The Twenty-first Sunday of the Year, B

            Joshua, the successor to Moses, valiantly throws down the gauntlet before God’s people.  In today’s first reading we hear him bravely declare something about the nature of true religion that sometimes is forgotten, even in our own day.  Joshua declares to the people:  “If it does not please you to serve the Lord, decide today whom you will serve, the gods your fathers served beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose country you are now dwelling.  As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” 

            Earlier in this chapter from which our passage is taken, Joshua has just gone through the conditions of God’s agreement with His people:  what is required of them to be identified as the people of God who are entering into the Promised Land, and what God promises in turn to do for them if they will obey Him, that is, keep the laws and decrees He has laid out before them.  They all respond, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord for the service of other gods….we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.”  This is, of course, the enactment of what the whole of the religion of Israel – and later the Christian Faith – revolves around, the enactment of a covenant.

            Here is the part that is so often forgotten:  that a true covenant, in order to be true and binding, has to be entered into freely.  “If it does not please you,” explained Joshua to the people, “if it does not please you to serve the Lord, [then] decide today whom you will serve.”  Like a marriage, as understood in the Christian, Catholic sense, a covenant is freely formed; both parties must freely give their consent to the agreement.  And only then is the covenant formed and binding.  And this is how God deigns to be in relationship with His people, by covenant, free agreement between both parties – no coercion, no force, but rather freedom and invitation. 

            We see the very same thing going on in today’s Gospel reading, where our Lord, because of His strong and literally meant words about the Eucharist, watches as a majority of His so-called followers abandon Him, and He turns to the Twelve, His closest followers, and Joshua-like, asks them, “Do you also want to leave?”  Are the terms of my covenant with you not acceptable?  Too demanding, too intensely personal, too sacrificial on both our parts, too overwhelmingly, embarrassingly generous on God’s part?  Is it too much to ask of you to so identify with Me (to eat My flesh and drink My blood) so as to suffer with me, I who am to suffer for the redemption of the whole world?  (And remember, the covenant, this the new covenant, “the New Testament” we call it, is freely entered into.)

            How so, freely entered into? one may ask.  Well, first with baptism.  There at the font an adult freely commits himself to follow Christ, to be a Christian.  Or parents freely take up the awesome responsibility for their child when they have their infant baptized.  Young people, of age and reason, freely confirm all that their baptism entails.  Most marvelously we covenant ourselves to Christ in His Holy Catholic Church when we receive the Holy Eucharist; there we renew the covenant; we ready ourselves for Holy Communion with the words running through our heads, “Do you also want to leave [me]?”  No, Lord, we answer with Simon Peter, “Master, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.” 

            “You have the words of eternal life.”  Ah, there we see it:  you, Lord, have the right to make the terms of the covenant. 

            If we look back into the Old Covenant (or Testament), we see there a repeating sequence of events:  the people of God would begin to enjoy the benefits of living in covenant with God, and then they would want to change the terms, terms already freely agreed upon.  The whole purpose of the coming of all the prophets was to call the people back to the covenant, back to the integrity of keeping their side of the agreement.  The prophets, in some of the most beautiful of Hebrew poetry, pleadingly, with just threats of the coming wrath of God, reminded the people that the reason for the terms of the covenant, the laws and rules, was to keep them near to the God who so loved them.  Yet the people often refused to listen to the prophets; often, so adamantly opposed to the truth, to the terms they themselves had agreed to, they even murdered the prophets.

            Christians, Catholics, can do more or less the same thing.  I have seen and heard of priests all but crucified for daring to remind the people of the agreed-upon terms of the Catholic Faith. Yes, everyone wants the benefit of the Sacraments, but the Sacraments do no good for the one who is not intent on keeping the terms of the Covenant.  What terms?  Jesus beautifully reminds us in that classic scene with the rich young man who asks our Lord, “Master, what shall I do to gain eternal life?”  Jesus answers so simply:  Well, keep the commandments; you know them – Don’t be unfaithful to your spouse (with the implication of not throwing oneself around and away sexually but rather using that gift from God in the way God intended), Don’t murder (or even hate – that is, kill someone in one’s heart), Don’t take what is not yours, Don’t malign or gossip against your neighbor, Make sure you honor your father and mother.  “All these,” the young man insists, “I have observed from my youth.”  Yes, the Lord, acknowledges, but you still lack one thing.  Now I want to show you the whole purpose for these commandments, these terms of the Covenant:  “Sell all that you have and give it to the poor… and come, follow me.”  Obedience to the commandments, our Lord is saying to this young man, kept you from wandering off away from your God; now do whatever is necessary to draw very close to God – God who has made a covenant with you.

              “If it does not please you to serve the Lord,” Joshua reminded the people, “decide today whom you will serve.”  For God will only have your allegiance freely given.  There is no gun being held to our heads.  We are Catholic Christians freely.  We could, God forbid, abandon the covenant, but we are not free to set the terms; they are already established, so that there might be a Covenant between God and His people.  Much like a man and a woman do not make up the terms for marriage (the vows are already written), so Catholics freely accept God’s terms of covenant in baptism, confirmation, and most intimately in the Holy Eucharist.  “Do you also want to leave?”  No, Lord, we say in Holy Communion:  I accept the terms, I submit to your laws and commands, because they keep me close to You, so close that I can now receive You, Your very Body and Blood.  That’s the Covenant, the Covenant of Love with the One to whom we say with Peter, “Master, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”