The Baptismal Covenant: Part 2

In this episode of Speaking of Faith, Bishop DeDe Duncan-Probe and Adam Eichelberger continue their exploration of the baptismal covenant, diving deeper into what it means to proclaim that Jesus is Lord. They reflect on the tension between faith and doubt, judgment and grace, and the mystery of Jesus as both fully human and fully divine. This conversation invites listeners to approach faith as a journey of learning, questioning, and relationship—returning again and again to the truth that God’s invitation is always one of love and transformation.

Highlights:

• The baptismal covenant as a vow that shapes how we live
• What it really means to say “Jesus is Lord”
• The judgment of Jesus as an invitation, not a threat
• Embracing doubt and questions as part of belief
• The mystery of Jesus’ humanity and divinity
• God’s constant invitation to relationship and growth
• Returning to the foundational truth of faith and love

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 (00:02.005)
Hey, listener, welcome to Speaking of Faith. We're going to speak about those things we believe with courage, with curiosity, with humility. This podcast is not about knowing it all. This podcast is not about saying it all. This podcast is an invitation for all of us to learn to speak our faith, me included. My name is DeDe Duncan-Probe. I'm the Bishop of Central New York. I'm joined by Adam Eichelberger.

And we're going to continue a series we began last week where we're going to talk about our baptismal covenant. The baptismal covenant in the Episcopal Church is a foundational vow we make. It's a foundational part of our liturgical life. At big events, baptisms, confirmations, we say the baptismal covenant as an invitation and as a response to God's goodness. We reaffirm it.


Bishop DeDe (01:05.663)
we reaffirm our faith together as a community saying the baptismal covenant. Now one of the things that will strike you right off when you look at the baptismal covenant, and if you are an Episcopalian, you'd wanna look at page 304 and 305 in the Book of Common Prayer, it is a communal statement that's framed in the word I. So the bishop or priest or person says, you believe in God the Father?

And the response is, I believe in God the Father. And do you believe in Jesus? I believe in Jesus Christ. Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? I believe in this, in the Holy Spirit. And it is something that is done liturgically that is not done in isolation, but in community. We reaffirm our covenant with God as a community of faith, as an individual in that community.

So it's right away a really interesting invitation. I really, over the years have grown in my devotion to and appreciation for our baptismal covenant as a rooting in something. When we're trying to figure out in this world all the things we could believe or do believe or don't believe, the baptismal covenant is the bedrock on which we come back to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And this is the way we express it.

Now, the question last week that came to us was about what does it mean, Jesus is Lord, and how do we as people of faith, what does that bring up for us, this understanding of submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ or to God? And it's a very complex answer, and so listener, you may have an answer right away that you're ready to talk about, and I invite you this week to have a conversation with someone about

And to ask them, what do you think it means that we talk about Jesus as Lord of all the earth? What does that really mean? And when in our thinking, when we understand that, you know, and I reference God as gravity last week, this sense of God being this, this power, this force in the universe that holds it all together, that circles around us and through us and in us. And I equated God metaphorically to that sense of that force.

Bishop DeDe (03:32.007)
What does it mean to submit to or be in relationship with a force that we're God is Lord? And one of the things that it makes me think of, I don't know what you think of listener, but I would want to speak about that when I proclaim Jesus as Lord, I am right away defining my life in a different way than I might otherwise. There's so many things in this world that want us to be on a certain team or another.

whether it's partisan politics, whether it's which football team we think is the best, know, go Bills and or Eagles. know I throw that in there for you or whatever team it is. Listener, would you throw out your team right now? We tend to think of ourselves as part of where I'm one of those people. I even had someone say to me one time, well, we're courtland people because their favorite kind of apple was courtland apples.

which I thought was really interesting. was like, wow, I didn't even know apples could be one of those things. But we tend to subject ourselves to something where, and we see this especially, it's easy to sort of talk about partisan politics, that we are people who ascribe to this belief or that belief. But when we say that Jesus is Lord, we're taking those things that we have, you know, those identities.

and laying them before the cross of Jesus Christ and saying fundamentally before all things, before any of these other things, I subscribe to Jesus alone. And every once in a while it will come up, someone will say to me, well, you really needed to take a side in this issue. And what I will say, and you will hear me say this, I'll say, well, I already have, I'm on the side of Jesus as much as I can understand it because Jesus is Lord. That means that

in a situation where as an individual I might have full capacity to do whatever I want, when I say that Jesus is Lord, it means I don't have that right anymore. Lying, cheating, all of the things. When we ascribe that Jesus is Lord of our lives, it means that we're living our lives in reference to the gospel of Jesus Christ. It means that that is the plumb line of our decisions.

