If you are a new believer, fresh to the church scene, Christians can, I imagine, seem like really nice people who do some weird things. One of the reasons that they do some weird things is because they continue religious practices from the Bible. The old stuff is 4000 years old but the new stuff is only 2000 years old… barely out of diapers. When only decades old Christians engage in ancient rituals and use old-timey phrases from a Bible translated in 1611, it must appear as odd as if they came to church in Bedouin robes and a giant turban, looking for a place to tie up their camel. Tip: They like the shady spot next to the water trough. I looked it up.
So, today, I want to introduce you to a single subject from the ancient world—Covenant—that effects two weird things in church: Baptism and Communion.
Put simply, covenant is like a contract that is enforced by spiritual agents. So, a pagan who believes in, say, Marduk (The ancient storm god, not that mischievous but hilarious great Dane) may not be trusted by the guy who rents out camels, but when that same guy swears to bring it back without a mark on it and calls upon Marduk to have ravens pick out his eyes if he doesn’t, we are getting at the soul of covenant.
When a person makes a covenant they make promises to engage or refrain from certain activities and seal that promise with self-cursing oaths before God/gods whom the parties believe in… thus they believe that He/they really will punish them if they prove unfaithful.[1]
There are hundreds of covenants in Scripture. In fact, just eating a meal together was a covenant-making act. It was a special kind of evil to seek the harm of someone with whom you’ve “broken bread.” Even so, there are only a handful of really big covenants, ones that involve nations and generations. They have different forms depending on the parties and the promises. I certainly can’t cover them all here, but the idea is important to grasp.
Covenants in Scripture tend to have ritual acts that start a covenant; it’s like signing a contract. Now, however unsettling it may feel to modern folks, these ritual acts usually symbolize the self-cursing/death of those making them. Eating a meal together symbolized ingesting divine curses. Do you feel all devotionally yet? We’ll get there… I hope.
In the ancient world, men stood before gods and governments on behalf of their families. So, when God makes a covenant with Abraham “and his seed” this covenant is entered into symbolically with the circumcision of the males, who are each to become heads of their own households. It shed blood (but healed without real harm) and symbolized the cutting off of “posterity” (Future generations). It was a first act and a lifelong reminder of one’s covenant with the Creator.
In the decades before Jesus’ birth, groups of Jews started special groups and made special religious commitments beyond being Jewish. So, naturally, they began to seek out initiation rites they could use. Not only was circumcision already taken, but they also wanted something that could be performed by women as well.[2] They chose a modest ritual bath. It was priestly, because priests washed before entering holy places. It also symbolized washing away the past, and was a popular image for death and resurrection as well. Oh yeah, and it symbolized Moses, bringing Israel to a new life through the Red Sea, and Joshua to a new life through the Jordan River. It was perfect.
It was sooooo perfect, that Jesus used it with those who joined His spiritual family in what the ancient prophets called “The New Covenant.” After Jesus’ death and resurrection, baptism took on even more symbolism. In baptism, we each symbolically memorialize Jesus’ death and resurrection and publicly declare our promise to fulfill all the responsibilities involved in joining Jesus’ “Church.”
Another element of covenants, was that people had signs that they were in one… reminders of their responsibilities and promises. We do this, when we wear wedding rings. Israelites wore tassels on their outer garments. Sometimes these signs were also ritual acts, like eating a sacred meal together with layers of symbolism, one of which was, remember, ingesting curses as an oath. The Israelites celebrated Passover for instance, and Jesus, as with baptism, added special symbolism to the Passover meal to represent memorializing the New Covenant sealed with Jesus’ death and validated in His resurrection.
It was common in the early Church, after their service of prayer, worship, and preaching, to eat a community meal together. It replaced the Passover supper in time as “The Lord’s Supper.” They called these meals, “love feasts,” which had ZERO sexual undertones, but sure did cause some rumors among the Romans.
Now, if you were a Roman soldier, you routinely took a loyalty oath to Caesar. You renewed your promises to serve or die by his command by taking bread and wine from “Caesar’s table.” It’s not the same thing as eating a Caesar’s Salad, don’t worry. So, as time passed, and the Church became more and more non-Jewish, this taking of bread and wine replaced the love feast that replaced Passover as “The Lord’s Supper.” Many churches call this sacred “meal” Communion. When you take it, you are supposed to consider the layers of its meaning and your covenant with Jesus… part of which is living in harmony with fellow believers. So, as you eat the bread and drink the cup, examine yourself and ask, “How am I doing with the Lord?” and “How am I doing with the Lord’s people?”
When you are baptized and take communion in church, you are continuing a covenant tradition that connects you to believers as far back as Abraham & Sarah who broke bread with the angel of the Lord and made a covenant with their Creator.[3] It maybe feels a little weird at first, but it is also, super cool.
~ Andrew D. Sargent, PhD
[1] By the way, marriage is a covenant of lifelong sexual exclusivity in the building of family.
[2] Female “circumcision” is NOT the same as male circumcision… it does permanent harm. The very idea of it was despised and rejected by Jewish worshippers.
[3] Genesis 12, 15, 17 & 18. The first book in the Bible.
