Ep. 18 - Seek, Serve, Love: Renewing Our Baptismal Vows

You're listening to the Average Piscopalian podcast where two average Episcopal sisters fangirl over the baptismal covenant and other liturgical masterpieces in the Book of Common Prayer. I'm Annie and I'm Kate and this is episode 18 Seeks of Love Remewing our Baptismal Vows. In today's episode we discuss the many ways in which baptism calls us into a new life with Christ and we get way too giddy about renewing our own baptismal vows. Be prepared for a giggles. So Annie today was my first baptism in like two or three years or something like. Oh wow. Like it has been an inconceivable amount of time since I last saw a baptism in church. And let me tell you, I think that after all of the times that we've talked about baptism just like in recent weeks or the times that we've discussed in a recent podcast, I just like went full on into it and my heart was so full the entire time. I was just ready. My soul was ready to watch like a small child like take his finger and put it in the oil that was on his forehead and then like taste it. He pulled a lot of antics today. It was cute. He like went back in for another down. Oh my gosh. The priest. He was also as intimate as I was. So yeah. I love it. I mean I think that baptism has come up right? I think we talked about it last time just in our ketchup session. We talked about it with Charlotte and we also discussed some of the elements of the baptismal covenant in our Incarnational Theology episode seven, which is one of my favorites. But I think that when I was younger and I saw that the baptismal font was set up, I was like, oh no, it's going to be a long service. Like this is not what I have. It was a bad sign. Proud participation. I know. I was like, oh here we go. But now as an adult, I have such a greater appreciation of it. Like I just embrace it so much. And the kids' antics certainly help with that. Yeah. For sure. I also as an adult have grown into a baptism fan. I feel like it also just as something about being like an episcopal adult is just like the baptismal font comes out and everybody's like, oh there's a baptism today. Oh my gosh. There's a baptism today. Oh I can't wait. Oh what a cute kid. Like I feel like everybody really like gathers around and bans together for it. And I really like that because it's just another symbol of the supportive environment that we're hoping to foster for the kid as they get baptized. Do you think I'm trying to just think about this right now because there's lots of things I think you and I have both grown into into our time of being a episcopalian of things that either didn't mean much before or annoyed us before or we just breeze through before that as we grow older we appreciate more. I mean is that just called being an adult and maturing in faith? Oh for sure. The post communion prayer. Let me tell you when I was a kid I just wanted to get out of there to go eat like powdered doughnut you know but I love the post communion prayer now. And also wait another thing is I remember we were talking about our favorite parts of the liturgy during our very first like liturgy episode and we both said we love the prayers of the people. I very specifically remember like as a teen or something like that being like oh if we do a baptism that means we get out of saying the prayers of the people because I was just like annoyed by praying for others. I don't know I was a weird teen. You just want to get out of there at that point. I mean but beyond just that I mean maybe that's the definition of being an adult in many ways is you just come to appreciate small little things like having when they serve bread for free at a restaurant it's like the highlight of my week or you know just time alone in a car or like just random things like that you just come to embrace more as an adult or at least hopefully you do. Hopefully those things don't make you grumpy or but if you're on the right path you can live more into the things that were maybe just mundane before. I just done like the ongoing everyday life of adulthood. Baptisms are just always a bright spot. Yeah. Mixing things up and we're seeing like a new person come into the church and it's a new kid usually usually like 95% of the time like a brightness in their eyes and they try to grab the flame on the candle. It's just all fun and little things you know. So Katen I today are going to talk about specifically the baptismal covenant. So we'll dance around some of the other baptism elements of you know what's going on in a baptism, what Episcopalians believe about baptism but specifically we want to hone in on that covenant, that proportion of the liturgy because it says a lot more about our faith in general and it has a lot offer for those of us who've been you know baptized for a long time for decades now. So I know a lot of our listeners are either like new Episcopalians or some people who who are not. So for our new listeners who are new to the church hopefully this will help kind of paint a picture of what some of these things mean and hopefully it'll help you embrace those baptisms with a little more enthusiasm but I think for those of us who have been baptized you know since we were little babies there's a lot to learn and unpack here as well. For sure. So before we get started let's just do a little bit of Episcopalian baptism 101 if you will of just what does baptism mean to Episcopalians you know what role does it play in our lives and I had to go back to the books on this one I went back into our your faith your life book which is our confirmation book that we read which great book it's just such a practical book it has so many different things laid out really practically but the baptism is one of the seven sacraments so in the Episcopal Church we have seven sacraments baptism Eucharist confirmation marriage reconciliation, unction and ordination and we're not going to talk about what they all mean because that is a separate episode but in general sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace so it's like an outward ritual that's kind of explaining or symbolizing something that's happening internally and I even want to be careful saying like ritual because it's not just something you do to commemorate something like we believe that there's actually something spiritually happening inside of you when you go through these different sacraments. Yeah and ritual also implies like regularity and these sacraments are not regular undertakings. The Eucharist is the only one that's regular. Yeah yeah things like baptism or confirmation they only happen once. Yeah one time deal. I'm trying to think of a good analogy of like an outward visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace that someone who's like secular can relate to. It's I think it's a tough concept to bring into secular terms because it is supposed to come from something like very deep within you from a very spiritual place and I even remember in like history courses people still had a really tough time understanding sacraments this I mean I did a whole history course on the Anglic like the Reformation and the origins of the Anglican Church and two d'ards do it Britain and the professor was you know explaining these and giving definitions but it's still a hard thing to wrap your brain around and it's me I am people I have a hard time understanding the sacraments. Yeah to I remember mom trying to explain