Bishop DeDe (05:54.825)
And that can be very hard because there's some things that we just kinda like. We kinda like being selfish. We kinda like asserting our own way. We like feeling that we're right about everything. But to say that Jesus is Lord means that Jesus is right about everything.

So we're gonna love our neighbor. We're gonna forgive 70 times seven. We're gonna share our belongings. We're gonna care about people who annoy us. It means all of those things because when Jesus is Lord, it means it changes who's in the driver's seat of our lives. It's no longer my emotions or my wants or what I like. Jesus is Lord, therefore, I will be about these things.

And that is exactly what the baptismal covenant is inviting us to remember. Do you believe in God the Father? I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? I believe in Jesus. And so that is the plumb line of my life. That is my statement of faith, my true north. Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit that moves me.

And so my life is centered not in my self-sufficiency, but in God's mercy and grace. It is transformative, it is hope-filled, it is joyful, and it needs to be said, it is challenging because we are always called back to this foundational place of truth and transparency. This I believe, so therefore this is how I will live. Now I've said some things here.

I invite you into this conversation, Adam. What's percolating for you about Jesus' Lord?

Adam Eichelberger (07:45.273)
think when I look at this part of the baptismal covenant, I think the reason why in our last episode, listener, we're sorry that we left you on a cliffhanger when I asked about Jesus being Lord and the implications of that statement. I think that when we look at the first part, which is God is creator, almighty, these are big things, but they're easier things for us to wrap our heads around because it kind of lets us, like we talked about, give over control.

When we talk about Jesus in these statements, we have to make some very kind of scary concessions or scare. We make these scary affirmations about him being Lord. And you just talked about that. The other thing that really kind of stood out to me is this is there is the line. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. Right. There are some very big theological ramifications of that statement. But what does it look like?

Bishop DeDe (08:19.253)
Yep.

Adam Eichelberger (08:42.914)
when we talk about Jesus being a judge, especially when we look at who Jesus is supposed to be in the light of like a loving and merciful God. So what does that look like for you and for us?

Bishop DeDe (08:54.683)
my gosh, I wish I had the answer to that. Wouldn't that be great right now if I could just say what that is? That's part of this podcast, listener, is all of us are seeking God together and whether you're a seasoned theologian, a biblical scholar, and I will say most biblical scholars and theologians that I know, and I know quite a few, have humility about them because the longer you study this and the more you look at these things, the more you realize

that like my theology professor used to tell us, we are indeed Hamlet trying to describe Shakespeare. We can conceive of it as St. Paul would tell us, we see in the glass dimly, but then we will see face to face. There's a lot about our faith that the answer is, I just don't know, but I believe in God. I believe God knows, but I don't know.

I believe that God is greater than my ability to conceive of God, but God knows. And so in this case, when we're talking about something as big and expansive as the things you just mentioned, I think we start from a place of not knowing, of saying I can't conceive of God who's this big. And so I'm invited into a God that is that big.

Adam Eichelberger (10:13.102)
I mean, it's, I think it's scary for me. And again, I'm sharing for myself, listener, I'm speaking of my faith. When I look at that word judgment, right, it has these very scary connotations. But I think what it is, as a reminder to me, kind like you talked about in the last episode, Bishop, but like when we talk about what Jesus asks of us to love our neighbor, to forgive, to show mercy.

Bishop DeDe (10:21.983)
Yeah. Good.

