The Baptismal Covenant: Part 1

In this episode of Speaking of Faith, Bishop DeDe and Adam dive into the foundations of the Episcopal faith through the lens of the Baptismal Covenant. They explore what it means to proclaim faith in God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and why community is essential in living out these commitments. Along the way, they reflect on humility in faith, the hope that comes from belief, and how the covenant connects us with the wider Christian tradition. Listeners are invited to reflect on their own faith journey and what it means to live into the promises of baptism.

Highlights:

• The Baptismal Covenant as the foundation of Christian faith
• A covenant as a vow before God, shaping belief and action
• Belief in God as Creator and what it means for our world
• Proclaiming Jesus as Lord and what that asks of us
• The Holy Spirit’s role in transforming our understanding of God
• The necessity of community in living out faith
• Humility, hope, and openness are central to belief

AI Disclosure: To support our staff in their limited time, many of our episode summaries are first generated by AI and then edited by the Communications Director to accurately reflect and preview our podcast episodes.

Transcript

Bishop DeDe (00:01.927)
Hey friends, welcome to the podcast. We are speaking of faith. My name is DeDe Duncan-Probe. I am the Episcopal Bishop of Central New York; Canada to Pennsylvania, Utica to Elmira, all those beautiful people and places in between. I am joined by Adam Eichelberger. He is our Director of Communications and we're going to speak of faith. Something that in these times, I think it's really hard to do actually. And so the purpose of this podcast,

is for us to practice together, to talk about things. I talk about my perspective, you think about what your perspective is, and together we learn to speak about those things that matter very deeply and very much to each of us. Now, you're welcome to this podcast, whatever your faith may be, or if you don't feel that you even have a faith, you're welcome to be part of the conversation. My perspective as an Episcopal bishop is going to be, you know, as an Episcopal bishop in the Christian faith.

Today we're going to talk about something that is foundational, the baptismal covenant. When people ask me, what does it mean to you to be a Christian? What does it mean that we're Christians? How do we act as Christians? This is really where we should go to because this is the foundational piece of it. We have made a covenant with God. And so first of all, what's a covenant? Well, a covenant is an agreement. It is a dedication. It is sacramental.

It is all those things. There's a lot of churchy words we can use. But for today's podcast, we're going to talk about it being like a vow, that we've made a vow before God that we recognize God is our God and that we are God's people. And therefore, we are committing ourselves to be about certain things where we need God's help to do them, because there things that aren't in our usual kind of bailiwick, if you will.

Now, the baptismal covenant is used. There's recommended four to five Sundays a year that is, you know, used on high holy day and feast days and various sacramental rites. also at baptisms, obviously, is going to be part of this liturgy in the Episcopal Church. And then at confirmations and other times of great importance as the community comes together, we usually renew our vows.

Bishop DeDe (02:26.939)
Refresh our memory about what unites us. What is it we say we believe? so when we do this liturgically and when we start and and I would be remiss not to say that the baptismal covenant is When it comes to us from a very cherished shared tradition with the Roman Catholic Church the Lutheran Church Lots of what are called historical denominations

Originally, we might have referred to it as the Apostles Creed, where here it's put into a real vow form in our liturgies. So let's get into it. The first question, because the vow, going to answer your questions much like a marriage ceremony. Do you take this person to be your wife? That kind of thing. The first one is going to be...

you know, the question, do you believe in God? And so we start off by saying, do we believe in God the Father? And we say something about God that we believe. I think this is more important than we often know. Sometimes when we're renewing our vows, we'll say, I believe in God the Father, creator of heaven and earth. And we'll sort of prattle off these words very quickly.

But when you stop and you think about what does it mean to believe that God is the creator of all, it changes how we think of all things. So enemies are no longer those people, they too are beloved children of God. The health of our ecological environment is no longer just some sort of partisan talking point.

but as part of God's creation and we are centering ourselves in an understanding that God is our creator and that we are responding to God's created goodness in ourselves and in the world around us. And we're also recognizing that in ourselves and in the world around us, we've not reached perfection, but that God is perfect. And so it's, do you believe in God the Father?

