THE BAPTISMAL COVENANT
BAPTISM OF JESUS – FIRST SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
January 12 2020 – 10:30 AM
Saint Cecilia Catholic Community
Rev. David Justin Lynch
Isaiah 42:1-4;6-7 | Psalm 29:1-4
Acts 10:34-38 | Matthew 3:13-17
+ In the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, AMEN.
Throughout our
lives, we make promises. We sign business contracts. We make marriage vows. We
promise things to spouses, family members, and friends. Although for many and
varied reasons we sometimes don’t keep promises, most of us at least try to do
the best we can.
When you become a Christian, you promised
God certain things in your baptismal covenant. Of course, if you were a young
child when you were baptized, as most of us were, someone made the promises in
your baptismal covenant on your behalf. Whatever format the covenant had at
your baptism service, the basic idea was that made a commitment to God.
What exactly is a covenant in the
biblical sense? It’s a promise to do or not do something for which there is a
sign of some kind of sign from God. The Bible has more than one covenant. Here
are a few examples.
God covenanted with Noah that never
again would massive rains destroy all humankind. Its sign was a rainbow, so
whenever you see a rainbow, think of Noah.
God covenanted with Abraham that
his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sands on
the beach. Circumcision was the sign of that covenant.
And God covenanted with Moses that God’s people would
inhabit the Promised Land, the area we now know as Israel, and the sign of that
covenant was the various laws, supposedly from God, that appear in the first
five books of the Bible.
But what kind of covenant was
involved in the Baptism of Jesus? The Gospel story does not mention one. God
did not promise anything. Instead, the Baptism of Jesus is a theophany of God,
that is, a sudden, unexpected appearance of God, to manifest fulfilment of
God’s promise of a Messiah.
The Baptism of Jesus was an act of
grace, a fulfillment of God’s promise of a Savior, in the form of a servant,
prefigured in the prophets. This can be seen in today’s first reading, which is
from among the four servant songs from the prophet Isaiah. The concept here is
that of “type” and “anti-type.” Put another way, it’s a situation where
something in the Old Testament, called a “type”, is predicted and then
superseded by something in the New Testament, called an “anti-type.”
And that’s true for Baptism itself.
Believe it or not, baptism originated in the Old Testament. It was the type
from which the anti-type of New Testament baptism was derived.
Old Testament Baptism was a ritual
of cleansing and renewal. The prophet
Ezekiel used the metaphor of washing and anointing when he proclaimed the
restoration of Israel after the Babylonian exile.
The emphasis in Jewish baptism was
on purification. There were pools of water in front of temple where people
performed cleansing rituals before entering.
In biblical times, lepers were
considered impure. Recall the Story of Namaan the leper in Second Kings who was
told by the prophet Elisha to wash himself in the River Jordan, where Jesus was
baptized.
The Jews baptized those converting
from paganism. Again, the emphasis was on purification, as pagans were
considered spiritually unclean.
For Christians, however,
non-Christian candidates becoming Christians through baptism are not unclean,
but like for the Jews, Baptism is a sacrament of initiation, something that makes
us part of the community.
Yet the “purification motif”
continued from Judaism into Christianity.
Traditional Western Christian theology has the waters of baptism washing
away the stain of original sin from one’s soul.
According to this theory, the
consequence of the disobedience to God by Adam and Eve is carried as a sin from
generation to generation. We are born
guilty of sin. We are born with a fallen nature, separated from God. Under that theory, baptism takes that away. Baptism
frees us from that sin and rebirths us.
We are a parish of the Ecumenical
Catholic Communion. Ecumenical Catholic means we draw on the rich heritage of
all churches of the Catholic tradition. That encompasses Old Catholic, which is
our tradition, as well as our Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Roman sisters and
brothers in Christ.
The Eastern Church, however, takes
a different view of what the Western Church labels as “original sin.” To quote
Greek Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware, humanity was “Created for fellowship with
the Holy Trinity, called to advance in love from the divine image to the divine
likeness, but Adam chose instead a path that led not up but down. Adam repudiated
the Godward relationship that is the true human essence.”
The Easterners don’t believe
everyone is guilty of Adam’s sin, but that the Adam’s fall from grace infected
humanity in three ways:
It made humanity mortal instead of
immortal;
It made us distant from God; and,
It gave us an inclination towards
sin.