Bishop DeDe (10:26.506)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (10:44.238)
I think the scary part becomes like, for me, I don't know if any of you listeners are the same way, we got raised in a system where like, if you don't do it, God's mad at you and he's gonna punish you. And I think that what this is an invitation to do is, listen, God is asking us, Jesus is asking us to do all these things, but he's doing it free of the condemnation. He's gonna look at me and say like,

Bishop DeDe (10:54.229)
Mm-hmm.

That's right.

Adam Eichelberger (11:14.36)
hey, what were you doing? But he's doing it for me when I look at the baptismal, he's doing it from a place like we talked about, like a caring parent or like a good friend who's being gentle with me. He's being gentle with how he looks at me when he, and I'm gonna use air quotes for the listener, judges me.

Bishop DeDe (11:15.669)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (11:26.891)
Woof.

Bishop DeDe (11:32.415)
Yeah, and I think we want to sort of unpack this word judge. Because often when we think, I mean, I think really 90 % of the time, 99%, when we think of judge, we think of harsh critique. We think of sinners in the hand of an angry God. You we go back to Edward's sermon, or we, you know, in Alabama, go to church or the devil's gonna get you. I mean, we, you know, we.

we really do not have an instant recognition of being judged by Jesus as helpful. In the same way as when you have a job evaluation, you go into it with great deal of anxiety. And sometimes the best thing somebody can say to us is, hey, you you're really blowing it here. And we really need to look at this over here, because this will help you have a better life.

And like with AA or any of these other things, and in a job evaluation when someone holds us accountable for having not done our best, it doesn't feel good, but it's good for us. It helps us to become better because truth will set us free. And Jesus has promised us that, but in the gospel narratives or the Nagamati text, there's this wonderful passage from.

the Gospel of Thomas that I love and companion to that, that the truth will set you free, but that it also will destabilize you and it will cause you to have to wrestle with things. And so for us as the followers of Jesus and Jesus judging, to see it as Jesus holding us accountable for

You call yourselves my followers and yet you're not following me. And so the place that I think we need to really pair the judgment of Jesus with is in the Garden of Gethsemane. When the apostles bail and go to sleep and Jesus comes back and says, you can't even stay awake for an hour, stay awake and pray with me. And then they go back to sleep again. And then Jesus comes back. When we put that Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane with these

Bishop DeDe (13:55.871)
with this understanding of Jesus coming back to judge us. I think we get closer to the reality of not sinners in the hand of an angry God or somebody who's gonna get us and send us to hell or someone who's gonna say you've really been a disappointment all your life, but rather a savior who says, again, love your neighbor as yourself or you won't experience love. Again.

Forgive your neighbor because in forgiving them, you will find forgiveness. I want you to be with me in paradise tonight, you know, and like it says to the sinner on the cross, always, always, always in scripture, Jesus is inviting us to a better life. So that judgment of Jesus, when we pair it with a better life, it feels more hopeful. It's like, okay, you know, help me get this right, Lord.

I still feel like I'm so burdened by my sins. I still feel like I'm so trapped in this human existence. Help me to be freed of this and to truly know that you are God and to have faith. Help me in my unbelief. And the judgment of Jesus becomes something that's more of an invitation than a damnation. It becomes something that can be maybe not great in terms of, yeah, I have been blowing it.

And I've been creating narratives that fool me into thinking I haven't been blowing it, but I really have been blowing it. But you know, right following after that moment comes that moment of release where we go.

and I let that go and I can change now. So the judgment of Jesus is an invitation to deeper relationships.

Adam Eichelberger (15:39.523)
Yeah, it kind of makes it a lot less scary, I think.

Bishop DeDe (15:42.055)
Mm-hmm. All that hell language. There was no, you know, it was a way of coercing people, but we can have better language now.

Adam Eichelberger (15:50.864)
Absolutely. And yeah, we're making the judgment part less scary. It's the invitation to change, which is great. One of the last things that kind of is standing out for me, and I want to ask this as a questioner to you first listeners, and then I'm going to ask Bishop to kind of answer it. And then maybe we can kind of hold our answers up against hers. Not that hers is better or more right than ours, but this is a conversation for us to have. Just like last week, we talked about these different images that we can place on God.

to help better understand who God is to us as individuals. There's a lot of the story of Jesus in this part of the baptismal covenant. And it talks about the birth, his suffering and dying, his resurrection, his ascension. Lister, want to ask you, and then Bishop, I want you to answer too. What part of the story of Jesus that you hear in the baptismal covenant is really resonating with you?

right now. And the reason I ask that is because ultimately, just like the title of the show, we're speaking of faith, we're talking about our faith. So which one of these things resonates with us the most? That's easiest for us to share with others.

