The words of the covenant echo through the Scriptures - 'you will be my people and I will be your God'. This is the relationship established by God with the people of Israel, in the first place through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then renewed through Moses, David and the other leaders and prophets of the people. As Christians we believe that the new covenant promised through the prophet Jeremiah is established in the work and person of Jesus Christ.
The first reading records a moment of tension in that covenant relationship. Knowing that the people have already lost faith and are worshipping a calf of molten metal God decides to dissolve his relationship with them. 'Your people', he says to Moses, 'whom you brought out of Egypt, have apostatised'. God's plan is to destroy them and begin again with a new group descended from Moses: 'of you I will make a great nation'.
But Moses, extraordinarily, helps God to be true to Himself! Why be angry with 'this people of yours', he says to God, 'whom you brought out of the land of Egypt'? It is as if he says: remember who they are and how you have already committed yourself to them, swearing by your own self. So, we are told, 'the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened'. It anticipates that moment in the parable of the Prodigal Son where the elder brother refers to 'this son of yours' only for the father to say 'your brother'. There are relationships that cannot be disowned no matter what difficulties may attend them. Covenant means pledged or committed love. Once enacted we are then forever related to those with whom we have made such commitments. We can never disown them for such is the nature of a covenant.
The difficulties of understanding and sustaining the relationship with God are recognised also in the gospel reading. The works I do, says Jesus, and the Father who sent me, bear witness to me. He is arguing with his listeners precisely about his work and mission. 'I am not going to accuse you before the Father', he continues, 'let Moses be your accuser'. We have just seen what kind of accuser Moses was, appealing on behalf of the people and calling God to be true to His commitment! Jesus is the new, and greater, Moses in whom a new, and greater, covenant is sealed. He is the new, and greater, Mediator in whose obedience man is reconciled to God and returns faithful love to God.In God's fidelity, some like to say, we see what divine immutability implies: God has chosen us to be his people and he is our God. If we are now tempted to doubt this we have the blood of Jesus sealing a new and everlasting covenant. We may reject and try to forget God but God will never reject or forget us, for we are (literally) carved on the palm of his hand.
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