them to me after we went to like a Catholic wedding or something she's like they take the sacrament of marriage very seriously in the Catholic church and stuff like that and I was like what is sacrament? Yeah I guess that's one that everyone can that's one that everyone has heard of marriage like you know people get married that are religious so that is probably the closest thing people can relate to is outward an outward sign like a wedding is an outward sign of an inward change which is that you're committing to this person for life. So maybe that's one thing. You were actually like maybe that's the sacrament that's most accessible to non-Christian people. But regardless baptism is first on that list because it's typically the first thing that happens in a Christian's journey depending on their path there's lots of different paths and ways to get there but it's one that we can partake in when we're very young and baptism is pretty critical because as I was doing research for this and of course looking on our favorite source the Piscopillian Church website and also in the BCP they describe baptism as foundational for all participation and ministry in the church. So it's kind of like it's your entry into beginning your life of faith in the church and yeah it's pretty critical it's like the first step basically of becoming a Christian and becoming an adopted child of God and so in baptism we are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ's own forever which is what they say in the liturgy and so that's kind of the whole purpose of baptism is to mark that commitment. I don't even want to say commitment to faith because that's more confirmation. It means that you're becoming that adopted child of God and it's just an outward sign of the inward grace that God gives. It's such a complicated thing. to be honest. I know for sure because there are so many things where I'm like, "Oh, that could be doubly said for confirmation," or that could be said for something else, you know. But I feel like what truly sets baptism apart, it is hard to explain in words, most of the time. And also there's just like, just as there are with many major elements of Christianity, baptism does for some people have like a very large stigma around it. But more on that later, we'll get into some of those things at the end. So I guess to go into the practical elements of baptism and what happens throughout the course of a baptism, there's a lot of words and talking in an episcopal church before the baptism even occurs. Lots of call and response, lots of Q&A. And so here's kind of a breakdown of all of that talking because the focus of today isn't necessarily trying to understand and break down the sacrivent of baptism, it's more on the covenant and the words we say because that's what we want to dive into. So there's pretty much four sections in the words. This reminds me of Kate when we were little and we'd watch old movies. And you know, old movies, they would do the credits at the beginning. We called those the words. I think Steve even went so far as to call them the letters. If there was, when were the letters stopped coming? Yeah, you would always say. Well, when dad would make a swatjold movie, so we were like, the words, like, let's get these words over with to be concerned the movie. That's kind of what's happening here. Let's get these words over with so we can start the baptism. Except we want you to pay attention because they're fun words. So there's kind of four sections. First is the presentation and examination. Next is what we have deemed the baptismal line of questioning, which is not an official term and is not written down in the BCP. That sounds just like very like police interrogation kind of. It kind of is, to be honest. A bit. We question things and we question you. Yeah. So. And then you get into the baptismal covenant as the third element before you get into the prayers for the candidates. And all that happens before the baptism even occurs. So we're going to go through those four things kind of quickly. Those four different categories talk about what each of them mean and then we'll dive more into that third section, which is the covenant. So for the presentation and examination, we've deemed this kind of like the walk out song of the baptism. You know, we introduce the batter and otherwise known as the person who's about to be baptized, the candidate for baptism and are basically like, here's this person and we present them to receive the sacrament baptism. Yep. And if they're an adult, we say, is this something you want to do? And if it's a parent of a child that's getting baptized, we say, are you committed to this? It's basically like, you're all ready for this. So that's the presentation and examination. I really, I bet if a priest is listening, they're like, you guys have never butchered anything more true. That's just an average breakdown. Okay. Then we get into the, what we have called the baptismal line of questioning. Yeah. Again, not the official term. I'm not a parent or like a god parent or anything, but I feel like this, this must be like a really good parental reset in a lot of ways because I think in the stress of raising a child, there's just so many decisions to make and people are judging you no matter what you do. And I, it seems like a very overwhelming thing that I, yeah, I don't know. I feel like I can't say a word about parenting, of course, because I am not one myself, but I would imagine it kind of helps bring parents back to the basics in a lot of way. This line of questioning. Yeah. This line of questioning is we're calling it. It's like six or seven questions where there's two main purposes of the questioning. And it's basically, like you said, it's a reset. And it says, it's a call to action in two ways. First is turn away from Satan. And then second is turn towards Jesus. So it's kind of starting off the baptism by saying, okay, the walkout song, here's the candidate, you know, you're ready for this. And then it gets into, okay, it's time. Are you ready to turn away from Satan? And this is all those questions that are answered with. I renounce them. So do you renounce evil? Do you renounce Satan? You know, do renounce the dark side of the force? And then the question is going to turn towards Jesus. So will you do accept him as your Lord and save her? You know, you ready to turn away from the dark side and head towards the light? And that's kind of the thing that leads us then into the more tangible baptismal covenant. But before we get into the baptismal covenant, we have one of my favorite parts ever of baptism. So this is, I'm going to stand up and say, this is my favorite part, Kate, I'm I'll wait for you to tell us what's your favorite part as we talk through it. But my favorite part is at the end of those questions about turning away from Satan and turning towards Christ. The celebrant turns towards the congregation and says, will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ? And the response is, we will. We will. It is just like the best part. I don't know why everyone almost shouts it. Like it's so loud. Everyone goes, we will. And it's just so cool. It's like the first moment out of many moments in the baptism and the baptismal liturgy where the crowd, the congregation really gathers around in like almost rallies. It's like a rally in support of this person that's being baptized. And I think it's really cool that