Rev Andy Braunston
Introduction
This evening we mark two events in our calendar; the Baptism of the Lord Jesus at the start of his public ministry and the Covenant Service which comes to us from the Methodist tradition and which marks our commitment to follow God in every aspect of our lives.
Jesus’ baptism is the first event which we know about in his adult life. We have lots of material about his birth in Matthew and Luke’s gospels, almost no information about his childhood but lots of information about his baptism where he bursts into the public arena. It was a sign of his commitment to follow God.
The Covenant Service was started by John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, and was designed to be used at the start of each year to help the people called Methodists to reflect upon and renew their commitment to God. It is a difficult set of words which are demanding to live up to, yet they focus in a beautiful, poetic, way the nature of the commitment that we make to God.
Baptism
Jesus’ baptism is an event that puzzles many people because we read into his baptism the layers of meaning that are more appropriate to our own. For Jesus his baptism was about a number of things, first and foremost he felt God calling him to such an act. After his baptism he had such a profound experience of God’s presence that it felt like an audible voice – in St Mark’s gospel it is implied that everyone heard the voice, in St Luke and St Matthew it is clearer that only Jesus heard God.
The baptism marked the transition from Jesus’ private life, presumably with his family in Nazareth, to his public ministry of preaching, healing, teaching and challenging the authorities of his day. It marked the change from one period of his life to another. And the baptism clearly identified him with the radical preacher John the Baptist and his message of repentance and living justly. John recognised the strangeness of Jesus going to be baptised – after all what had Jesus to repent of? Yet for Jesus the baptism was about identification with God’s will rather than repentance from a life of sin.
Baptism has always been a ceremony recognising the start of the journey of life for Christians. In the earliest Church it was given to adults as they professed their faith in Jesus – over the years it was thought that as baptism washed away all our sins it was put off until the moment of death (given that the early church only baptised by immersion, it is possible that baptism killed a few off!)
Baptism marks the formal membership of Christ’s Church, it is a means of cleansing us from sins and shows our desire to be identified with Jesus. As time went on it became common to baptise babies – making the ceremony the Christian equivalent of circumcision in the Jewish faith. The vows that were previously made by the adult convert were made by parents and godparents on the child’s behalf.
In the Christian Church now there are two practices – many churches baptise babies and expect adults to make promises on the child’s behalf and to bring them up as Christians. Many other churches only baptise adults seeing the ceremony as the formal way of marking conversion to Christ. In MCC Manchester we honour the baptism which many of us had as children and, if someone comes to faith later in life, will help them re-affirm those promises. We also joyfully baptise adults who have not been baptised before. Some of you will remember Andy Jenkins’ baptism here in church where we drenched him in a paddling pool, and more will remember Masoud’s baptism where we hired a Baptist church with a proper baptism pool.
Baptism for us is about cleansing from sin,
renouncing Satan and evil, and being identified as a child of God. It is a
mark of being a Christian and the vows made are serious – we renew them each
year on Easter Sunday.
The
Covenant
The Covenant renewal is similar to the renewal of Baptismal vows. But whereas the vows of baptism reflect the start of a journey of faith in Christianity, the covenant is more about a willingness to let God rule every aspect of our lives. It is a level of commitment which moves us on from coming to Christ and helps us reflect on what living for Christ is all about.
It you look at the words on your little cards you will see that they are difficult. Beautifully written, but difficult ones to say and hard ones to live:
'I am no longer my own but yours.
Put me
to what you will,
rank me with whom you will;
put me to
doing,
put me to suffering;
let me be employed for
you,
or laid aside for you,
exalted for you,
or
brought low for you;
let me be full,
let me be empty,
let me have all things,
let me have nothing:
I freely
and wholeheartedly yield all things
to your pleasure and
disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and
Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours.'
The words are incredibly counter-cultural. In our culture we are used to asking for the things we want, demanding our rights, and seeking to achieve whatever we want. We seek the better job, the better more good looking, more fulfilling date, we want more money, more influence, a better home. Our society is based on the values of buying; the current economic worries are based on the fact that we are not spending as much because of worries about mortgage rates. Yet the words of the Covenant remind us what is really important in our lives as Christians – submitting ourselves to God’s will and trusting that God’s will for us is good.
This isn’t the fatalism seen in some forms of Islam where all suffering and misfortune is seen as God’s will, but is a deep trust that we will do what God wants and will trust that God will look after us. Some of us have had to radically trust God. Some have trusted that God will not desert them in the midst of their asylum claims, others have trusted despite battles with addictions, disastrous relationships or horrible jobs. Others continue to trust in spite of life changing and life challenging illnesses. The Covenant does not say that these addictions, asylum problems, illnesses or relationships are God’s will, but that through them we learn to trust God. Just as Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane learnt to accept God’s will through the trauma he went through, so we learn to trust God even when it makes no sense to do so. The Covenant reflects our commitment to surrender to God in love and joy despite all that life throws at us.
Conclusion
So now that Christmas and Epiphany are behind us, now we are well into the business of the New Year we take time to reflect on our commitment to God over the next year. For some of us this year will be wonderful, for others it will be hard. Some will be blessed with good health, others will have significant health challenges. Some will have worries about asylum, others will have relationship problems, others will face difficulties with jobs. Some of us will have no worries like that this year, others will suffer bereavement. For these things are all the normal things of life. If our faith in God means anything, it means we are given the grace, and faith to trust God throughout the difficulties which come our way. Christianity is not a way of escaping from the problems of life, but a way of coping with and transforming them in the love and light of Christ. With that trust, we make the words of the Covenant our own today.
(Rev Andy Braunston)