]  That’s an understanding I find in short supply among millions who call themselves Christians across the globe today.

Typically, christians act and talk as if nothing much happened in the hundred years from the announcement of the birth of Jesus; like Jesus – despite all he set out to achieve – was a momentary aberration in the course of Jewish and world history.  Jesus, to many, was and is a ‘great moral teacher’; but aside from that, for many, nothing much happened in the cosmos or in the supernatural world – even if you are one of a minority that believes there is such a thing.

Many so-called Christians name themselves such simply to distinguish themselves from followers of Islam, Judaism, Shintoism, Buddhism, etc. and couldn’t tell you much about distinctions between named sub-sets of ‘christian’.  And many reference their ‘christianity’ back to the characters, the laws and the teachings and ethics of ancient Israel.  Some do both.

Any number of histories will tell you that the ‘christianity’ of the first hundred years from the announcement of the birth of Jesus was a ‘Jewish sect’ and/or a ‘new religion’.  And histories that take a dim view of the first century character Saul (later Paul) – whom they view as a renegade and a break-away – struggle to make sense of (or find a place for) a distinction between an ‘old covenant’ and a ‘new covenant’ or a transition from one to the other.

This is not altogether surprising given that Saul/Paul was a stand-out in understanding and articulating that distinction and the need for a transition.  Remove Paul’s writings from the equation (and of course Luke’s history of Paul’s exploits in the book of Acts) and you are left with an eerie sense that those histories might actually be on the right track.

So at the outset, I am stressing that I am NOT one who devalues or dismisses Paul.  And my reading of Jesus is that he had no intention whatsoever of forming a new sect within Judaism or of starting a new religion.  Furthermore, it is my view that it is Paul’s exploits and writings that gave the will and intentions of Jesus the impetus they needed to blast through the inertia of the religion of the day to usher in the dawn of a whole new administration of God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven”, as Jesus put it.  There was no one better placed than Paul to do that.

And “administration” it is.  The English translations of Paul in his letter to the Ephesians use that word specifically.  The Greek original of the word is οἰκονομία, which is variously translated administration, stewardship, household.  Believe it or not, this is the original Greek work from which modern English derives the term economics: economics is about much more than money and book-keeping; it’s about a household, stewardship of what we have to hand, and the sound administration of our corporate responsibilities.

Paul picks this up as no other new testament writer does – unless, of course, you see the letter to the Hebrews as not written by Paul but by another (unknown) author.  Indeed, it is inextricably linked to Paul insofar as it is actually part of his character and his perception of his purpose and mission and calling in life.  Paul saw the revelation of this administration – this stewardship; this economics – as coming directly from God.  And I for one don’t doubt it.  After Paul was flipped over and spun about by God – in the person of the resurrected Jesus – he soon thereafter spent around three years in the ‘wilderness’ basically alone with God.  He needed to hear first-hand (not via his usual school of Rabbinic thought) just what the tumult in his life was all about.  You’ll see this in part of his letter to the Ephesian disciples.

In short, Prior to Jesus’ resurrection (see Romans 1 especially verse 4), the old administration was in force.  For the Jews, it meant pretty much the continuation of the administration we see as the context for the old testament writings.  For non-Jews, it meant whatever was their particular administration of the cosmos relative to their culture and history.

The resurrection changed everything.  Romans 1:1-6 puts the story in a nutshell.  The old Jewish prophets recorded God’s promise that a descendant of David would receive the imprimatur as “son of God with power.”  Through him, a new administration would begin in which “all nations” (the proper meaning of the Greek word translated ‘Gentiles’) are now included – not least the Roman disciples to whom Paul addressed his letter.

To many Jews it was then and is now an utter scandal.  As Luke’s record in Acts shows us, the Jewish leaders have continuously and assiduously maintained the view than any Gentile seeking fellowship with them must keep the “law of Moses”.  And this – as those same scriptures show us – meant that anyone wishing to join the new “Jesus movement” (“The Way” as it was often called) must also keep the “law of Moses’.  Paul fought this notion to his death – precisely why many view Paul as ‘the false apostle’.

The new testament scriptures record various first-person and second-person accounts of Paul’s understanding and articulation of what this means and implies.  Much of Romans and Hebrews is precisely about his, as are parts of his various letters to the local gatherings of Jesus People he worked with.

And Luke’s record in Acts contains multiple references to events (e.g. Acts 9 and 15) that shed light on the reality of a new administration and of the necessity of a transitioning from old to new.

And for me, this issue is not just a “theology” or a doctrine that only has significance within the perimeters of religion, church or christianity; it is central to our humanity.  Many works that make no profession of being about theology, religion, church or christianity talk at length about both the existence of ‘old’ and ‘new’, of a transition from ‘old’ to ‘new’, and of a considerable need to make that transition.  Two come immediately to mind: New Power by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms; The Great Turning: from Empire to Earth Community by David C. Korten.

As far as I am concerned, a true authentic and satiated humanity flows not from the ‘old’ (Empire; domination; winners and losers) but from the ‘new’ (Earth Community; partnership; cooperation).  And on both counts, we have ample evidence from thousands of years of recorded history of both approaches; notwithstanding the fact that Empire tends to get the lion’s share of the oxygen, attention and Press coverage and Earth Community tends to be just ‘white noise’ in the background of life.

Blogger Bill Britton (promiseed.com) calls the new testament letter to the Hebrews “The Book of Better Things” as this is the chief argument of the letter.  In summary, the ‘new’ is better than the ‘old’, as witnessed in these ways:

·         Sonship is better than the angels

·         A better gospel spells better dominion

·         A better house with a better builder

·         A better Sabbath (day of rest)

·         A better high priest in a better priesthood

·         A better tabernacle (tent/meeting place)

·         A better covenant

·         A better blood from a better sacrifice

·         A better holy place

·         A better day

·         A better way through a better veil

·         A better faith with a better promise

·         A better relationship (sonship)

·         A better kingdom with a better city

·         A better altar with a better sacrifice

From promiseed.com by Bill Britton:

Thirty years after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus we still find the Jewish Christians following the law of Moses and the ceremonial ritualism of temple worship. Thirty years after the Holy Spirit fell on the day of Pentecost, thousands of Spirit-filled priests and Jewish Christians were still engaged in the offering up of the Passover lamb and other blood sacrifices. The writer of Hebrews is trying to show them the glory of the reality in Christ Jesus, and the "better things". (emphasis added)

It remains a puzzling question why people still cling to the old, the less satisfactory, the less effective ideas, ways and practices in the manifest presence and availability of a far superior way.  Why do we do that?  David Korten has excellent insight here.

۞

Next I want to set up a parable story – a metaphor; an allegory – to illustrate what I’m talking about.  Following that, I want to add in some tables of comparison and contrast.

Included somewhere in there will be an examination of the “old covenant” nature of the things included in what we call church today, as well as touching on the brilliant work of Gregory Boyd in his two books: The Myth of a Christian Nation and The Myth of a Christian Religion.  And as sure as the sunrise, they are both myths.

And the pièce de résistance: a short tour of Matthew 5, 6 and 7 focusing particularly on those occasions when Jesus is reported to have said “You have heard that it was said...  But I say...”