The Baptismal Covenant: Part 4

In this conversation, Bishop DeDe continues our discussion on the Baptismal Covenant, specifically the profound impact of making a commitment to God and how it transforms one's life. She emphasizes that true north shifts from personal desires to a relationship with God, leading to a new way of being. The discussion explores the implications of faith on daily living and the importance of understanding one's purpose through a spiritual lens.

Takeaways

• When we make a commitment to God, our life shifts focus.
• Our true north becomes who God is.
• This commitment opens us up to a new way of being.
• Faith impacts our daily living significantly.
• Covenant means a commitment to change and growth.
• Understanding God reshapes our purpose in life.
• Life transformation is a result of spiritual commitment.
• True north guides our decisions and actions.
• A new way of being is possible through faith.
• Faith leads to a life filled with purpose.

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 (00:01.822)
Hey friends, welcome to the podcast, Speaking of Faith. My name is DeDe Duncan-Probe. I'm the Episcopal Bishop of Central New York, and I'm joined by Mr. Adam Eichelberger. He is our Director of Communications, and we're gonna speak about our faith. And I want to unpack that a little bit. Sometimes I have people ask me, why? Why would you do that podcast? Well, it's because I think we've lost the ability.

to speak about our faith in curious, hopeful, helpful ways with humility and honesty about what we know, about what we don't know, about what makes us uncomfortable, and about what our hopes are. So to speak about what we believe to be true is really helpful in the way that we live, because it helps us live a better life. So welcome to the podcast and to the conversation.

This conversation is meant to be open. It's meant to be sharing. And you're invited to take what we talk about and practice your own ability to speak your faith, to talk with a friend or a loved one or a neighbor and have a good conversation about what you believe in a helpful way. And so let's get into it. We've been talking about the the baptismal covenant coming from an Episcopal Church perspective. That's true.

You may be familiar with this if you're in another denomination as the Apostles Creed or, and most of our, we all have a baptismal covenant of some sort that may be differences. And the Episcopal baptismal covenant, it is our, really our commitment of faith. It's what we profess to believe. We've done a couple of podcasts. The last three, I think, if you listen to those talking about the first part of the bidding,

which is who we say God is, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. We say some things about with whom we are making this covenant. A covenant is a sacrament. It is a commitment. It is like a marriage or some other promise that's a deep covenant together that we're making where we are committing ourselves to a way of being. And so now that we've talked about who we say God is,

Bishop DeDe (02:24.328)
this being with whom we're covenanting. Now this bidding we will talk about today is where we make a pivot from talking about our relationship with God to what that means. This is the so what episode to be honest. So what does that mean for how we will live? And so this is the bidding that we are asked at this point in the baptismal covenant. Will you continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship

in the breaking of bread and in the prayers. And when we do the baptismal covenant, we answer, I will with God's help. So will you continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship? That is such an interesting invitation and question because it asks, will you be part of the ongoing revealing of God's grace in the world? Will you join with generations before?

and generations after who were seeking to profess God as we've come to understand God in Jesus Christ. So being part of and to continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship means that we're going to take part in those. We're going to be learners. We're going to receive education and take part in really building our faith. In the Christian tradition of our faith,

It is not about ascribing to a belief as much as it is about being formed by relationship and an incarnational understanding of God. And about it, if you're in with atonement theory, I'm veering a little bit into theology about a redemption of God. And both of those are about us being transformed by love, made new by love and made more whole by love. No matter what your tradition.

I think we all recognize that love is both a challenge and a hope that in our lives it adds to and emboldens our life. It also can be challenging to figure out how to love well. And so here to be continuing in the apostles teaching and fellowship is to care for one another, to grow together and to recognize that our faith is not an individual exercise.

Bishop DeDe (04:49.554)
hold our faith as an individual, we have a communal faith that we impact each other, that we are inspired and challenged and delighted and really at times can be harmed by others' belief. And here's a really good place for me to put a little asterisk and say, you know, there's a thing that's happening in our world called white Christian nationalism. And it is an assumption of Christianity into

It's like a bad mashup of taking religion and civic duty and trying to put those together. And I've said a number of times, I said at a recent convention, it's like a boathouse. It's not a great boat and it's not a great house. Although they can be fun and they can be nice in places we like to go, but in reality, the gospel of Jesus Christ is not about forming a nation. It's about forming the kingdom of God.

