IS THE BAPTISMAL COVENANT WATERED DOWN?
By Matt Hardy via Unsplash.
Discipleship.
It’s one of those loaded, Christian-ese words that assumes a wide range of meanings and uses across Christian traditions. That’s understandable when you read the Scriptures and see what being a disciple entails.
Three of the four Gospels tell a story about a rich man and Jesus. While details of the story vary from Gospel to Gospel, it involves a rich man asking Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. After explaining to Jesus that he follows the Commandments, Jesus says there is one thing he still lacks - ‘sell your possessions and give the money to the poor…then, come follow me (Matthew 19:21, cf. Mark 10:21 and Luke 18:22).’ If you’ve never seen exegetical gymnastics, look up some of the interpretations for this passage - we have gotten very good at reading this passage today in a way that allows us to, you know, keep our possessions (or, give a few away as we see fit).
One interpretation you might hear is that this was a particular call for a particular person - money was this guy’s idol, and we all know what we have to do with idols. But, at a closer look, this requirement for following Jesus wasn’t unique to the rich man. Luke writes that Jesus tells all his disciples, nearly verbatim, the same thing he told the rich man on two different occasions:, ‘Sell your possessions, and give alms’ (Luke 12:33) and ‘None of you can become my disciples if you do not give up all of your possessions’ (Luke 14:33).’ In the Gospels, the disciples did just that - ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you’ (Matthew 19:27, cf. Luke 18:28). In continuity with this way of discipleship, the book of Acts reveals an early church community where ‘no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. There was not a needy person among them…’ (Acts 4:32, 34).
The way of life for a disciple is costly. To follow Jesus meant not only to give up one’s possessions, but even their own lives. Jesus doesn’t mince words - “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27). The cross is an instrument of torture and death, and Jesus tells his disciples to risk both. There’s no turning back once you’re a disciple, no going back to bury your own family members (Luke 9:60) or even to say farewell to your family (Luke 9:61). A person who seeks to live as Jesus both lived and taught seems radical, even reckless.
While we don’t find ourselves in first century Palestine, the question of what it means to live a Christian life remains. When we look at the Episcopal Church, both past and present, we can ask whether the Christian way of life as we’ve lived it has been all that costly. In her book The Church Cracked Open, The Rev. Stephanie Spellers writes that, ‘We have long been the church of the slaveholders, industrialists, and the owning and managing classes - in short, the church allied with power and control.’ (1) Walter Posey writes, ‘Nearly all the Southern bishops owned slaves, either by inheritance or purchase,’ and The Episcopal Church actively defended this practice against the anti-slavery movement. (2) The wealth the Episcopal Church accumulated from its participation in chattel slavery has passed on through church property and endowments, leaving us with not only questions about how we’ve acquired this unjust wealth, but what to do with it. (3)
From participating in and benefiting from chattel slavery, to present numbers that say Episcopalians are nearly twice as wealthy and educated as the average American, (4) it’s worth calling into question whether we as a tradition in the broader church have really taken seriously the costliness of being followers of Jesus. Jesus tells us to give our possessions away, and we have nearly twice as much! What gives?
We Episcopalians often view Baptismal Covenant (5) as our framework for living a Christian life. The actual structure of the covenant moves us from statements of belief to response. Ruth Myers, Professor of Liturgics at The Church Divinity School of The Pacific, writes, “Our response to [God’s saving action] is to live as Jesus Christ lived, to live according to the power of the Holy Spirit, to participate in God’s self-giving love for the world.” (6)
But where in the Baptismal Covenant are Jesus’ radical teachings about what it takes to be his follower? Where is the call to sell our possessions, carry the instrument of our death, and leave everything for the sake of the kingdom of God? Compared to the cost of discipleship outlined in the Scriptures, does the baptismal covenant really challenge us? Does it make us uncomfortable as we consider what the cost of living as a Christian is like in our time?
Is the Baptismal Covenant just a ‘watered-down’ version of discipleship?
