The Gift of Covenant

By Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist

Genesis 9:8-17
Galatians 3:27-29

In the early church the Season of Lent was embraced as a journey of spiritual fortitude for candidates preparing for baptism into the covenant community of Christ. It was a journey that culminated in a powerful ritual of initiation through the dark hours of Holy Saturday and into the dawn of Easter morning. It was a communal affair of celebration and hope designed to discipline its candidates through a series of spiritual practices that would quite literally transform them into a community of equals: a covenant community in Christ living in radical resurrection resistance to the powers of domination and exploitation and crucifixion swirling all around them, where Greek surely overpowered Jew, where free surely overpowered slave, where male surely overpowered female. But not for them, because they were “one in Christ Jesus.”

Adults who wanted to join this covenant community of Christ presented themselves to church leaders for a process that was, according to theologians Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker, “akin to applying for, attending, and graduating from college while also training for an Olympic team sport and undergoing group therapy” (Saving Paradise, 117.)  Everything from the occupation of the baptismal candidates to their knowledge of Scripture to their generosity in almsgiving was subject to intense scrutiny. And throughout the Season of Lent they were counseled to practice the spiritual disciplines of study, prayer, fasting, abstinence, voluntary poverty, and non-violence. Practices that we are today invited to continue in our own Season of Lent, even if we are among the “already baptized.”

We who are Protestant might dismiss this kind of preparation for baptism in the Season of Lent as overly legalistic or dependent on “works-righteousness.” We baptize infants, after all, who have no knowledge of what we are doing. All time is God’s time, we would say. And salvation is by God’s grace alone through faith alone. And I do believe those things are the right things to do and to proclaim.

But imagine what this ritual of spiritual endurance in preparation for baptism in the season of Lent meant for a first or second or third century Jew living as a crushed religious and ethnic minority under Greco-Roman culture. Or imagine that you have lived your days as a Gentile citizen of the Roman Empire imbibing the superiority of the Greco-Roman world in your mother’s milk without ever having to notice the heavy price that is paid by those who do not share the supremacy of your culture. Are you really going to believe “there is no longer Jew or Greek it? Are you really going to live it? How?

Or imagine what this ritual of spiritual endurance meant for first or second or third century slaves subject to the whim of their masters, with no ownership of their very bodies (which biblical scholars are beginning to concede were subject to the systematic rape and abuse and torture of those who enslaved them). Imagine what it means for the enslaver himself to give up his ownership of other human beings—an ownership he has been cultivated to expect as an entitlement—and learn to live with them as equals. Are you really going to believe “there is no longer slave or free”? Are you really going to live it? How?

Or imagine what this ritual of spiritual endurance meant for first or second or third century women, whose voices were not welcome as legitimate testimony in a court of law, whose names are barely mentioned or flat-out erased from religious history. And then imagine what this ritual meant for first or second or third century men, who have been taught from the time they were born to crush anything vulnerable within themselves. And then imagine what this ritual might mean for us in our senseless and irresponsible and flat-out Self-Inflicted-Nonsense over sexual orientation and gender identity. Are we really going to believe “there is no longer male and female”? Are we really going to live it? How?

The truth is it takes a disciplined, dedicated spiritual endurance to live as a covenant community in Christ. That is why the preparation for baptism in the Season of Lent was so rigorous in the early church. They knew that living as the covenant community of Christ required more than intellectual assent to a good idea. It required a practiced dedication to study, prayer, fasting, abstinence, voluntary poverty, nonviolence. An examination of conscience. An exorcism of anger and fear and greed. They could not “think” their way into this covenant. They had to “practice” their way into it.

By the time baptismal candidates in the first and second and third centuries who truly wanted to join this covenant community gathered in the dead of night on Holy Saturday, they really were prepared to become a new creation Christ where there was no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female. Where they really were “one” with all of creation the way God had intended it all along. They shed their old clothes before entering the baptismal pool, symbolically leaving their old life behind. They presented their naked bodies for anointing with oil, the same way we presented our foreheads for anointing on Ash Wednesday. They stepped into the pool and confessed their faith as the bishop immersed them in the cleansing, healing, renewing waters. And they rose again to new life as Easter morning dawned.

The deacons of the community wrapped the newly baptized in a white linen robe, “clothing them with Christ,” and leading them into the mysteries of the Eucharist. And that ancient baptismal formula from Galatians 3:28 was very likely spoken in the early hours of Easter Sunday—every Easter Sunday—as each newly baptized member emerged, naked, from the ritual waters of baptism and claimed a new life as a member of this covenant community . . .

Why am I sharing this with you today?

Of the six things the Madison Square mission statement proclaims you want to be and do, the very first of them is this: “to be a community that is open and welcoming to all people, without regard for nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status.” Sound familiar? To me, it is an awful lot like Galatians 3:28, updated for 21^st century American Christianity: there is no longer American or un-American; there is no longer white or black or Hispanic or middle-eastern; there is no longer straight or gay; there is no longer rich and poor; for all of us are one in Christ Jesus. And we are supposed to live like it!

This is the covenant community of equals we claim in our baptism. It sounds an awful lot like the covenant with creation we claim in the rainbow from the book of Genesis. And I have to say, as someone who is still relatively new in your midst, I think you do it remarkably well.

But Lent is about self-examination and penitence and turning from the ways in which we fail to live up to the covenant. And my word of caution in meditating on this part of our mission is to be clear that we really are rooted in the covenant community we are called to be in Christ. The one we claim in our baptism. The one that goes back to the beginning of creation and is sealed by that rainbow as God’s promise for all creation. It is not about being “politically correct.” Or . . . even as much as I love you for it . . . about being “the little church that leans a little to the left.” It is about the covenant we proclaim for the kingdom of God. Period.

And my word of caution today is that it really does take a disciplined, dedicated spiritual endurance to live as a covenant community in Christ. As well as we do this at Madison Square, the truth is that we aren’t there yet, either. If we pat ourselves on the back thinking we have figured it out and others have not . . . well . . . we have entirely missed the point. Because the truth is that we need the community to come around us and walk beside us and challenge us when we fail our part in the Covenant.

That is why we have the Season of Lent. Not to beat ourselves up for how bad we are. But to join in a disciplined, dedicated, spirit-filled reminder of how good God has created us to be. In study, prayer, fasting, abstaining. Asking God to transform us into the community of equals we say we want to be, and trusting God to make it so . . . on that Easter Sunday morning . . . when the sun rises . . . and the resurrection dawns . . . and in Christ we really are a new creation.

This is our Lenten mission. It is our Madison Square mission. It is our Christian mission.

I pray it may it be so.

Amen.