I often get asked to explain what the Covenant service is and it’s hard to describe but I think we find what is at its core in Romans chapter 12: 1-12
I think here the author of Romans, Paul explains how the Covenant between us and God works. It is the means of Grace by which we accept our human – God relationship and how we intentionally seek to sustain it – not by acquiring a relationship by earning it or doing good things so that God rewards us. The Covenant with God isn’t a contract where God and us humans agree to provide things or do things for one another as a transaction.
Romans is a letter, written by the apostle Paul to the Christians in Rome around AD56, but it is a long letter which was designed to have been read out loud. Some scholars suggest that in Romans Chapters 1-11 Paul provides a sort of manifesto, or a teaching of doctrine. Then from Chapter 12, Paul describes how we are to live our lives practically – how we put all these things he has set out into practice.
It’s written to people Paul hasn’t met (he hasn’t ever visited Rome) he dictates it to Tertius from a place near Corinth (whilst he was spending some time reflecting on his ministry). He gives it to the Deacon of the church in Corinth Phoebe to deliver, and likely read to the Roman Christians. When Paul writes it, he assumes that the Roman Christians are making the same sorts of mistakes that most Christians are making – I wonder if its perhaps the same mistakes we are still making today. Maybe the words are as relevant today as back then.
Sometimes Paul’s words can feel complicated but here in Chapter 12 it is kind of simple and radical at the same time. It exposes the covenant we are in with God, the same covenant that is talked about by the prophets like Jerimiah who talks about a faith that it written as the law inside them it not about what they do, the sacrifices or the acts of obedience Jerimiah 31:33 says:
I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
In Romans 12:1 Paul asks us to take our everyday, ordinary life – sleeping, eating, going-to-work, resting, going shopping, going to school, cleaning the house, and walking the dog things and bring God into them. Including all the amazing things and the dull things, happy things and sad things we experience. In the times when we feel God is using us and when we feel God is setting us aside, the highs and lows.
Paul says we place it all before God as an offering. When we wake up, we place every day before us to God and before we sleep, we thank God for what we have had, every single day of the week God is in your heart.
We are to EMBRACE what God does which is the best thing you can do for God. Isn’t that beautiful God created a world for us to live in and we are to mirror that vast expanse of Love right back. If we do nothing else all day that’s all God wants.
Paul warns us – We must not become so well-adjusted to our culture (the world we inhabit) which is the life that we fit into it without even thinking. This is easy to do in the day-to-day routine of our lives. I think Paul suggests that if we do get caught up in the problems and business of life without thinking, because we will, but we are to be aware we are doing it and as we become aware we should fix our attention back on God.
If you can do this – You’ll find that you will be changed from the inside out.
When you are in this type of relationship you can recognize what God wants from you and you can respond to it. NOT like the world around you, always distracting you and dragging you down, God brings the best out of you.
It’s not only Paul that thinks this way – some of the greatest theologians think this way too, it was John Wesley’s understanding of discipleship. He believed that we need to accept a relationship with God because it allows us to grow in this important relationship and recognise it which is what we do during the Covenant Service.
Paul used the metaphor of the body suggesting we are like parts of one body we function together. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people (that’s us).
Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So, since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvellously functioning parts in Christ’s body, we go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t. Not only are we wonderfully loved – there is no competition, pride, self-doubt and greed or trying to be what we are not – because God loves us as we are!!!!
Paul warns of the responsibility of power and leadership:
Paul says – if you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face. We must love from the centre of who we are; we shouldn’t fake it but seek to be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle. We need to be careful of burn out; keep ourselves fuelled and aflame as alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant and never quit in hard times; pray all the harder.
When we do all this God is in our hearts and our Covenant with God alongside our church family means that we become the body of Christ. We renew the relationship in many ways but its powerful when we say the covenant prayer together and take communion because Jesus himself took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it the disciples, and said, “Take; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, and all of them drank from it. He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. (Mark 14:22-25).
This is our Covenant Prayer
I am no longer my own but yours.
Put me to what you will,
rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing,
put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you
or laid aside for you,
exalted for you
or brought low for you;
let me be full,
let me be empty,
let me have all things,
let me have nothing;
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things
to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessèd God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours.
So be it.
And the covenant now made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.
Credit Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash
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