the congregation in general plays a role in the baptismal liturgy because although there are there are many faiths that see faith as a you and Jesus thing of like, you know, oh Jesus and I are, you know, our relationship is strong. So he knows who I am. I know who he is. The Episcopal Church, as you heard in Charlottes episode, is very much about the community and that you are part of a body of Christ, a greater body. It's not just about you and Jesus. It's about everyone in Jesus. And so I just love the act of participation of the crowd. You know, after they they've said, yes, I'm not into Satan. I'm into Jesus. The crowd gets to say, and we will do all of our power, do everything in our power to support this person's journey towards Jesus. So I, let's like my favorite part. Yeah, it's a statement of community. It's a dedication, open dedication to the communal element of walking with Christ. I also love that part. There's so many parts of the liturgy that are mumbled. This is not one of them ever. Yeah, nobody mumbles this part. I mean, it's kind of hard to mumble, we will, but I agree. One thing that's cool about it is that's almost one way that we can check ourselves as a church is if we're following that question. You know, will you who wins these vows do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ? So are we supporting each other in our life in Christ? Are we supporting our community? It's kind of like that's what a church is for is supporting each other in our lives in Christ. And so that's a good way to measure how well we're actually doing as a church is if we're following this thing that we so enthusiastically respond with we will. Just as it's a reset for the parents and the God parents, so be like, okay, this is the thing that's important here is that we're bringing up this child in the way of Christ. For us, it's another, you know, pause and re-examination of like this is what's important about being part of a church. Just in general, it's this moment right here. Yeah, it gives me goose bumps. I know why are we? Chills just thinking we're in a giddy mood today. We're like really into baptism today. Yeah, no, I think it honestly, I saw baptism today. I'm really hyped right now, y'all. Speaking of re-examination, the third part is the baptismal covenant itself. And this is where the whole church goes back and like renews their own baptismal vows together. And I love this, that every time we bring someone new into the community, we go back and remember our very own entrance into the community ourselves. We go back and even though, you know, we're not infants getting dumped in water anymore, that never means that this is over. And I love that we all go back and do this altogether again. For sure. And more on that later, because that is the main content of this episode. So, third is that baptismal covenant. And then the last thing, the last part of the words, as you will, is the prayers for the candidates. So before that, that actual baptism occurs, we pray for the candidates as a congregation. The title this one pretty much explains it. This is one, the congregation prides for the candidates. But once again, this is where it's really only the first section, which is that presentation of the candidates. And then that baptismal line of questioning. But then the congregation is a really part of the rest of the service. It's kind of a whole church body experience. So at the end, before the person gets baptized, the congregation will pray for that person's faith journey, basically. So really cool. So let's get into what we're here to talk about today, which is that baptismal covenant in the middle. What is a covenant? Here we go. It's definition time. Oh yeah, you know it. So like I mentioned our confirmation book called Your Faith, Your Life has a really good explanation of this. I think that as a society, we don't really hear about covenants that often outside of a religious context. In today's society, it's all about contracts and contract negotiation, treaties and yeah. Treatises. Nobody does just a good old covenant these days. No, what happened to the good old covenant? Well, I think that because we're not using that term commonly these days as we've established, the tendencies to think of a covenant or to have our understanding of a covenant be that of a contract. But that's not the case. They are not the same. A contract is like a paper design, whereas a covenant is kind of freely entered into by two parties who promise to be faithful to each other. A good example of this is that contracts are meant to ensure a mutual agreement of aligned views or aligned actions. Right. When I buy a house and I sign a contract to buy a house, I'm just we are trying to reach a mutual agreement as the buyer and the seller as to the price that I am going to pay. So we're aligning our views and sometimes compromising to meet in the middle, right. Aligning our views and actions. Whereas covenants are not about aligning your views and actions and then signing off on it, covenants are meant to just transform the parties that are involved. So the covenant is not like a sign off that you have the acceptable views or that, you know, you're agreeing to do something like you're committing and signing a contract that this is how things are going to go. It's more just the confirmation that you're entering into a true relationship with God and you're starting you're committed to that journey of transformation that the transformation is going to start happening in you. I mean, somebody who works for a law firm. Oh, true. I should have had you read contracts contracts and retainers. You know, it's it's very much just all about like two parties agreeing to do something or agreed to not do something or. Yeah, it's just coming to some sort of mutually beneficial sometimes compromise in some way. And it definitely is kind of entered into in a way that takes emotion out of it. But I think covenants are actually quite emotional in nature, which is what makes them so great. It's like it's a spiritual contract almost, but I also feel using the word contract is just putting it in terms that only are like Western capitalist brains can understand so much more than that. But yeah, in order to truly get it, like sometimes we do need more terms that we're familiar with on the day to day basis. I have to be careful though, because I think there are some churches where you have to sign a piece of paper of like this. This is what I believe in order to join the church. And so I do think it's important to keep that split between contracts and covenants because that never happens in the physical church. You get baptized, you can get confirmed. But you never have to sign a piece of paper that yeah, I'm signing off that these are all of my quote unquote acceptable views that I hold. And this is now what I have to believe it, you know what I'm saying? It's less so about signing off on stuff and more so about the beginning of your transformation. Yes, precisely. So we all say this together. We are reminded of our of our covenant when we renew our baptismal vows in the middle of the baptism. So the lead into this goes, let us join with those who are committing themselves to Christ and renew our own baptismal covenant. So this is just inherently linking us to the candidate for baptism by us to the congregation, the people witnessing it. Yeah, this person is about to take this major step in their