Bishop DeDe (04:44.229)
And we respond with, believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. That God is bigger than the challenges before us. That God is almighty, God is bigger than any challenge that's ever been or ever will be. It's an expansive statement of who we believe God to be. And it's an interesting thing because the response is that we say, I believe in God the Father.

is a commitment, but it also is aspirational. Do we fully know what it means to believe in God Almighty? No. We're human beings in this realm. Our understanding of God is, and my necessity needs to always be changing. Someone asked me one time, how would I describe God to someone who has no concept of a God? And I said, I think I might go with gravity. And the person kind of was like, what?

And I said, it's a force in the universe that affects us, that changes how we live, that has a daily aspect in our lives of being a force around us. If you think about the wind or you think of the sun or the moon or the stars, as we talk about in liturgy, God as creator, when we say, believe God, the father, the creator of all, that we're saying that we aspire to something.

So we may not understand it, and it's okay if you've been in a service like this, and you think, well, I don't really know what I understand about God and creation and all that. That's okay, there's an openness in this question of, I'm going to believe that, I'm gonna ascribe to it, and understanding that I don't really have the concept to fully grasp it, if that makes sense. And then the question is, do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?

And then the response is, believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the Holy, the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again, he ascended to the, into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

Bishop DeDe (07:11.537)
He will come again to judge the living and the dead. Now that is a fairly large bidding. We could spend a couple of podcasts on that bidding alone. There's a lot in there about who we're saying that Jesus is. We're saying who the Holy Spirit is with Jesus. We're saying what we believe about God. And again, I want to invite you listener to think about your own concept of who you believe Jesus to be.

Is Jesus a holy man? Is Jesus God? Is Jesus a combination of those? And to know that when you go into this contemplation, you are not alone. And it is many, many, many generations from the beginning who have tried to understand what does it mean to believe in a God who is creator of all, who has come to us in the form of this human called Jesus in history, who comes to us in the next bidding is, you believe in God the Holy Spirit?

this understanding of who God is. And so for today's I want to stop there because I think there's so much in these three biddings. And let me read the third. Do you believe in God, the Holy Spirit? And we respond, I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

Each of these sentences, one comes from scripture. Each sentence comes from a theological understanding of God. And each of these sentences speaks to something that we may or may not completely understand. The virgin birth, for instance.

That continues to be something that we hold gently in our theological understanding. Even the most seasoned, well-intentioned, clear-headed theologian who may in fact think that they have a lock on this, all of us need to understand that we come to this by faith. We come to this with a hope of understanding and an openness to God transforming our ability to understand.

Bishop DeDe (09:30.727)
that God is bigger than our conceptions of God. That there is this force like gravity in the universe that creates this force that is seen in places where creation keeps happening no matter what the circumstance is. That there continues to be the grass blade pushing up through the asphalt. There's this sense of the universe creating and creating and procreating. And then this understanding of Jesus coming.

this holy teacher, this rabbi, this person of God who we believe to be human and God at the same time. In ancient days, they came to an understanding, I'm gonna be a little nerdy for a minute, just a minute, just a moment, homeosis. I mean, we're just gonna throw the word out there. But my theological professor would say kind of like a jar of good and plenty, which I think is very funny that in trying to understand

the divinity of Jesus, we resort to something like candy is our best shot at it. We don't have language for this. We can't totally talk about how is Jesus divine and human and what is that. We come to it with an understanding that it's faith, not fact. It is something we're invited into to believe with humility, with curiosity. And we believe it not because we know it, we believe it because we see the truth in it.

We know what it is to receive someone who is sent to us by God and is a blessing to us. We know some of what that is. And when we read scripture and we hear about the life of Jesus, we have a fuller understanding of God's love in our life. And so, and then the Holy Spirit, all of these things we've said about the Holy Spirit that we see in creation, that we see moving across the deep, all of these things that are powerful and meaningful in our

Bishop DeDe (11:27.793)
I'm stopping there because everything's breaking loose in my house. Can you hear the dogs?

