Renewing the Covenant
Texts: Joshua 24.1-3a, 14-25; Psalm 78.1-7; 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18; Matthew 25.1-13


In a few moments we shall do as Joshua and the people of Israel did in our reading.  We shall renew the covenant God has already made with us, a covenant that expresses both God’s love and faithfulness toward us, and our own desire to be live God’s way in the world.  The word covenant means, of course, a firm agreement to honour not a contract so much as a relationship.  While contracts could be easily broken by one party or the other, a covenant is not so easily put aside, for it is founded not on convenience, but on love.  It is a bond between parties who want to stick together through thick and thin.  For the people of Israel, the covenant had been forged with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then, when they were slaves in Egypt, with Moses.  The terms of the covenant were simple.  God loved his people and wanted to give them a land and a way of life that would be the envy of the whole world.  In return, God asked for the loyalty and obedience of the people, for without this, they would not develop the habits, customs and ethics that defined the good life that God wanted to give them.  If God was jealous of their hankerings after other loyalties, therefore, it was not because he was a power-freak.  It was because he was God, and therefore genuinely knowlegable about what would bless the people.

For Christians, the covenant we are called to renew from time to time is that first forged in baptism.  In baptism we accept God’s offer of grace and a way of life that is modelled on that of Christ, and promise to live this way for the rest of our lives.  Again, the emphasis here is not on the strict terms of a contract, but on the centrality of the relationship baptism signifies.  In baptism we are made one with Christ in his life, death and resurrection.  In him we enter into a relationship with God which is more like that of sons and daughters toward their parent than anything else.  And, as you well know, a relationship like that can survive many mistakes and betrayals so long as the desire to be in relationship is stronger than it all.  God is faithful.  In the Spirit he gives us the power to be faithful as well, so long as our desire to stick with the relationship remains intact.

So why is it important to renew the covenant with Christ, as we shall do today?  Having exchanged vows once, why should it be done again?  In the case of confirmation, that is perhaps obvious.  Many of you were baptised as children and were not capable of making the promises yourselves.  Confirmation is the church’s rather sloppy way of redressing that imbalance so that you, yourselves, can affirm the promises that make such a baptism complete.  In the early church, of course, there was no such divide between God’s promises and our own.  Confirmation happened immediately following baptism, and had nothing to do with vow-making.  It was a prayer for those who had already taken their vows, asking that the Spirit help them to keep those vows.  That is why, in most contemporary churches, we are shying away from the language of confirmation and speaking, instead, of various ceremonies in which baptism (as a complete covenant) is re-affirmed.  These ceremonies range from personal re-affirmations to the congregational re-affirmations of the Easter Vigil or the Wesleyan-styled covenant service that we celebrate today.  Whatever the case, these re-affirmations are usually designed to achieve particular ends:

1.    To remind God of the promises God made to us in baptism: to be faithful in forgiveness, in loving care, and in the gift of life eternal within the bosom of the Trinity.

2.    To remind ourselves of the promises we made to God in our baptism:  to turn away from evil and give ourselves, without reserve, to the mission and way of life that Christ models for us.  Without such reminders, we can easily forget and get lost.

3.    To give the promises of baptism a particular shape and form in a particular period of our lives.  That, in fact, is what we are doing today with this covenant service.  Four weeks ago I asked you to consider, prayerfully, how you might contribute to the work of this church in the year to come, whether that be in financial or practical ministry terms.  I asked you to talk to God and your fellow Christians, and come to some decision.  In a moment, as you re-affirm the baptismal covenant, the general vows of your baptism will take on a very particular shape and colour, the colour of your local commitment to ministry.

But there is a final, very powerful, reason for re-affirming the vows of our baptism in ceremonies such as this, and it is alluded to in the passages we read from Thessalonians and from Matthew this morning.  In these accounts of the return of Christ to inaugurate God’s new kingdom of justice and peace, there is a simple encouragement to always be ready.  Be ready, they say, keep those supplies of lamp-oil in reserve, for you know not the day or the hour when the bridegroom shall return.  Ceremonies like today function as constant reminders that the vows of baptism are not magical.  They are promises that require ever-new discernment, preparedness and action for the whole of one’s life.  In the new Testament, of course, oil functions as a key symbol of the Holy Spirit and of spiritual aliveness.  The call to be ready is therefore a call to stay, always, within the region of the baptismal covenant, where you were anointed with oil as a sign that God had poured out his holy Spirit upon you.  ‘Stay awake and alert to everything spiritual’, says the parable, ‘always be alert to the stirrings of the Spirit within you.’  Rituals such as the one we celebrate now are a wake-up call for everyone who has fallen asleep.

So, let’s get on with it.
Garry Deverell
25th Sunday After Pentecost
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