And so appropriating that and trying to make it into some sort of civic duty cheapens the grace of Jesus Christ. It cheapens the redemption of Jesus Christ. And I think is a sin because we are called to be people of God who love Jesus and share in the fellowship of the saints and learn about scripture and pray together and pray for our hurting world. And as Americans or Canadians or English or Italians,

We may have a lot of civic pride and want our nation to do moral and good things, but those are not the same things. Christian nationalism is a, it's really an aberration. It's really taking something from our faith. So I want to make sure that when we're speaking about taking part in the apostles teaching and fellowship, we're really demarcating that our faith journey.

is about the communion of the saints. It's about the communion of people who believe in God and believe in God differently. It's not about some sort of Borg mentality. It's about really loving God and being part of, know Adam's excited, I got in a Star Trek reference. And it is the way I'll get in a Mandalorian reference. But this is the way, is communal and we grow in our faith together.

Bishop DeDe (07:15.036)
And fellowship is about forgiveness and walking with and learning from and fellowship sounds fun and sometimes it is really fun and sometimes it's a little tough because fellowship means that we're fellows together. means sometimes we may, as St. Paul tells us, incite one another to good works. It may be iron sharpening iron. It may be that we, in fellowship with others, we realize our own failings.

So continuing the apostles teaching and fellowship means we're willing to not be the center of our own universe. And so when you think about what it's like to be in fellowship, I love to use the reference of like you get up in the morning, you think you feel great, you're feeling really positive about yourself, you're feeling really good about your day, and then you go out and you're really super annoyed by your family member.

but you're really feeling good, of course. And then you go out into the world and you're snapping at people. And all of a sudden you realize, wait a minute, I think I'm cranky. And you don't realize it until you're in relationship with somebody outside your own thought process. We need, and the apostles teaching and fellowship and being part of God's kingdom, to step out of our own self, self, self mentality and a

be aware of and open to our communal mentality, who we are together, how we are part of a bigger system, and what role that plays in helping us both be ourselves and helping us to be part of something greater than ourselves. And then, so once we've committed to being part of this community and stepping outside our own selfish needs and wants,

to be part of something bigger than ourselves, that we're willing to grow in it, we're willing to be changed by it. How often do we not really want to be changed by something? We want my way or the highway. To be part of a communal fellowship is to have humility, curiosity, to be open to being changed. And then the breaking of the bread and the prayers, that as part of this community,

Bishop DeDe (09:34.474)
There's something we do. We come together for a Eucharist or we come together to break bread, has many deep, profound meanings, not just eating ones, but we share in the feast that God prepares for us in scripture, in prayer, in fellowship, and then we pray together. And there's vulnerability in that. There's openness in that. There's a willingness to receive and to offer.

There's hospitality for other. All of these things are really important and essential aspects of our faith being whole and our faith being a healthy, living, vibrant aspect of God's kingdom or as some would say, kin-dom. So I'm gonna stop there. That's, you know.

It seems so simple when you first read the sentence, you're like, okay, the apostles teaching and fellowship, breaking bread and the prayers. That means like you're going to go to church. yeah, it does mean you're going to go to church, but more than that, it means you're going to take part in something and be part of something and you're committing to being part of it. And it's so, it's really helpful to remember the reason it says I will with God's help is we need God's help to do that.

We need God's help to follow in the apostles teaching. We need God's help to have fellowship. We need God's help to gather, to break bread, to be in the prayers. We need God's help to be open to something new. So let me bring you in, Adam, and if there's any questions that have come up, how does that sit with you? What does that thought bring up for you?

Adam Eichelberger (11:22.486)
Yeah, Bishop. And listeners, as I ask these questions, I want to again reiterate, Bishop is not claiming to have all of the answers for everybody or speak for everyone's experience. But these are just a great way for us to kind of focus in on some of these things and cue up how we can speak about these things in our own life. And so obviously, there's these these big things about like the teaching of the apostles, the breaking of the bread, fellowship prayers. And I wanted to talk, I wanted to ask a question first about

Bishop DeDe (11:31.984)
Absolutely not. No, no, no. Yes. No.

Bishop DeDe (11:40.906)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (11:52.367)
this idea of following in the tradition of the apostles. Because I think that, I mean, based on my own experience and knowledge of my Christian faith, it seems like the way that the apostles were observing and practicing the faith, this faith that Jesus handed off to us was so simple at one point and has grown and become bigger and more complex. So I guess in the lens of, as we are staring down the barrel of 2026, how

Bishop DeDe (11:54.974)
Yeah.