faith journey. He was about to enter into our community and take this journey alongside us and inherently linked with us. We are, you know, binding ourselves together. It's quite intense actually if you think about it. And really beautiful actually. What do you think that word renew means in this context? To me, it renew implies that like it never ran out. It's never like, oh, we hit the expiration date, you know. I don't know, you could, you could think of it like that. But I think it just kind of means like refresh in a way. Baptism is such a major force in the process of a faith journey that I think we all need a reminder. I also see it as a chance to an opportunity for self-examination. Not that this is what it's exactly supposed to be, but sometimes I feel this way. As I'm repeating the covenant, it sometimes gets me to just think about, okay, am I doing this thing? Like, am I committed to this stuff? Am I taking these actions? I mean, it's meant to be a test or a chance to measure yourself and how quote unquote, well you're doing because it's not what it's about. But it is an opportunity for self-examination and a little bit of internal reflection too. Yeah, I mean, baptism is just such a major part of being a Christian. Like, don't you want that, that, yeah, that renewal to be refreshed. Yeah, to be refreshed. I was about to say refreshment, I don't know what's going on in the correct word here. But don't you want those donuts and coffee? Oh, yeah. Don't you want that refreshment? Oh, yeah, no, don't you, you want to never forget that? You know what? Yeah, that's true. To be reminded of it. Yeah. So the way that the covenant is structured is there are eight questions. Like we said, big, Episcopalins are big, Colin responds people. So it's eight questions, the first three questions, it's split into two sections. The first three questions are about the Nicene Creed or the Apostles Creed. And then the last five questions are about taking action. So quickly to kind of go through those first three, we're not going to read it word by word. But all of those three questions begin with, do you believe? So while we said you don't have to sign that paper, sign that contract to confirm that this is what you believe, this is kind of as close as you're going to get in the Episcopal church to a statement of belief. And I think we've talked about this before on the podcast. But if you're looking for what to Episcopalins believe, this is pretty much it. Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Jesus Christ? The son of God? And do you believe in the Holy Spirit? So there's three questions for each piece of the Trinity. And so that's how the covenant begins is just confirming those basic tenants of belief. Any thoughts on these first three questions? Absolutely. I think that it, I mean, it is something that we say every Sunday. So this is kind of the starter pack to it all once again. As here's just like the fundamental tenants of being part of the Christian faith. And just like everything else you said about the Nicene Creed, we go back through those because they're just that important. And then we have those last five questions. And this is what Charlotte's son was talking about. If you listen to that episode, Charlotte told this great story where her son was witnessing a baptism at a non-denominational church. And what did he say? He said like they asked her if she believed in God, but they didn't ask her what she was going to do about it. And we're just to live by literally words to live by. So these last five questions, and it's kind of cool that that's a majority of the questions. So if there's eight questions, the majority are spent on what are you going to do about it? And so these last five questions also kind of serve as a guide of how to live out your faith. So let's go through those five questions together and have some conversation. Yeah. And let's focus on the verbiage there too. We love some action verbs. Yeah. Good action verb. Yes. So the first question of the five is will you continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship and the breaking of the bread and the prayers? I also before we get into that question, the response to this is I will with God's help. And I want to talk about that because the answer to all these questions is I will with God's help and I freaking love it. It's not I will. It's I will with God's help. And it just recognizes that we are not like our actions are not enough to sustain us. And you know, they're not enough. We can't just do everything on our own. It's by grace and with God's help that you're able to do these things. And so I love that in response to all these questions, we get to say I will with God's help. It shows how God is linked into all of this just in every single way. This isn't something that yeah, that we do on a road. You're not alone as you're trying to do these things. So anyway, I mean, these are big tasks. Yeah, I know. So it is quite nice to have God's help along the way. Just say literally will you continue continuing the apostles teaching no big deal. Will you continue the work of the 12 disciples? No biggie. Yeah, no biggie. Will you continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship in the breaking of the bread and in the prayers? This is like five in one this first question because the first one is continuing the apostles teaching. which does that mean to follow the Apostles teachings or to continue to teach as the Apostles did. This is, it like calls back to the early days of Christianity when people were just like meaning secretly in each other's houses. And it was just like so dependent on the communal part of it because it was still like a sprouting religion. I don't know why sprouting came to my image. I like it. It's very early stages still just coming out of the seed. And it was just so based on community and fellowship and keeping the thing going. Yeah, and keeping it, keeping it alive. And it took the work of like individuals really to keep it going and growing during that time. And so I think if you start to see things through that mindset of it still takes every individual to keep the body of Christ moving and growing and evolving. I don't know. It comes with a lot more responsibility. I'll say that the feeling of responsibility is augmented by with God's help. Yeah, it is possible. So, but it focuses on both fellowship and on the teachings and on the prayers so that you're right. There are a couple of different parts of it here. Oh my gosh. I don't know why. I got a little emotional when you were talking about that when you were explaining that. Because it makes it so cool. It makes it so cool. It's like we're part of this thing that it's dependent on all of us. And not that that puts the weight of the world on your shoulders. Like Christianity. Christianity survival is dependent on you. No, no, no way. You get to play a role. You get to play a role in this giant tapestry of a historical journey that people have passed down through generations. And it's very, very cool that you get to be a part of it. But I love the breakdown of these things too because it doesn't just say will you continue teaching what the apostles taught. It says teaching and fellowship. So time together, time together is Christians. The breaking of the bread so that can mean the Eucharist and also can mean just sharing meals and more fellowship together and then the prayers. And that's