Adam Eichelberger (11:33.676)
Yeah, that's okay though.

Bishop DeDe (11:35.013)
Okay. Cause the Amazon delivery guy, which I don't even know what that is. good. Chase is coming out. So, I just had to stop cause that is loud. Just a minute. Get him.

Okay, sorry, we're making work for you. So I'm going to stop and I'll give a thumbs up and then I'll start talking in a minute.

Adam Eichelberger (12:01.379)
Yeah, yeah.

Bishop DeDe (12:03.207)
Bishop DeDe (12:08.349)
So these first three biddings of the baptismal covenant are wonderful things to be speaking about because we need one another to draw more closely to an understanding of who we believe God to be. I sometimes ask people, well, what's your favorite hymn or your favorite song about God? Can kind of give you a sense of maybe God the creator is more synergistic with how you understand God, this creative force.

or what a friend we have in Jesus, that this understanding that Jesus loves and accepts us in our entry is with this divine, holy person who invites us to deeper understanding of our faith. Or the Holy Spirit, we've had that, the hair on the back of our neck come up, we've had moments where we felt inspired by something or we haven't gotten on the plane or we have, and then we find that God has called us to something and that movement that we can't quite pin down.

but that we know and understand to be something divine in our life. Each of us has a calling to be in relationship with this divine creator, the salvation of Jesus and the Holy Spirit in whatever way we understand that, whether it's codified in our Christian thinking or moves beyond that. Because C.S. Lewis once said, if you can't see Jesus in the ancient myths,

then how can Jesus be true? Because what is true and right and good about a God that is almighty, all-expansive, all-living, is that it precedes and supersedes all that there is. That we all are yearning for a relationship with this God who acts in our lives. So for today's podcast, I invite you to look at the baptismal covenant and really draw close to those first three biddings.

to look at them and ask yourself, about this really speaks to me? And what about this seems like it, I just don't quite understand it, because it's not quite how I think about God. It is really essential that when we reaffirm our covenant with God, we understand a little bit in the ways that we can, we see dimly the God with whom we are covenanting, because that informs the next biddings.

Bishop DeDe (14:32.375)
Now, Adam, I've talked a lot about these first three biddings, and so I welcome your feedback and questions and reflection.

Adam Eichelberger (14:42.211)
Yeah, so one of the first things that stands out to me and listeners, you've heard me talk about this when I get to talk on the podcast about my history growing up in the Roman Catholic Church and being a practicing Catholic, this kind of a thing, we don't really do it as much as we do here in the Episcopal Church. We have a form that's kind of similar to it when somebody's getting baptized. And we do at certain points of the year,

Bishop DeDe (14:48.819)
You

Adam Eichelberger (15:11.407)
pray the Apostles Creed. But by and large, this kind of like a codification of what it is that we are like striving to believe in, isn't something that's a common practice within Roman Catholicism. It's not a practice in a lot of churches that we see in America, by and large. And one of the things that really stands out to me is there's this

clear kind of division and how it works. And we're going to talk more about this obviously in a later episode. This is a multi-parter friends if you haven't figured it out. But there is something that I've always kind of liked about the idea of when you hear evangelical or non-denominational churches really tout a personal relationship with Jesus. And I've always liked the idea of that.

Bishop DeDe (15:38.663)
Mm-hmm. It is multi. That's right.