Adam Eichelberger (12:21.806)
Can we understand, better understand the connection of the faith that the apostles were celebrating and what they were teaching and how our modern faith experience what that looks like? Because I feel like these things can sometimes feel very distant from one another because it's so long in the past, but I also think that they could also be extremely relevant. So how can we connect to that idea of that apostolic faith that's been handed on to us?

in a way that I mean, not to be glib, but a way that is ever ancient and ever new.

Bishop DeDe (12:55.668)
Well, and that is a great question. And listener, you will have a good answer in our good way of talking about this. I do think that the hazard of humans getting involved sometimes is we want to codify things and we want to say who's in and who's out. And we want to get all feisty and try to supplant God's way with our opinion. so, you know, generally speaking, when you talk to someone,

You know, they're pretty sure that God agrees with them that something's bad or something's good or something's irritating. But the ways in which we gather and with the apostles, I think it's helpful to recognize that really there's not a big change. You the apostles would get together and have a meal and they pray together. They go to temple and pray together. They would walk a road together. They'd walk a journey together. They'd share their lives with other people. They would go on journeys together.

We all can relate to that in our own lives. And in many of our churches today, I know in the Episcopal Diocese of Central New York, we have these wonderful places where people will gather for a shared meal. And it's a small band of siblings. They get together, they love each other. When someone's sick, they take food to them. When somebody's celebrating, they attend the wedding.

They're part of community together. And whether it's in some of our larger populated churches or smaller populated churches, the relationship is the same of sharing life and sharing the journey together. Yes, food is involved. mean, the early Christians in the first century were often called those banqueting people. And one of the criticisms often laid, levied at Jesus was that

He was always kind of partying and having food fast and stuff. That is how as humans, we share life together is around a table. And, you know, there's been lots written in secular and sacred writings about what happens when we share a meal together, how we sit down and, you know, there's a vulnerability in it and there's a, the humanity of it. There's a, there's a quality in it. And so in these times,

Bishop DeDe (15:19.56)
for us to take part in community that feeds us spiritually, emotionally, know, physically, those things haven't changed very much. I think we get into trouble when we try to allow the trappings of church institution to overwhelm the basic human relationship and divine relationship to which we've been called. It's, you know, the only thing worse than, as has been said many times,

The only thing worse than organized religion is disorganized religion. hopefully, aspirationally, the organizing of the Episcopal Church or the Catholic Roman Catholic Church or Lutheran or whatever your, your faith may be is that it will help us to become better at fellow shipping with God by being together. There were made more whole.

And those times when the church is an error, that we repent together and we change and we renew because all of it is really centered on walking together, learning together, eating together, supporting one another, praying for one another, and being part of a human movement. And so I think that's so essential for all of us.

Adam Eichelberger (16:43.631)
I agree 100 % and I really love that you perfectly dovetailed into the next question that I had for you, which is you talked a lot about the emphasis of communal life in the history of the church and especially amongst the apostles. And I think that when we talk about those next two,

Bishop DeDe (16:49.834)
Yeah.

Bishop DeDe (16:54.538)
Mm.

Right.

Adam Eichelberger (17:05.007)
All right, hold on. And I think that when we talk about those next two components about fellowship and the breaking of the bread. In the world in which we live right now, and we a lot of times we throw around words like post-COVID, I think that we are struggling mightily with things like fellowship and celebrating Eucharist in this kind of like post-COVID world. We talked a lot about it.

Bishop DeDe (17:21.514)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (17:32.162)
at our recent diocesan convention about this epidemic of loneliness and this feeling of disconnection that so many people are feeling right now. What does it mean for us to extend what fellowship looks like in light of the baptismal covenant beyond like a Sunday gathering or beyond like a Bible study, which none of those things are bad. Allow me to reiterate like those things are not bad things, but how do we extend beyond

Bishop DeDe (17:38.78)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (18:01.055)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (18:01.423)
Can we extend beyond with fellowship and can we extend beyond with things like the breaking of the bread?

Bishop DeDe (18:07.474)
again, listener, you know, I encourage you, urge you, invite you to be thinking about how, you know, how might you respond? just so you know, I don't know what Adam is going to ask me. So these are, you know, this is off the cuff, which, so what would you say? That's why this podcast is about speaking of faith is it shouldn't be rehearsed because we are in situations in our life where we have a 30 minute window to go do some research to then respond.

All of us speak of our faith in the messiness and haphazardness of life. And sometimes we misspeak and sometimes we get it right, but all of us together on this journey. So with that, the way we extend it is really to think about for too long, well, let me back up making this very live, for too long.