kind of what the definition of Christian community looks like. That's kind of how I'm seeing this first question is will you continue? Will you help the Christian community, the body of Christ to just continue? Yeah. Praying together, examining the teachings together, enjoying time together. And it's all big parts of Christian life. So I guess shortening this one down is just like, are you going to be a part of Christian life? Mm-hmm. So awesome. Why do I have chills? Yeah. The best part of being baptized, honestly, we have to do Christian life altogether. This is so silly. I'm like, I have chills. We're just, we're talking about the baptismal covenant. I'm like, wow. Okay. Will you the second question of five second action question? Will you persevere in resisting evil? And whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord. Heavy. The action verpure being persevere, meaning that it's going to be hard. That there's going to be a lot of challenges. I know the first one's like, will you keep spending time together? Break that bread. You go to the potlux. And in this one's like, that was the fear in resisting Satan. I know. Is like, do you want to eat chili together? And in this one's like, will you stop saying? We want from zero to 100 real quick. But it's all part of it. I would point out there's three action verbs in this one. So there's it's persevere, repent, return. And that's kind of the cycle of Christian life. And I love how it also doesn't say and if you fall into sin, it says, whenever. Yeah, whenever you fall into sin. Guess what? Welcome to life. It's going to happen. Yep. It's going to. I've yet to meet someone who it has not happened to. But then it gives you a way forward, a pattern to follow in that cycle of persevering, doing your best to resist evil. And whenever you do fall into sin, repent and return, repent and return. And that's kind of really the cycle of life is just repent and return. And not just repent too. It's the next part of the perseverance is that you have to just take the steps to come return to the straighteneropath. Yeah. Yeah. So good. So good. This is good stuff. The third question. Yes. Will you proclaim by word and example the good news, good news capitalized of God and Christ. This one makes Episcopalians a little itchy. Evangelism. And we've spent a fair amount of time talking about this topic as well. Proclaiming by word and example. I think we've both made it very clear what our opinions are on the proclaiming by word. But I love the proclaim by example. Because if the question about continuing in the apostles teaching and fellowship was talking about what we're doing within the community, this one is a little bit more outward facing. This is just how are you going to walk through the world at this point? What kind of example are you going to be? What are you going to do with your actions? Now this is another reason why I just I just love that the baptismal covenant isn't all about just like, ah, what do you believe in? What do you believe in the whole time? This is the what are you going to do about it? It's an action plan. Like if you're someone who loves to have an action plan or, you know, next steps walking away from a meeting, these are your next steps. I just have to say that I know really, I just have to say that we can't shy away from the proclaim by word. And I really think that this does not mean standing on a street corner proclaiming the word. I think it just means you what you fully caught me trying to skip. Oh, I sensed it. I was trying to dodge it. You're real and be back in here. Well, this is what Drew talked about, you know, in his episode of like Episcopalians, we shy away from evangelizing because it's something that has burned so many people and we don't need to repeat this. Like you said, we've talked about it over and over. But it is an our covenant that we do need to proclaim by word. And that doesn't mean that every human interaction you have is a chance to tell them about Christ. That's not what it means. It just means that your words and your example point towards God. You know, yes, it's not just about being kind and, you know, serving at the local food pantry. It's your words and your example. So words and actions both proclaim God and Christ. Yes. Okay. Fourth question. Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons loving your neighbor as yourself? I will with God's help. So three action verbs in that one. Seek, serve, love. That's like I kind of want that to be a on a t-shirt. Yeah, the new live laugh love is actually seek, serve, love. Literally, yeah, put it on a piece of wood and some cursive and salad at home goods. Seek, truly though. Seek, serve, and love. And kind of in that order, right? So seek means that you're actively seeking it out. You're not just, oh, loving the people that are convenient to me, loving the people that are easy to love, loving the person that I gave birth to, loving the person that I married. It's seek, seek out Christ in all persons. Wow. Like what a statement Christ is in all persons. So seek Christ, look for Christ in all people, which what a counter cultural thing that is, I mean, we love to write people off or make assumptions about the people, God people off, whatever. And so for your approach to human interaction to be I am seeking Christ in this person, no matter if they are the most annoying person I work with or you know, the person that's being rude to me, I'm seeking Christ in that person and I'm serving Christ in that person. Super punk rock. So yeah, really another tough one. I mean, we didn't say this list of action verbs. It's going to be easy. No, we got a persevere here people. Yes. And then the loving your neighbor as yourself is a call back to the most the second most important commandment. Oh, we've all actually got a reference to the two commandments just directly right here. You know, what do you mean God is what a loving God is the seeking and serving Christ. Oh, true. Yeah. Yeah. In a way, because I think the two are of course an extricably linked. And then yeah, the loving your neighbor as yourself. This is like directly quoting Jesus. Him basically saying, this is the thing that I need you to do. This is the most important question. Yeah. Yeah. First. Yeah. This is our mission statement. Yeah. Yeah. Seek serve love, baby. I need a throat below. The last question. Will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being? (crow cawing) - Mic drop. Yeah. Boom pow. I love how we have to bring up justice like in these questions. All things considered, the baptismal covenant isn't super, super long. So the fact that we've got justice and peace thrown in here already, like that just goes to show how high they are on the Christian totem pole of priorities. And we talked, yeah, so there's two, kind of two halves to this, although of course they're related, strive for justice and peace among all people. And then the last part being respect the dignity of every human being. I wanna talk about something that I was discussing with my friend, Haley, which is the idea of justice and compassion on a macro scale versus a micro scale. And I think that we were talking about in the context of generations. So Gen Z being a lot more compassionate on a macro scale. Like that's one of kind of the points of pride for Gen Z people is that they have that compassion on a macro scale for the world of issues of justice, climate