GENERAL BACKGROUND
Genesis 1:1 describes the earth being “formless and void” – as chaos – which is worse than what we might imagine as a vacuum or nothing. Chaos is an active, malevolent force which constantly threatens everything, even our very selves. (Chaos = tohu wa bohu)
The goodness of God’s creation culminates in the creation of beings in His image, us humans. Only once we come into being does God pronounce everything, “Very good.” The Bible reveals that God continually remembers who we really are, even we have forgotten.
Chaos may threaten us – sin and death may be all around and deepen within – but God reaches into the chaos.
God continues to offer us Covenant. A covenant is not a contract or mutual agreement between God and man, but an unsought gift of God to man. “The covenant then is not a pact built on reciprocity, but rather a gift, a creative act of God’s love.”’ (Pope Benedict XVI)
Lent is a journey through chaos, with Israel in its Covenant relationship with God, and with Jesus, who inaugurates the new and eternal covenant on the Cross.
Romans 8:20 – “for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope.”
_________________________________________
BACKGROUND FOR COVENANT WITH CREATION
He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. (Mark 1:13)
Jesus begins his mission of bringing about the New Covenant surrounded by all of creation, earthly and heavenly. He himself is confronted by the power of chaos, being tempted by Satan, the same power which invades and pervades the world.
The first reading is God’s first Covenant after the fall of humanity in Eden. The flood which has just subsided is chaos itself unleashed by human sinfulness. But God “remembered” Noah (Genesis 8:1) with whom he made the very first Covenant (Genesis 6:18).
Everything, even each one of us, is called back into Covenant with God, as one. We are not isolated individuals, nor can we be separated from everything.
It is Jesus who holds us all together: “for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:16-17)
When we enter this New Covenant, we are also “given us the ministry of reconciliation; [for] in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. ” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)