Today we are moving back in time. Yesterday I wrote that we are moving into a new chapter - not. I'm back in the chapter "Israel as YHWH's Partner" and I will be here through next week. It is amazing how confused I can become sometimes. So back to covenant with people.
Different accents are made in different texts out of different traditions and in response to different circumstances. On the whole, however, in my judgment it is futile and misleading to sort our unconditional and conditional aspects of YHWH's covenant with Israel. The futility and misleading quality of such an enterprise can be stated on two quite different grounds. First, even the covenant with the ancestors of Genesis includes an imperative dimension (Genesis 12:1; 17:1). Israel, as YHWH's covenant partner, is expected to order its life in ways that are appropriate to this relationship. It is unthinkable that the God who is holy, glorious, and jealous, who is the Creator of heaven and earth, will extend self in commitment without such an expectation. Second, if this relationship is indeed one of passionate commitment, as it surely is, it is undoubtedly the case that every serious, intense, primary relationship has within it dimensions of conditionality and unconditionality that play in different ways in different circumstances. The attempt to factor our conditional and unconditional aspects of the covenant is an attempt to dissect and analyze the inscrutable mystery of an intimate, intense relation that, by definition, defies all such disclosure. YHWH is all for Israel, and that includes both YHWH's self-giving and YHWH's intense self-regard.
In the next week we will enter into this more fully. When we are tempted to think of conditional as a less than desired aspect of a relationship, we lose a bit of the power intended in the covenant. As Brueggemann will spell out, this loving relationship in which God gives so thoroughly of God's self and is so passionate about the unfolding relationship, it will be one in which the relationship must have a way of having the God who initiates the relationship - show through the life of the beloved. So we come upon the simple formula: I am loved - therefore I am.... The love shapes the one loved. The one loved needs to know what it is to be the beloved and to thus embody that love that creates the relationship in the first place. Something as simply as a commandment is not merely a condition, it is a part of the passionate love of God that would take us in and shape within us a love that reflects God's initiative.
Connection: Conditional is not a bad word. It is also one that is not to be like a ruler ready to strike. Fine wines need to be conditioned in the barrels - it is this conditioning that enables the best wines - scotch - bourbon.
O God, who makes our humanity shine with life, continue to open up our hearts to the adventure that is before us - continue to show us the way of your love and teach that way to us. Amen.
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