change, social justice, all these things. But how it's possible to strive for justice and peace among all people on a macro scale, but not apply it at a micro scale as well. And I think that as Christians, we're called to do both of these things. The striving for justice and peace, but also respecting the dignity of every human being where we are called to do that on a global scale when it comes to global issues, but also on just a personal scale of how you treat people in your everyday life. And how you're caring for your community, because I'm one of those people that I think it can be, well, I don't think this is unique to me at all. The world's issues are very overwhelming. And it feels like what the heck am I doing? You know? I can have whatever I consider to be the quote-unquote right stance on social issues or issues of war or issues of oppression or whatever it may be. But if I'm not working at a micro scale, like nothing will change. So that's something I think a kind of irrelevant conversation to this last one is keeping both the macro and the micro in mind. How are you striving for justice and peace at home as well as on a global level? - Yeah, when we say that those are our values, they have to apply on all different levels of life. And if this is part of the mission of being baptized, then there's a lot of that that goes into just like the everyday. And unfortunately, I hate to say it, but I'm not like fighting to stop climate change. Just every single day. (laughs) I don't know how else to express that. I think you know what I mean. But there are moments when we worked for the big things, but then they're the moments of just being. - And serving who's right in front of you. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Our relationship with others. We've been talking about this the whole time. And as part of it, community, justice and peace within and-- - Just within your family. - Yeah, within your family, within your friendships, within your church community, it's tough. It's tough to live in all there. - It's tough with. - Persevere, y'all. - Yeah, so okay, so do you wanna do it? Let's count all the action verbs in these five questions. So you have, continue. Persevere. - Persevere. - Repent. - Return. - Proclaim. - Seek and serve. - Seek serve love. - Seek serve love. - How could you forget? - Strive and respect. So it's 10 action verbs. Wow, we have a lot to do. - Oh boy, I better get to work. - I know, kind of overwhelmed. But hopefully by this exercise of walking through these five questions or five of the eight questions in the baptismal covenant, we've kind of gotten some people jazzed up about them. Jazzed to witness their next baptism, to renew their own vows, and also just to take it out into the world. - Exciting. - So let's end on a fun note. And by fun, I mean controversy. - baptismal controversies. - Just for the record. - This was Kate's idea to have this section. Okay, I just wanna put that out there. - Okay, so if it goes terribly wrong and off the rails, then we can just blame me on that one. No, I think there's a lot of big talking points surrounding just the concept and idea of baptism. And I thought it would be fun. - Incomplete. - I wasn't gonna say fun. I thought perhaps we should touch down on them and just lay out a little bit of level headed dialogue 'cause you and I don't agree on all of these points. Yeah, their people disagree on some of the major elements, tendents of baptism. - Yeah, if they wanted us to agree, they should have had a sign of contract. Am I right? - Truly. - Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be entering into a covenant with you about how I feel. I mean, I see these things as well. - Who knows maybe? Infant baptism is quite prevalent in the Episcopal Church. The vast majority of baptisms that I've seen are infants, babies. I think I've seen one time where like, I saw an 80 year old man get baptized when I was like 10. And I remember being like, "Oh my gosh." This never happens. And then all the people around me were like, "Yeah, you're right. This does never happen." It's quite rare that an older person gets baptized in Episcopal Church at least. But at the same time, it's strange because the culture, in quotes, the culture, seems to be very much against this whole idea of infant baptism because the child doesn't have a choice or it's being indoctrinated. Well, non-religious people will kind of view it as like, oh, you're indoctrinating your child. I think some people who are very religious, but who only practice like adult baptism will be like, oh, the person should have a say in what they're getting themselves into. They should have actively decide this and like an infant can't consent to this. And I think that just all has to do with the near perspective on what baptism is. As weird as it sounds, I do think Christians can like disagree on the nature of baptism, even though it is as a whole, like what it accomplishes is fairly straightforward. Yeah, it's such a central tenant of our culture, but there's just so many ways in which we can disagree about it. But every major religion has like a ceremony surrounding the arrival of a baby or of an infant, you know? In Islam and Hinduism, they shave the baby's head, you know? It's an Islam, it's a signal of like, you're coming into the Muslim community in a way. I'm totally butchering the way that I'm describing these because I know very little about them myself. Or Hinduism, it signifies like a new beginning, you know? And then in Judaism, they have male circumcision when they're an infant. And it's also, you know, and these, all these lists on the internet that are like major ceremony surrounding the arrival of a new baby in all the world religions. You know, baptism is listed amongst them because for a lot of branches of Christianity, it kind of does play that role. And in a lot of ways, it is kind of like our way that a new human is welcomed into the faith. Yeah. And we have to be a little careful there because it's like, well, they're doing it. So we can do it too. Like that's not necessarily a good, just a, or like a logically sound justification. That's not a justification. I mean, it's just a characteristic of religion. Yeah. I of course didn't want to butcher this topic. And so guess where I went, the catechism and the catechism says, infants are baptized so that they can share citizenship in the covenant membership and Christ and redemption by God. And I found a lot online that basically was pointing towards God's gifts are extended to all regardless of their age or how well you quote unquote understand the doctrine or can recite your faith. As we mentioned, this is not a contract. Of course, infants should not sign contracts. They can't even hold a pen. But this is a covenant. It's the beginning of a transformational journey. And so for an infant to be baptized, it's the parent helping and, you know, supporting that child in their journey of transformation. Hopefully towards Christ. I think that a lot of people, especially if you're come from a Baptist background, you have that concern over the fact that the infant can't like profess that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior. But as we mentioned, this isn't a contract necessarily in the Episcopal faith. It just means something slightly different. And our belonging in God's family and our place in God's family is not dependent on believing the right things are