Adam Eichelberger (16:01.657)
But one of the things that really stands out to me about the baptismal covenant is it is the stark realization that we absolutely should have a personal relationship with God, but it can't stay there. That it has to be something that is communal. So the second half of this, the rest of it that we're gonna talk about kind of starts talking about that communal aspect. But the thing that stood out to me, Bishop, and was hoping you kind of, this is my long-winded way of saying, I was hoping you could kind of expand on this a little bit, is,

that what I hear when I hear these really big concepts about who God is and who Jesus is and all of this stuff that seems really hard for not just a Christian to believe, but anybody to believe really, when you read those words, is it speaks about hope to me, that there is something bigger than me, that I can place my trust, my worries, my cares, my joys, my sorrows, all into God. Is that the direction

Bishop DeDe (16:44.423)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (16:59.187)
you

Adam Eichelberger (17:02.127)
that we should be looking at when we look at things like the baptismal covenant and how do we maybe use this first part that you've presented for us on the show today as a profession about hope. Because I think that we really could use some hope in 2025. I think we could use a little bit.

Bishop DeDe (17:19.027)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (17:22.843)
Yeah, absolutely. And such a good question. as always, listener, because we're talking about our speaking of faith, you're invited to think about your response to that question as well.

Whenever we're trying to talk about God, the first and I think essential aspect of it is humility and a curiosity to know that we really cannot conceive of a force as big as God. It is really beyond our spiritual imaginations. I mean, one of the fundamental things we see in scripture and believe in our church is that God is eternal.

And that seems, you know, sometimes we think we can kind of get at that because we think God will never die. Okay. Well, that also means God was never born. And it's like our mind just wants to seize up on that very fundamental aspect of the God's being. This idea that God has always existed and will always exist already at that very simple ontological statement, our finite human minds.

just really can't conceive of that. We are used to sunrises and sunsets, births and deaths, beginnings and ends. Things have seasons, they start and they finish. This idea that God is this eternal, never beginning, never ending, alpha and omega, always present force is hard, and it is hard for us, and some have even refuted and said, well, it can't be quite like that, God must be different.

all of us come to this understanding of God with some humility. So I think the hope here is that we step out on this faith, you know, with a humility, but also with a certainty. The baptismal covenant is saying, I choose to believe these things. Not I have it in the bag, not I can do a discourse on this, not that I fully understand it or know it, but I believe is a statement of hope.

Bishop DeDe (19:32.315)
I'm going to believe because what is belief? If we say that we believe the sun rises, that's not the same thing as this kind of belief. That is an expectation. I expect the sun to rise because it rose yesterday. I expect the sun to set because it set yesterday. I expect it because that's part of this temporal realm. But to say I believe in a God who's like this is to say, you know, I'm stepping out in faith and not as much in fact.

I see the veridity of a God who is. And so the hope in that is one, that we're not God. And so we can quit trying to pretend we're perfect and say, you know what? I don't know is a really good answer. And so I believe in God, creator of all, because I see God has done these things. I believe that God is behind these things. I believe in Jesus because when I read scriptures, I hear about Jesus's, you know,

Nativity and Jesus's, you know, life and Jesus's passion. And I believe these things. I don't understand them, but in hope, I seek to understand more. And I welcome that understanding. I believe in the spirit and I see this evidence of God moving. I believe these three ways that God moves in the world are part of God's being in the world. So I think fundamentally it is about our hope.

It's also about our acceptance of who we are and who we're not. In our human failing, we often try to pretend that we're gods or we're big enough and strong enough and tough enough. And all we need to do is go to the ocean shore or at night, look at the stars and realize we're not all that in a bag of chips. not, we're small potatoes and this force that planets and the courses and fragile earth are on home.

is that we believe this force is a force of good. And that is such a hopeful message and such an essential message in a world that right now wants to be so certain that we're right about an issue or a reality because we are afraid to not know. I think the ultimate sign of hope is to be able to say, know, I don't know.

Bishop DeDe (21:55.207)
But I believe in God and I believe God knows. I don't have to know everything to recognize that I feel it in me. I see it around me. And that is a true sign of hope and redemption in that one simple moment of belief.

Adam Eichelberger (22:11.791)
Absolutely. this is, listener, I'm kind of joining you in all of this because many of us are coming from many different perspectives and opinions on these big things. So I wanted to ask three questions because when I read or when I hear the baptismal covenant, this first portion that you've given to us, it keys in on three very important things. And you already talked about this a little bit. You set the table for us about who is God.