In the Eastern view, Baptism is seen as:
The first step towards reunion
between humanity and God, because it:
Gives us immortal life as God’s
children; and,
Removes the corruption and
mortality that resulted from Adam’s disobedience.
Jesus came to fix all that. The Baptism
of Jesus has God commissioning Jesus to get us back into bring one with God.
Our human response to the mission of Jesus is to die and
rise with Jesus. Baptism is dying and rising with and in Jesus. In his letter to the Romans, Saint Paul tell
us that in the waters of baptism we die to sin and are raised up to new life in
Jesus.
Today’s gospel lesson has Jesus
rising out of the water and encountering God…perhaps a prefigurement of His own
dying and rising yet to come.
John’s baptism was one of repentance for sin, tying the
concept of forgiveness with a turning around, a change in one’s life. But it
wasn’t so with the Baptism of Jesus Himself.
Today’s Gospel tells us that John
hesitated to baptize Jesus, believing instead that Jesus should baptize John. Perhaps
the message for us in ministry is that we are humble ourselves in relation to
those to whom we minister. But in the
narrative context of the Gospel, John was recognizing his relationship to Jesus
in God’s plan.
But Jesus insisted that John
baptize Him. Why? The scripture translation we use says that Jesus was baptized
“for the sake of righteousness…” but what does that mean? N. T. Wright, one of
my favorite contemporary New Testament scholars, translates that phrase as
“This is the right way for us to complete God’s whole saving plan.” It meant
that Jesus saw Himself as part of God’s plan to bring about a new world, where
God’s justice and mercy reigns forever, a world where things will be on earth
as they are is in heaven.
What makes all of that possible is
the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit that came to Mary at the Annunciation and
impregnated Her with Jesus. Because of that, Holy Spirit, the baptism of
Jesus marked the turning point in the meaning of Baptism for Jews and that for
Christians.
John the Baptist himself
prophesized that when he declared that his baptism was with water for
repentance, while that with Jesus would be with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
The involvement of the Holy Spirit
at the Baptism of Jesus foresaw the doctrine of the Trinity, because Father,
Son and Holy Spirit were all present at the Baptism of Jesus for the first time
in scripture. In our tradition, we baptize in the name of the Father, and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit, for a very good reason. In Baptism, Father, Son
and Holy Spirit are all involved. God the Father commissions us for ministry by
means of the Holy Spirit to carry on the work of the Gospel of Jesus.
The Holy Spirit is the breath of life
which Jesus received on our behalf to communicate to us. That is why as part of
the baptism ceremony, we are anointed, sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as
Christ’s own forever.
Our Baptism ceremony refers to the
baptized person becoming, prophet, king, and priest. We are anointed to call out justice and to
proclaim mercy. We are called to be
leaders in the world around us in how we relate other people, to show the way,
rather than go along with the crowd. And
we are called to mediate the presence of God in our relationships with others,
which is the essence of priesthood.
And that is precisely why I baptize
infants. Our ministry as Christians starts from day one, no matter how old or
young we are when we are baptized.
Children are often quite adept in
calling out what’s not right. They haven’t yet developed a sense of what one
should or should not say to other people, and sometimes, that level of honesty
is a good thing. Children also lead by example. In their faces, we can see an
image of God unsullied by the vicissitudes of life. Infant baptism serves as an
encouragement to those attending the ceremony to help those children become
effective ministers and to look within themselves at the effectiveness of their
own ministry.
When we baptize anyone, no matter
how old or young, they become a part of the Body of Christ. God adopts us as
children, and by that fact, we inherit God’s kingdom, where all baptized
persons are ministers.
Notice I have been using the word
“ministry” in relation to baptism. That is intentional. Being a baptized person
is a ministry. The ministry of the church involves more than ordained persons.
You don’t have to receive the
sacrament of ordination to be a minister. The sacrament of baptism commissions
all of us for ministry. Baptismal ministry is the ministry all Christians
share, and in fact, it has some of the characteristics of the sacrament of
ordination.
When a woman or man is ordained a
deacon, priest, or bishop, they are examined and make promises. Again, we have
a covenant.
In both ordination and baptism, the
candidate makes a covenant with God and with the church. The baptismal covenant
is the covenant we all share. The sacrament of ordination merely adds an additional
covenant that relates to the particular ministry to which the candidate is
called.