being old enough or hitting a certain age or saying the right words. It's dependent on God. It's not dependent on us. The other thing I want to say about this topic is there are parents in the Episcopal church who don't baptize their children as infants. You don't have to. You don't have to. We disagree about many things. This can be one of them. Yeah. So I've seen a few baptisms occur at my church where the kids were like seven or eight. So they understood, you know, conceptually what they were doing and what they were committing to as well as a seven or eight year old can. And this is also why we have confirmation. It's because confirmation exists once your brain is more developed for you to confirm that this is the direction you want to go. So this is why there's two separate ceremonies and baptism isn't just a one and done. Yeah. Hallelujah. I don't think I could have said of anybody than what you just described. If we stop viewing it as like such a contract or like a transactional thing, then it changes the nature of what you're doing with an infant. Yep. So my next controversial question. Yeah. It's a controversial question is what we should have called the segment. Yeah. In order to take communion at an Episcopal Church, should you be a baptized Christian? The official answer is yes. Really based on Episcopalian, Catechism believes all those things is if you're a baptized Christian, you are welcome to take communion. I'll point out that this is different than a lot of denominations where you have to be baptized in that specific church. So like the Catholic church, I was always annoyed when I was a child and I was at a Catholic service that I couldn't go take baptism because I wasn't a baptized Catholic. Don't take communion. Yes. Yes. So in the Episcopal Church, if you had a Christian baptism in any denomination, you are welcome to take communion at any age. What qualifies as a Christian baptism, you might ask, is just defined by two components. One is water. That could be a full-on dunk. It could be a dribble as long as there's water involved and baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So it doesn't matter who baptizes you in what church or even if it was a priest, to be honest, you are welcome to take communion. So that's the official church definition, although I think this is the one where you do have a different opinion, right, Kate? Well, I think that if it's part of the Catholicism, then I have been a part of many rebellious Episcopal communities in my time. I feel like this is always such a big topic of conversation. It's like, what do we say before communion so that people know whether or not they can or should receive, and we've alternated between a lot of different little sayings or such when we were devising what our own beliefs would be about this. There was a whole debate at Christ's church when I was in high school or so about who should receive, who should we say that only certain people are allowed to receive or should it be like an internal thing where you go inside and consider whether or not it would be good for you to receive because they were talking about like all baptized Christians are welcome and then somebody was like, ah, we don't want to be exclusionary. Let's just say everyone is welcome and then some people were like, no, that's too far. And we kind of landed in this middle spot where we were like, let's not say you have to be baptized and we landed on wherever you are with your journey with God, you are welcome here, which kind of implied that like you should be on a journey with God. But we wanted to say something that helped people understand like how this is very special and that this is not just any ritual of ours taking communion is very serious. And so typically it would be a baptized Christian who would want to partake of the meal because they're on their journey with God. I still don't quite know the answer to that. That's what I'm saying. Kate, you're kind of dancing around it a little bit. You don't think necessarily that's how much it's a rule of requirement that someone should be baptized, is that correct? I don't think you should have a rule of requirement around communion. But I do think that people should understand the seriousness of what they're doing just as they would with other religious processes that exist, you know, understanding the whole nature of it and the nature of what you're signifying with this, with partaking in this process. I think that needs to be quite clearly communicated, which we have a whole new, gristic prayer leading up to it. So that's basically our whole thing like, hey, this is what we're doing here. And this is what you're getting into if you're doing this. I disagree in that I just based on everything we just talked about, baptism shouldn't be seen as a requirement because it's not a contract. It's not a sign off. It is a symbol. It's an outward symbol of the inward journey you're going on and of the transformation that you're partaking in. And so if you are on that journey with God, then baptism, as we've just, you know, spent the last 45 minutes or whatever talking about, is that first step in that transformational journey. Also if you look back at early Christianity, kind of what you were talking about, people who weren't baptized had to leave before the whole Eucharist would even begin. Leave the service. And I think obviously that's kind of extreme, but that's how it used to be because Eucharist was, you know, reserved for those people who were participating in that renewal and were participating in the body of Christ, who believed in God, and the natural first step of that journey of that transformation is to be baptized. So I don't think it should be so extreme as let's kick everyone out of the church as soon as we start the Eucharistic section. No. But I do think that baptism is, I've been trying to think of a good analogy as you're talking. It's like, it's like you're going on a roller coaster on the top thrill dragster at Cedar Point. And there's a height, there's a height requirement. It's as if it's not a height requirement. It's a height guideline. And really you should be following that height requirement because it's for your own safety for you to understand what's happening to you, for you to have the right experience, you know, for you to not fly out of the car and not that you could fly out of the car if you take baptism. But, you know, it's like, that's the best analogy I could come up with and it's a very poor one because that really is like a safety rule and this isn't a safety rule. But it's as if Cedar Point would say, this is our recommended height. You could take it if you're not, but you know, you might fly out of the car. Again, this analogy is very poor. I know it's very poor. It's a very small team. It's very poor analogy. But I just, I think that if we just spent all this time talking about how baptism is not a contract, it's not a sign off on something, then baptism is like the first step in your partaking in Eucharist and in your partaking of the Christian life. So to me, it makes sense why the recommendation is to have baptized Christians be the one that take the Eucharist. It's not an exclusionary principle. It's like a, this makes sense, in my opinion. But, agree to disagree. No, it's a, I totally see where you're coming from. I'm going to mull this over more, I guess. Do we do spontaneous baptism? No, we do not. We do not do