Symbols

I've been spending a lot of time recently studying the covenants and sacraments... two aspects of Christian theology that seem rather connected and which I feel have layers of meaning that I've never really understood. I find it interesting that when God makes covenants with people and this relationship is intended to remain for future generations there is a sign, something tangible, physical, involving the senses and not just any sign... the sign is involved in the relationship. When the rain comes down and all creation sees the bow in the clouds it is a reminder of a promise to not flood the earth again, when Abraham is promised a great nation with a prosperous future, the anatomical element most involved in that process is marked. But the really interesting ones to me are the sabbath and the Lord's supper. The sabbath seems to be both the sign and the expected resolution. The Jews are to take part in a restful celebration which only the prosperous, at peace, and landed could really be expected to have. In an agricultural society you don't take days off during peak periods unless you already have more than you need. And the idea of taking a year off is totally absurd. Only a nation with incredible prosperity could allow everyone to take a year off. And so they take a day off to experience by faith a taste of what they are promised. The Lords supper is even more complex... complex because there are so many symbols at work in upper room meal that it is like a venn diagram of Hebrew theology. The night before the passover is when the people remember the blood of the lamb presented to the angel of death as a model of substitutionary atonement, Jesus then says that the cup is the new covenant in my blood, inaugurating the new covenant promised in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel where a law written on people's hearts, the Holy Spirit indwelling, God dealing with the individual rather than the nation and personal forgiveness will be the relationship. But what does the symbol have to do with the relationship? The way that sacrifices worked in the Old Testament was commonly that of a shared meal between the individual, the community and God. In the same way, this is intended to place focus on the new community, a community of even more complete access and community with God through Jesus, the once for all sacrifice, and through that a community with people called out from every tongue and tribe and nation. Since the sacrifice of Christ ends the need for other sacrifices and inaugurates a new mode of relationship the symbol of a meal, the most communal point in both Ancient Near Eastern Custom as well as Greco-Roman culture (and in most other cultures in the world) so the symbol appropriately points to the nature of the covenant.