Bishop DeDe (22:22.672)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (22:33.939)
and

Bishop DeDe (22:39.431)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (22:39.683)
who is Jesus and who is the Holy Spirit and who we say that those three parts of God, who God actually is. Exactly. So the first thing I wanted to ask is when we use words like God, the Father, I think that that's a perfectly valid way to look at God. And many of us were raised in ways that we use that kind of language. But what does it mean for us that we call God our Father? like, are there other...

Bishop DeDe (22:42.47)
Right.

Bishop DeDe (22:46.405)
Mm-hmm. The Trinity, right.

Adam Eichelberger (23:08.759)
like names or images that can help us best or maybe better, should say, understand God as the creator, as the maker of all things, the almighty that we say that God is when we talk about God in the covenant.

Bishop DeDe (23:22.323)
Oh, essential question. I'm so glad you asked that. And listener, I invite you into this answer. It's a handicap to always refer to God as Father. And I think the handicap is that not everyone has had a good relationship with their father. Fathers on this earth are not perfect. And characterizing God as a super parent is an anthropomorphization of

of a divineness that is bigger than that. And referring to God as Father is entering into a statement about God that is familiar to us and may be an entry point where we can kind of get our head around it, where we cannot conceive of a God who's eternally always there, who never began and will never end. But we can conceive of a loving parent

the idealized parent we wish our parents were or that we are, we can conceive of a procreator, someone who went before us from whom we are created, created in the image of God. It is about that imago dei that this passage is sort of referencing without referencing it. I think it's both a help and a hinder. And so if God the Father,

speaks to you and gives you an entry point where you can kind of conceive of God being interested in you and you being part of the being of God and evolve and devolve from God, then that's a good thing. If it gets in your way, which it does for many and probably technically most people, to start with, I believe in God Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth. To take out the gender,

specific roles a little bit. And I wanna be careful here, because in another podcast, and we'll probably go back and do another podcast on this in the future, gender is very important. It's important to God, it's important to us. And all we need to do is look at our world to see how much it is important to us. Because people, and it's important to respect gender, whether it's non-gender,

Bishop DeDe (25:45.497)
or, and, the bias that people have about these things or the homophobic transphobic nature of things. But for me, when I look and say, you know, Magnolia trees have are gendered. Well, God creates with gender, this identity of being and gender studies. There's a whole understanding about it that we still don't grasp, but we can respect that.

And so for you listener, if God the Father gets in your way and God our mother is hard for you, that might be a place of kind of working with yourself about it. Who's created in the image of God? know, Aquinas and Augustine really thought that only men were created in the image of God. And so that's kind of a thing. You know, we want to not buy into that sexism that's rooted there.

And then also to allow ourselves to open up our concept of God as non-binary or some other ways that we may conceive of and start to understand that we are created in the image of God. if we're non-binary, that is in the image of God. If we are transgender, that is in the image of God's blessing. And these things that have been used to harm people.

are actually gifts and wonderful living expressions of God's love for you and goodness in you. And so this bidding here, when we're talking about God the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, I think we do need, write this down, Adam, we'll put this in another podcast, about the gender of God. Because we need to stop ourselves when we get too habituated God the Father.

and not mother, God the Father and not creator. And then have an understanding of what that is in our own lives and how our feeling about it may limit our ability to conceive of a God that values gender, creates in gender, affirms all the expressions of gender, and not become limited by our issues.

Adam Eichelberger (28:01.009)
Absolutely, and and I will fully admit that as my faith in God my my Journey as a Christian has grown and changed. I've struggled mightily with this There is a long period of my life where I using language other than father Using male language to describe God was something that was viewed as heretical

Bishop DeDe (28:13.299)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (28:25.87)
that it was sinful. I'm happy to report listeners. It's not, this does not go on your permanent record. And it is well within our ability to put these views on God to help us best understand and grow in relationship with God. I don't think there's anything bad about that. think Bishop, would agree, you've obviously agree with that. So don't freak out as we...