We have envisioned church life and the breaking of the bread happening inside a building at an altar with people in robes and candles where it's very come into a specific place and enjoy this fellowship. And you brought up the pandemic. So it's, this is a great time to bring that in. One of the gifts of the pandemic was that it pushed us away from that model a lot. And we've

We, you many people will say we're struggling because we can't get back to that model. I think we're hopefully going to move beyond that model. Um, I, I think the best Easter that I've ever experienced is always going to be Easter, 2020, which listener, many of you just thought what, that was a terrible Easter. There weren't any trumpets. didn't have any. Yeah, that's right.

Because the resurrection of Jesus Christ came to our homes. It came to us in isolation, came to us in fear, came to us in a time of destabilization. And it came to us in a way where the question we had was what happened? What are we gonna do now? And how could this possibly be okay? Which is exactly how the apostles felt at the moment of Easter, the first Easter.

Bishop DeDe (20:22.306)
What is going on here? Where is my Jesus? And Jesus comes to us in our hard times, in our darkest times, and with love and mercy and calling us into communion. And so on that Easter we gathered, if you're watching this on YouTube, if you're listening to this on the radio, much like we're gathering here. I'm picturing in my mind you are driving your car back or forth to work or to where you're going.

you're at home listening to this on your headphones, wherever you are, we're in our lives listening to something, being part of a moment together and sharing. That is the fellowship of the apostles. That is breaking bread together. We're talking about our faith. We're opening up a conversation about what heals and renews and delights us and challenges us. And that is a spiritual meal in of itself.

Task for the church today is to recognize that it's sacred and wonderful and beautiful what happens on Easter morning in a church with the trumpets and the choir and the gathering and people in there, you know, dressed up in their finest, but not to miss that that's also beautiful what happens when we feel that we're cut off and isolated and confused. And we feel that moment of that we're not alone.

that wherever you are right now that you are loved and beloved by God, that you're part of something bigger and something that's stronger than the challenge that's before you, that you're part of something that no matter how much you may feel cut off or that you've lost, that God is always with you renewing and emboldening you with a community of faith. And so that power is extraordinary.

And to recognize when we are around, when two or three are gathered, when we are celebrating the Eucharist of God, that the sacred remembering, the anamnesis of a Eucharistic feast, means that at the time we're gathered around that table, it's time collapses and the apostles are gathered with Jesus and the people in 2030 and 2050 and 2150 are gathered with Jesus. That this collapse of time happens

Bishop DeDe (22:44.488)
that when we remember, we become part of, and the people who've gone before become part of us. Every Eucharist is populated not just by the people who were there, but by people we love but see no longer, by people we don't even know yet, who haven't even been born yet, that we are part of the fellowship of the apostles, which is never ending and never beginning, this eternal nature of God.

We're part of a hymnody of love that is that large. It's extraordinary when you think about it. And it is so restorative.

Adam Eichelberger (23:22.191)
100 % and it's really good. It's really good reminder for me as somebody who comes from a background with a lot of as I like to say as a joke smells and bells. There's a lot of pomp and circumstance in the in in Yeah, and it's then and there's nothing wrong with that stuff and I think it's hard for some of us to look back on a season like Easter 2020 and see the beauty in it. But in reality,

Bishop DeDe (23:33.392)
Mm hmm. Love, love that. Yeah, it's nice. Yeah.

Adam Eichelberger (23:50.157)
It goes right back to that first question I asked you about the apostolic nature of the church because in Jesus's time there was I mean like there wasn't live streaming don't get me wrong but also there wasn't high church and there wasn't sensors and smoke and organs and trumpets and bells there was these very simple gatherings of people who had a lot of questions and a little bit of doubt and a little bit of fear and that does tie us back to that which is just

chef's kiss. the last question I kind of had on my mind and listener, I hope that maybe this resonates with you a little bit. We have talked about prayer on this podcast. In fact, we have a whole episode about it that you can go back and watch or listen to. the question I have about prayer in the context of the baptismal covenant is what does corporate prayer look like outside of

Bishop DeDe (24:20.426)
No.

Adam Eichelberger (24:45.496)
Again, it's kind of similar to the last question, but outside of the church walls, but also like how can communal prayer in our everyday lives sustain us as we go through our day to day, because I think it's really easy for us to focus in on personal prayer. How am I praying at home? Where am I finding God in my own personal journey? But this baptismal covenant is a reminder, like you said, Bishop, that we are called to be in community.

And that prayer should, I think, be a part of that communal life. So how do we better tap into that communal prayer life in our day to day?