Bishop DeDe (17:03.207)
And let me, it's a great question, and so let me read to you listener, if you don't have a Book of Common Prayer, what the bidding is. The question is, do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God? And people respond, I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born to 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 into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

So that's the whole bidding. And it does go into, if we were really expansively going over the baptismal covenant, each sentence could be a whole podcast. You know, even like the harrowing of the dead, that Jesus descends to the dead and then comes back and ascends to heaven. I can, whatever, there's no wrong answer here, listener, let me just say that. There's no, you know, this isn't a test in that way.

I really appreciate the part about Jesus descending and ascending, just the relationship between the two, the joining together of those who are farthest from God to those who are nearest to God, this expansive, I've talked about Simone Vey before, but that Jesus on the cross encompasses the full range of all of human experience from the furthest from God to the closest to God.

relation, it's not exactly the sentence, it's the understanding that God is that big. That we can never be anywhere where we're so far away from God that God isn't with us and caring about us. And that for God, what we see as a distance away from God isn't distance at all. We're still the right hand God, that both are held in this beautiful tension.

Bishop DeDe (19:14.653)
of God's expansive Almighty God being everywhere, God creator of heaven and earth. It's really back almost to the first bidding that Jesus descends to the dead, Jesus rises to the right hand of God, and all of that is encompassed in the love of God with us.

Adam Eichelberger (19:35.598)
Yeah, I mean, and that's a really great thing for me to remember because sometimes I have this tendency to like I make this is going to sound bad, but I'm going to just be honest here. Like I wind up creating different versions of Jesus and like I and like I stop a lot of times I'll stop remembering that Jesus is God and he does do these things that are totally unbelievable. Unbelievable, but

Bishop DeDe (19:49.557)
Yeah.

Bishop DeDe (20:02.837)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (20:05.657)
They're so epically crucial to me understanding that for me, I'm gonna speak for me listener, that he isn't just like a good teacher to me. Not that there's anything wrong with belief in and following good teachers, but that he is God and that he can do extraordinary things and I can place my trust in him. For me, I really think that focusing in on his birth is really important to me because it's also.

Bishop DeDe (20:14.773)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (20:24.244)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (20:33.505)
Again, there's this beautiful, totally incomprehensible dichotomy about like Jesus is God of all. He goes to the dead. I mean, in some language it says that he descends into hell and then ascends to heaven. So there's this beautiful dichotomy, but also he's a guy and we're human. And he has this relate, he puts on this relatable experience so that I can relate to God when I can't fathom.

the creator of the universe, I can fathom a person who lived a life like mine and struggled like mine and had failures and mistakes and mishaps and heartache or whatever.

Bishop DeDe (21:11.559)
Exactly. No, exactly. I mean, that's where Thomas gets into such trouble, you know, you know, what he's called doubting Thomas, which he wasn't doubting, but he so understood the human Jesus that walked with him. He couldn't conceive of God being bigger than that. He was like, I know Jesus, you know, until I see Jesus, I want to see the Jesus I've known. And then he's invited to a fuller understanding of Jesus. So I think that is such an important aspect you're bringing out here, which is there.

And I would say it, you know, these things don't sit in contradistinction to each other, even though we as humans want them to. Either Jesus is my best friend or Jesus is Lord, either Jesus is this or Jesus is that. To allow it to be that Jesus is those things, yes. And at some points, one speaks to us more than the other because in our human need and our human inability to conceive of all of it as a whole, we have on-ramps.

we can conceive of Jesus as my best friend and Jesus as God seems incomprehensible. And it has been down through the ages. It's not like it's a new thing. Like if we had been there in, you know, first century would have had this unlock. No, you had people right from the get-go. Some believe that Jesus never even ate, that he was so divine that he didn't eat or he just appeared to eat. Others had him being so human that he was, never, didn't really actually know what was going to happen next.

