Obedient Unto Death--Just Jesus Or Me, Too Series

Monday of First Week in Advent

The words of Jesus today stand alongside those of Isaiah: two prophets saying the same thing. In these latter days, the true Israel of God is the people who understand how to obey the authoritative word. In Jesus’s case, it was a pagan centurion who learned how to respect God from the respect his soldiers paid him. Isaiah tells us that the sign of the latter days is that all the nations would come to worship the God of Jacob. It is telling that Isaiah calls Isaac’s son Jacob, rather than Israel. The word “Israel” means “God-fighter,” one who contends with God. That was the experience of the relationship of God and His people for two thousand years, all the way to the days of Mary and Jesus. God would call His people to covenant loving obedience in faith, and they broke the covenant. Over and over again they rebelled. In our own lives we know the story well: over and over again you and I have heard God’s command, and turned away.

But, as the Holy Father tells us, God did not give up. The Old Covenant was not abrogated; it was fulfilled in Jesus’s obedience unto death. “In his crucified flesh, God’s freedom and our human freedom met definitively in an inviolable, eternally valid pact.” Christ’s crucifixion and death is the pinnacle of God’s own turning against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise humans up and save us. This is the most radical form of love. We are delivered from our turning against ourselves, our neighbor and our God when God turns against himself, in some sense turns himself inside out to pour out his love on us.

In the institution of the Holy Eucharist, Jesus spoke of His blood being the “new and eternal covenant.” It was an echo of John the Baptist’s words on seeing Jesus come for baptism: Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Everything in our Christian life flows from our identity with Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. Every challenge we face as Christians is met by this Lamb of God, whom we profess, whom we worship, with whom we walk each day. Let’s pray each day for the faith of the pagan centurion, who was attracted to the Jewish faith but unable to make any commitment until he heard of Jesus Christ, approached him and asked for healing for his servant. His reply to Jesus’s willingness to come and heal should be ours, every day of our life: “I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof, just say the word and all will be made whole.”