This Sunday, we are going to review
and rehearse our baptismal covenant, the things we’ve promised to do and should
be doing as baptized persons, whether ordained or not.
The baptismal covenant in the Roman
Catholic service is limited to resisting the devil and accepting the
propositions of the creeds. However,
being Ecumenical Catholics, we reach out to other Catholic churches to give us
additional insights, in this instance, our Anglican sisters and brothers. Their
baptismal covenant, which we use regularly here at Saint Cecilia’s recognizes
that being a Christian is more than telling the devil to get lost and
intellectually accepting certain ideas. The baptismal covenant is about how we live
our lives, what we do as well as what goes on in our head. So we intentionally use the Anglican version
of the Baptismal covenant because it better fleshes out that reality with more
specificity.
The fact is, Jesus did stuff as
well as said stuff. He was not only a man of words, but a man of action. In the Gospel according to Matthew, which we
are reading this year, Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount in Chapters 5, 6,
and 7, but then 8 and 9, he healed people and began to call people to follow
him.
All of the parts of our Baptismal
Covenant that follow the creedal part have us promise to DO something…
to pray and receive Holy Communion,
To resist evil,
To turn our lives around if we sin,
To proclaim the Gospel in our words
and actions,
To seek and serve Christ in all
persons,
To strive for justice and peace,
And to RESPECT THE DIGNITY OF EVERY
HUMAN PERSON.
Respect for human dignity is at the
heart of Catholic social teaching. Why? Because God created humanity in God’s
own image from day one in the first chapter of Genesis.
The church, and every person within
it, is required to live that proposition as a concrete reality, even if it gets
uncomfortable. Some people have told me that “church should not be involved in
politics”. But the work of the Old Testament prophets, and Jesus, included
speaking out on public issues. They all attacked a status quo which supported
idolatry, neglect of the poor, and the oppression of unpopular people and groups.
Jesus, like nearly all children,
learned His values from His Mother, articulately stated in the Song of Mary in
the first chapter of the Gospel according to Luke. The coming of Jesus was
God’s proclamation that the mighty would be put down from their seat; that the
humble and meek would be exalted; that the hungry would be filled with good
things; and the rich sent empty away.
Jesus explicitly came to address injustice, not shore up
social stability and property rights. In the Fourth Chapter of Luke, Jesus
proclaimed that He was here to “preach good news to the poor, to proclaim
release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and to
let the oppressed go free.”
In doing so, Jesus was explicitly
involving Himself with public issues of wealth and power, and just like today
when clergy address the same issues, people got mad at Jesus.
On January 20, we will celebrate
Mass to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a saint who led the civil rights
movement to end racial segregation. He used the pulpit to advocate on behalf of
those suffering injustice and oppression. And he was not popular as a result of
doing so. In fact, the result was he got killed. In the truest sense of the
term, he died a martyr for the principles of basic Christianity. The liturgy we will use is that for martyrs.
The altar and the vestments that day will be dressed in red, the traditional
color of martyrs.
For Christians, Jesus is our guide
and inspiration. Jesus’ life provides the model by which we are to work for
justice and peace in our world. We are
called to be Jesus-like, and that includes not just listening to, singing, or
reading His words, but living as He lived. And that includes doing the things
He did, among them, advocacy for the poor and oppressed, as part of our
Baptismal Covenant, just like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did.
Dr. King was a Baptist who
understood the Baptismal Covenant very well, even though he didn’t recite it
explicitly. More important, Dr. King preached it and lived it. While no one
will ever be what he was, he was a saint who gave us a example to follow, to
courageously live out the values of the Gospel of Jesus and to heck what people
who disagreed with him thought about him and what he did.
So today, in place of singing the
Creed, we’re going to renew our Baptismal Covenant to revisit the basic principles
of ministry all of us share, ordained or not. I invite you to take your service
booklet home after Mass, so you can from time to time recite the Baptismal
Covenant as part of your personal prayer life to ask yourself on a regular
basis how well you are keeping that covenant and what you can do better in
fulfilling it.
Finally, what happens if you don’t
fulfill your baptismal covenant? Is God going make bad things happen to you, or
send your soul to Hell when you die? No. Our God is a loving God, always ready
to forgive us and help us do better in the future. Those characteristics of God
are more than enough of a reason to believe in God, to trust God and to have
faith in God. God is always there for you, rewarding your faithfulness to God
with God’s faithfulness to you. AMEN.
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