Bishop DeDe (28:30.653)
That's right.

Adam Eichelberger (28:55.574)
as we are trying to process and understand God better to explore the massive nature of who God is and not necessarily pigeonhole God, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Bishop DeDe (29:06.685)
Yeah. And to keep in mind, I'll jump in here just before your next question. You know, when you're getting to know and you're building a relationship with someone, you don't know everything. And God's inviting us to relationship and God's not thrown by, you know, we get all caught up in, it's heretical and we're going to go to hell. I think God is like, did you think I forgot you're sinners? I mean, I'm just thinking maybe you forgot, maybe it's a surprise to you and not to me, but God knows us.

And our ability to be transparent and known by God, that's something we struggle with. But God can handle your anger, God can handle your inquisition, God can handle, well, bring that up, God can handle a lot of things that we are afraid to say or think because we think God's gonna get us. And what God wants to do is build a relationship with us and is inviting us to be curious, to be investigative, to...

to learn and to allow ourselves to think with the whole of our being and relate to God with the whole of our being because God already loves us, accepts us, affirms us, and redeems us.

Adam Eichelberger (30:18.224)
I don't think we can do any better than that. I wanted to ask a question about this second statement. When we talk about who Jesus is, there is a word in that language that I guess I had never really thought about until literally we got into this conversation. And that is the affirmation or the proclamation that we make that Jesus is Lord. And I think that for a lot of people, when we think about that word,

Bishop DeDe (30:26.13)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (30:41.202)
Yes.

Bishop DeDe (30:45.651)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (30:45.882)
there could be some pretty negative connotations with that, that there's the sense of like dominion or control. And what I wanted to ask is when we look at that word, when we talk about how Jesus is Lord, how might proclaiming Jesus as Lord challenge us, especially in the here and now how we live today?

Bishop DeDe (31:06.647)
great question. Listener, I hope you have the answer. It is really essential, I think, this is my opinion, doesn't have to be your opinion, that when we're thinking about Jesus and the gospel of Jesus Christ, that we recognize Jesus is advocating for the God's kingdom, God's kin-dom, as different from earthly kingdoms. And that,

being Lord of all is a challenge for people of empire or colonialism, which we all are part of. We're used to these realities, power over, power under. But with God, when we talk about Lord, it's an invitation into a relationship that does mean we're going to subject ourselves to God's goodness and greatness. And that can be very, very uncomfortable for people.

who've been abused, who've been traumatized by power, who've been harmed, or for whom this continues to be a place in need of healing. And so I think that that might be a good stopping point, because we're at time. Let's talk about what it means for God to be Lord of all in our next podcast. And let's get into this a bit, because when we're speaking of our faith,

It means we're going to kind of be speaking about stuff that at times may be uncomfortable or disquieting. Sometimes it means it's, we're going to be deconstructing some things we've been like, Adam is so good about being a living example of saying, I've always been taught this, but you know, as I get older, I start to, learned new ways. Paul, the apostle Paul tells us when I was a child, I spoke with a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Speaking of our faith means we're going to lay down some of those things we've always held up as a guard against God and to engage with our relationship with God as a community of believers. This baptismal covenant is renewed not in isolation or individually, it is renewed in community. So when I ask people to do you believe in God the Father, the whole community

Bishop DeDe (33:24.847)
speaks with one voice, starting with the word, I believe. So it's this wonderful juxtaposition of I individual as part of this big community, we profess together these realities. And so to see that in the baptismal covenant is really a fundamental part of it, to see it as yes, individual, as part of a community, as part of God's people responding to God's goodness.

So listener, this was a longer one and this is very involved stuff. This is really important and I'm so glad to get to speak with you about it and now I again pass the baton to you that you speak with other people about who do you believe God to be. To look at the baptismal covenant and work through how are these biddings resonant with your understanding of God and how are they inviting all of us to a deeper relationship with a force.

of the universe that loves and redeems us. Until then, may you be blessed and be a blessing, and let's keep talking about our faith. We'll speak soon.