spontaneous baptism. This isn't any shade at people who do. It's just not, not what we do. It has to be skinned. As you heard, there's lots of words before we get into the actual baptizing. So it's, it's a process that requires thoughtful consideration because you are beginning that transformative journey. And I'm just of the opinion that you can't thought for, thoughtfully consider a giant transformational journey spontaneously. I think that takes. I think that takes time on behalf of the parents or the guardian of the child or on behalf of the person themselves who's getting baptized. Yeah, especially for, for denominations or baptism is like confirmation, basically. There's no spontaneous confirmation. Yeah, that's such a good call out. I'm spontaneous confirmation. That's such a good call out. So okay, great call, Kate, because there's lots of faiths that do see it that way. They see baptism as like that confirmation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm proclaiming my belief. I'm, you know, saying these things like that I'm going for it. For us, baptism is just that beginning. And then you get the chance to get confirmed later. So, wow, that makes it kind of even more dangerous if you're doing spontaneous confirmation. That's like, whoa, anything but spontaneous for us. Yeah, confirmation should be a long process. Okay. Yeah. And I think as dangerous as kind of a side note is just that spontaneous baptism can also lead to a bit of a peer pressure situation. So, and maybe some people would call that being moved by the spirit, but I think sometimes you can be moved to buy the peer pressure. So like if it's like a situation where people are just being invited to come forward and get baptized spontaneously, sometimes you can just get caught up in excitement of things. No, we as Christians shouldn't want, yeah, oh my gosh, this is so exciting. Well, Jimmy's doing it. So I'll do it too. And we as Christians shouldn't prioritize. I think we should want people to get baptized who have really thoughtfully considered it and who aren't doing so out of a peer pressure state. Not to say that that's always the case. Oh, so much like the risk to it. Yeah, as we talked about. So in the nice and crude, we say we believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sins towards the end of all of it. And I thought about that. And I think it opens up a big can of worms. I don't really know the answer to this question myself. Do it does one baptism forgive? all sins. I think we could spend a whole episode discussing that and the many facets of that statement. But we say that we believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, kind of as a way of saying, you know, we believe in one baptism to enter into this way of life where we believe that, you know, our sins are forgiven through Jesus Christ. And that this is, this is, it kind of lays it out as like this is the start of this way of life where your sins are forgiven. And now we go on the journey of recognizing that and doing something about that. I have two thoughts here. One is kind of taking it back to the beginning where we talked about that quote from the baptismal liturgy where it says, "You are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ's own forever." So to say that the baptism is the thing that ensures your forgiveness of sins assumes that the resurrection wasn't the thing that assures your forgiveness of sins. Yeah. Forgiveness is a God thing, not a human thing. It's not related to an action we take. But by getting baptized, you are joining yourself. You are being sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ's own forever. That's not something that can be taken away. And I think that we believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. It's not saying we believe that one baptism results in the forgiveness of all sins. It's saying the baptism is your sealing yourself with God. And then as part of that baptismal covenant, what was it, persist, repent, return? Yeah. Like as you're basically committing to that cycle, you're committing to that way of life over repenting and returning. So you're being sealed by the Holy Spirit and you're being sealed by the Holy Spirit and you're being healed by that one baptismal covenant. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So I think that that's okay. I think the word "for" is what makes that a little confusing there. One baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Yeah. It almost establishes that it's like a transaction a little bit. That's why the line, like sometimes I pause for a bit. It's Christ's death and resurrection that gets us forgiveness. So in conclusion, hallelujah. This was fun. I liked talking about this. And although we didn't recite the entire baptismal covenant in many ways, this conversation has renewed my faith and renewed, you know, what the 10 action verbs that I need to work on. I've recited that this morning. So I'm good as far as oversight and goes. But I just think for like all the disagreements over baptism in the world, many of which we just went through in a man. Yeah. Quite thoroughly. Wow. I just, I find the baptismal covenant to be a really good way to like disengage him all the noise and racket about baptism, all the things that people say about it, all the ways that people disagree or don't see eye to eye. Just going back to the baptismal covenant is a way for us to as parents do before they go through baptism with their child. It just helps us reset and remember what the sacrament is really about and what this faith journey is really about. Yeah. That's what I was going to say is it's more than what the sacraments about. It's about what that transformation can look like and how we carry it out in the world. I would say that if I was at a church that was trying to like come up with a new mission statement, I would definitely start with looking here because there's so much good stuff here of what our mission is as part of Christ's body. Yeah. This is like your second birth almost. So as you enter into this new life, it's all about, hey, what does this new life entail? What does it mean? What you do? We believe in God and what do we do about it? There we go. What a way to end it. That's all for today, everyone. And we would like to once again invite you to follow us on Instagram at average.apiscopalian for some great reels. We've been making some great reels recently. Some good meme content as always and just a general slew of updates on how things are going over on this. And thank you so much to our brothers Steve for his lovely rendition of the doxology. Never get sold. That should be the 11th action work. Follow. Follow us on Instagram. And the 12th and 13th are shared and subscribed. Yes, please share and subscribe. As always, share this with a fellow piscopalian friends, people who are interested in the church. That is our best way of spreading the word, spreading the good news is by word of mouth, words and actions. We are totally refusing this right now. We can't stop. I can't stop. Be sure to subscribe on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. And don't forget to give us a rating. We'd love it if you could give us a rating on Spotify or iTunes and a written review on iTunes. Those really help the podcast. Okay, we need to get off of this crazy train. Goodbye. Thank you. Have a nice day. We'll see you on the next episode. See you guys next time.