Last Sunday we began talking about the idea of “covenant” as a central reality in the Old Testament, and one of the most important concepts that ties the Old and New Testaments together.  A covenant is a “sacred family bond.”  There are several covenants in the Old Testament; each one is important and meaningful, and each one reveals something about the New and Eternal Covenant forged by and in Christ Jesus.  Each of these Old Testament covenants is incomplete; but each one points to something real and eternal that we experience now in the New and Complete Covenant in Christ.  Last week we saw the covenant with Noah, which foreshadows God cleansing us of our sins in the waters of baptism, just as he cleansed the world in the Great Flood.  

This week we move on to the covenant with Abraham, forged after Abraham passes through the test of his faith described in this famous and heart-wrenching scene.  Just like with Noah, there are elements in this dramatic episode that point right to Christ.  First of all, Abraham is asked to sacrifice his “only-beloved Son.”  Abraham has other family and even another son in Ishmael, but there’s something unique and special about Isaac, which is similar to the unique relationship that Jesus Christ has to God the Father, who has other children (like us), but not in the same way.  It’s also worth noting that Isaac isn’t a little kid here, but a young man.  He would have had every opportunity to overpower his very elderly father and save himself.  But he chooses to be obedient to his Father’s will.  And although in the end he isn’t actually sacrificed, he is willing.  And that points right to Christ, who could have saved himself, but chose to be obedient to the sacrifice that was being asked of him.  Finally, God doesn’t ever actually intend for Isaac to die here; God provides the ram as a substitute for Isaac: he provides the necessary stand-in so that the sacrifice can still be accomplished without the need for Isaac to die.  And here is where we see one of the most profound connections to Christ.  We need some kind of sacrifice to open up the gates of heaven and repair the justice that was broken between God and man because of sin.  We tried all manner of sacrifices throughout the Old Covenant, none of which was enough, none of which quite worked.  Are we doomed to be forever slaves to sin and death?  God says no.  Wait.  I will provide a sacrifice for you.  I will send you a substitute.  My own son: who will stand in for you, carry all the weight of sin and death on his own divine shoulders and fulfill the sacrificial need for all people in all times and places. 

What Abraham had learned over the long course of his life with all its ups and downs, was trust in God.  He was ready to trust in God even when God’s request seemed unthinkable.  Centuries later Christ will say, “Father if it is possible let this chalice of suffering pass from me, but not my will but thy will be done.”  He is perfectly trusting and perfectly obedient to God the Father as well.  And that trust brings life to the whole world. This trust is what we are called to have, amid the ups and downs of our own life.  Trust that God is always faithful to his promises.  God understands that having that kind of trust is very challenging for us at times, and so he wants to help us to have that trust.  The magnificent moment of the Transfiguration, recalled for us this morning by the Evangelist St. Mark, is an example of that kind of help: God helps the apostles to have trust, to have the trust stored up within them, to be able later on to keep trusting that this Jesus was indeed the Son of God, even when all seemed to be lost on Good Friday.  He had already strengthened their hearts by this experience of his full glory.  And he does the same for us.  Just like the apostles, we also need to fill up the tank, to have the trust stored up within us, for when our trust is challenged, for when God asks things of us that seem unthinkable, as he asked Abraham and as he asked his own Son:  the trust to believe that there is something else going on, even if I can’t see it right now.  That’s why our regular, faithful devotion is so important: Mass week-in and week-out, regular confession, prayers and sacrifices during Lent, all the things we do to bring God’s grace into our lives: these things prepare us, strengthen us, so that we can have that incredible trust in God that Abraham had in Moriah, and that Christ had in the Garden.  Because of the trust shown by Abraham, God established a covenant with him, promising that his descendants would be more numerous than the stars and the grains of sand on the beach: and so it came to be.  In the fullness of time, God would establish a perfect covenant that could never be broken, a covenant uniting God and man directly in the person of Our Lord, a union that will never fail and will last forever.  And so our trust is not foolish, not in vain.  We trust in a God who is always faithful to his promises, who keeps his covenant forever, and who reaches down from heaven to unite us to himself, through the blood shed for us by Our Lord, whose power and glory are revealed fully in the Resurrection from the dead on Easter Morning, when all is brought to completion in Christ.