In answering that question, we must see the Baptismal Covenant as we find it today within its historical context. Prior to the 1979 prayer book, the Baptismal Covenant contained just two questions, ‘Dost thou believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith, as contained in the Apostles’ Creed? Wilt thou then obediently keep God’s holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of thy life?’ The Covenant was simple, but perhaps even too vague. The 1979 Prayer Book changed that.
The questions from the 1979 Baptismal Covenant, and in particular the final five questions, present us with expansive and exhaustive language about what discipleship looks like in our contemporary setting. While the Gospel language of selling all we have, and giving up our very lives to follow Jesus is absent in the Baptismal Covenant, a careful reading of the text presents its unwavering challenge to us as disciples.
“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons…? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” Not some, all. Not a few, every.
The urge to do exegetical gymnastics, once again, strikes us as we reckon with the seeming impossibility of the responsibilities of our baptism. Truly striving for justice and peace does cost our possessions, relationships, and our lives. Respecting the dignity of every human requires us to resist every supremacy and superiority and silent excuse that leads to complacency in the face of injustice.
When we witness baptisms or renew our baptismal covenant every year, do we really hear in the text a radical charge to follow Jesus in a way that costs us everything?
When commenting on baptismal liturgies today, Brad Braxton highlights how the cost of discipleship stems from our baptism: “To baptize people in the name of this God is to immerse them in politically turbulent waters. Baptism services should not be polite. On the contrary, they should create a guttural awareness in those about to be baptized, and in those already baptized, that following God will at times be costly. A major currency for payment of that cost is struggle, and this struggle may exact a toll from our bodies.” (7)
Instead of softening the requirements of our Baptismal Covenant for fear of their impossibility, we should remember that the answer to the radical call to follow Jesus is:
“I will, with God’s help.”
Reflecting on our response to these questions, Myers writes, ‘‘The promises we make in the last five questions of the Baptismal Covenant spell out how we will respond to God’s initiative. Even then, it’s not all about our efforts. To each question, we respond, “I will, with God’s help.” Our salvation lies not in what we do ourselves, but in what God does for us and through us and with us.’ (8) And lest we hear these words as an excuse for our inactivity or failure to uphold the covenant, we are reminded that in baptism God does make it possible for us to be disciples.
The Baptismal Covenant’s radical and expansive all speaks directly to our life as disciples. Our baptism invites us to this great table, where all are included, all have dignity, and all are in right relationship with each other. Yet, we not only take our seat at the table, we work here and now so that all have a seat, all have food, all are welcomed. In the end, the cost of discipleship isn’t about loss, but gain - it’s embracing the gift of life together that God has already made possible through baptism. And until that dream is realized, our call is to to risk everything, to give up all we have for one another - to live that reckless, grace-filled life of discipleship.
Stephanie Spellers, The Church Cracked Open, Church Publishing (March 17, 2021), p. 69.
Walter Posey, ‘The Protestant Episcopal Church: An American Adaptation,’ The Journal of Southern History 25, no. 1 (February 1959: 26).
One recent example comes from earlier this year, when the Episcopal Diocese of New York set aside $1.1 million of the their endowment for a reparations fund, stating,‘ “The Diocese of New York played a significant, and genuinely evil, part in American slavery. We must make, where we can, repair.”
[Michela Moscufo, ‘Churches played an active role in slavery and segregation. Some want to make amends.’ NBC News, (www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/churches-played-active-role-slavery-segregation-want-make-amends-rcna2129), April 3, 2022.]Spellers, The Church Cracked Open, p. 69.
BCP, pp. 304-5.
Ruth Myers, Baptismal Covenant and Commitment (October 12, 2009), (www.episcopalchurch.org/dfms/baptismal-covenant-and-commitment/)
Brad Braxton, ‘Troubling the Waters: Baptism and Black Lives Matter,’ June 15, 2020
(https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/responses/troubling-the-waters-baptism-and-black-lives-matter)
Ruth Myers, Baptismal Covenant and Commitment (October 12, 2009), (www.episcopalchurch.org/dfms/baptismal-covenant-and-commitment/)