Bishop DeDe (25:22.922)
Oh, another good, you know, these are good. Uh, so listener, what, what, want to give you a minute to think about how you might answer that question and what it taps in to for you.

And it really fundamentally, I think, or foundationally comes back to what we believe prayer is. Why do we pray? What is prayer? What is accomplished with prayer? And there's many answers for that and many different aspects and facets to what prayer is and what we're doing when we pray. Praying as a community, individually and collectively, is when we all are focused on bringing

either something before God or some or got into something. And when you think about, like, let's use the example, you're going into work and a coworker has is having a hard time. And there may be times in your work where you could say to the coworker, would you like to go sit down and pray for a minute? But more likely that would not be one of the things that someone would do. But when you're at your desk to take a moment and pray for them.

to hold that before God for them and to honor the person's integrity of whatever their faith tradition may be, but to pray for them is inviting God into our world and aligning our thoughts with God's thoughts where maybe as we're praying we realize, know, I'm concerned about that person, but I haven't done anything to offer to help. I haven't, you know, asked if they'd like a cup of cold water or.

You know, hey, I know that you're really struggling. Would you like for me to help with something? Or, just wanted you to know, I really appreciate the good work you're doing or something that's encouraging to the person that they would find encouraging. When we pray as the community of God, I sometimes think about all at the same time that we may be praying. There's other people who are praying, praying for refugees, praying for LGBTQ plus AI siblings.

Bishop DeDe (27:33.198)
praying for people who are isolated alone, praying for people in need. And in doing so, one, are holding people before God's love and care and mercy, which is real thing. But also in saying those prayers, are being transformed by thinking of other people and suddenly feeling inspired to make a phone call or write a letter or take a meal to someone's home or be more compassionate to the person next to them.

all of us engaging with the Holy Spirit in prayer, all of us joining together with the apostles and praying for this hurting world, that it is transformative for us and for the people around us. It will change the very nature of what's happening. I don't know, listener, if you've had this experience, but when you're somewhere and you're really annoyed and you feel really agitated and you just sit in your car for a minute, I guess I'm big on cars today, but you sit in your car for a minute and you think,

and you pray, and then when you open that car door, you're gonna be different than you would have been if you hadn't prayed before you opened that car door. You're gonna have a different capacity. You may still be aggravated, but you'll still be annoyed, but you're gonna be more aware of the wholeness of who you are as a person, your faith and the thing that's scaring you and making you angry. so prayer together,

to think about the prayers of the people more expansively. I think all of this conversation we're having today is about opening it up to it. It's not just the things we always, we always kind of make our God box smaller and smaller and smaller. I don't know if you've heard that expression, but we kind of reduce God down in our lives to Sunday mornings we go to church and the rest of the week we go it alone. But more and more as people of faith and when we...

make this commitment, this covenant with God. What this covenant is saying is, you know what? My faith's gonna be bigger than just an hour on Sundays. My faith is gonna be about gathering. My faith is gonna be about offering. My faith is gonna be about living with. My faith is gonna be about doing something. And I wanna close with, I've been talking a lot lately and lot of people have about resiliency in this time and resistance. As we're recording this podcast, The Government to Shut Down,

Bishop DeDe (29:58.724)
There's conversations about snap ending, there's conversations about people who are furloughed, who are not, who are struggling. There's a lot of hurt and there's a lot of confusion and there's a lot of separation in our world. But when we make a commitment to God and this covenant, it means that our life is going to shift its focus. Our true north is no longer what I want or what we like or what we demand, but our true north becomes

who God is and our relationship with God and it opens us up to a new way of being. And that new way of being takes in the fullness of God's mercy in this time. so resistance and resiliency come when, and we are part of that, when we know what we stand for, we know who we are and we have sustenance for what we're facing. So I encourage you listener,

whatever may be true in your life and whatever may be happening for you, that your faith and sharing your faith is a place you go for sustenance, for the energy to be resistant to what you need to resist, to be resilient in the things you need to be resilient, so that you know who you are and that you're ready for the day. And speaking of faith is how we do these things. And the baptismal covenant is the commitment we make to be

about these things.

So I appreciate your time today. I'm going to pass the baton to you. This is your opportunity to go and to speak about your faith. What does it mean to you to pray for the world? What does it mean to you to expand the, the, the breaking bread with all the community of God? And how is it that we, as part of the apostles teaching and fellowship are continuing to share the good news of Jesus Christ to the serving world? May you be blessed and be a blessing.

Bishop DeDe (31:54.834)
and I look forward to speaking soon. Take good care.