And then you have everything in between those two senses of the divinity of Jesus. And that is part of this, is how does that sit with you listener? For you, is it more compelling that a Jesus who is a human seeking God with you? Is it more compelling Jesus who's better and more advanced so that you're aspiring to something? All of us have a way and a need to.

understand Jesus and throughout our lives our understandings may change, may grow, may morph. I remember the first time I went to the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and went into this holy space where the, where you have Golgotha and it's enshrined now of course in a big, in a holy sepulcher, but in there there were all different variations and understandings of Christians. There were people who were

Bishop DeDe (23:37.973)
Greek Orthodox and people who were Baptist and people who were American Baptist and people who were Catholic and all these expressions of Jesus and some of them so different from one another and yet so faithfully being held. And so Jesus is, and we just seek to understand through the story of Jesus, through our own experiences.

Adam Eichelberger (24:06.254)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that for me, it's really one of the best things about this has been for me, it's helping little by little deepen my, not only my relationship with God, but my understanding of God. And that this is absolutely so vital to who we are as Christians, who we are for those of us who are Episcopalian, like why this is central to us. And for those of us who are questioning that these are really good things for us to consider.

and question and wrestle with because that's a really important part of this is that belief has room for doubts and questions.

Bishop DeDe (24:42.559)
and it's enhanced by it. you know, when I was growing up and I grew up in the Episcopal Church, but when I was growing up, you didn't want to mess up because you didn't want to go to hell or you're going to get ostracized or God was going to be mad at you or you would get punished. And this real impact of that, you know, one sermon, but sinners in the hand of an angry God that was repeated over and over this understanding of God as someone who wants to get you and you better straighten up. I think is extremely harmful.

to our ability to be in relationship with God. Because it pits us in a way that is not in scripture. Yes, there's places in scripture where Jesus holds people accountable. Yes, there's places where he says, you you brute of vipers. Yes, he tells Peter, you know, get behind me. If you're not for me, you're against me. Truth telling and boundary setting are very essential to our faith. But this concept of punishment and hell

as a motivator for relationship is just as dysfunctional in our spiritual life as it is in our personal relational life. If we're married to someone and we're threatened, you better love me or else, that's a dysfunctional relationship. Our invitation with Jesus is to be in a whole, healing, redemptive, renewing relationship and to be held accountable.

It is not possible to proclaim Jesus and harm a neighbor. It is not possible to love Jesus and do a thing. So we repent, we change our mind. It's new every morning. When we mess up, we go back to Jesus and say, I want to start over. I want to be part of what you're doing. I blew it. And my personal belief is that God is not shocked. I think God sent us Jesus because God said, you know what?

They're just not getting this. They have the prophets, they have Moses, they have Amos. They're just not getting it. I'm sending Jesus to walk among them. And then we crucified Jesus because it's what we do. And then Jesus is resurrected and then we have the post resurrection narratives and then the ascension. All through this, God is saying, I'm inviting you to relationship. I blew it.

Bishop DeDe (27:09.737)
I'm inviting you to relationship. I blew it. I'm inviting you to relationship. Eternally, never ending invitation to be healed, loved, forgiven, renewed, and empowered. New every morning, continually invited.

Bishop DeDe (27:28.639)
Well, listener, I'll tell you, this baptismal covenant, we were gonna march right through it and we're going really slowly. We're gonna go very slowly and we're gonna take our time and make sure that we talk about some things that may be empowering for you as you're speaking to others. I pass the baton to you to talk with others about what does it mean for Jesus to be Lord? What does it mean, how do you understand that Jesus is gonna judge us and how do you hold that? We can say that we think God's gonna judge us and get us.

then how do we hold that with the gospel of Jesus Christ inviting us to relationship? Where is the forgiveness of God in our own theology? To hold all of this together and to know that God loves you, God is redeeming all of us, God calls us and heals us. so speak with loved ones, speak with friends, and I encourage you to be speaking your faith and in doing so to learn our faith. What do we believe and how do we give it voice?

And so until next time, be blessed and be a blessing and we'll keep speaking. Take care.