Commands, Contracts, and Covenants

Sermon for Aug. 10, 2025 (Transfiguration, transferred)
Luke 9:28-36

We come together this morning to celebrate the feast of the Transfiguration and to welcome four new members into God’s family, the Church.  These two things may not seem to go together very well.  What does a story about Jesus glowing on a mountaintop have to do with faithfully following him 2,000 years later?

Well, the connection for us probably comes by way of the disciples, right? – Peter, James, and John, who’ve come up the mountain to pray and then find themselves much more “up close and personal” with God than they ever wanted to be.  Is that kind of confrontation what’s in store for us and the four new disciples who’ll be baptized today?  When they pass through the waters of baptism, what are they signing on for?  What will God expect of them – and what does God expect of us?

We hear answers to that question every time we have a baptism and recommit ourselves to God’s way of love.  It’s called the Baptismal Covenant, the job description for a follower of Jesus in our tradition.  First, we affirm the mystery of God’s nature: that the One in charge is actually One in Three, different facets of divinity existing in eternal relationship.  Then we make five promises about how we’ll live out that same spirit of relationship with God and the people around us.

But, you know, we hear these promises so often that they risk losing their punch.  So, let’s pull back from the specifics for a minute and ask not just “what do I have to do to get right with God?” but “what kind of relationship am I signing up for?”  Why is this the Baptismal Covenant?  And what would it be like if we made some other kind of agreement with God?

For example, what if it were the “Baptismal Commandments”?  After all, wouldn’t keeping the 10 Commandments be good enough for a follower of Jesus?  Well, honestly, no.  With the Law of Moses, we already tried a legalistic approach to living in right relationship with God, and that led Jesus and St. Paul to point us toward grace through faith instead.  Sure, humans need rules, but rules don’t bring us relationship.  So, a set of Baptismal Commandments wouldn’t get us very far in orienting our lives toward Love. 

Well, what if this commitment were the “Baptismal Contract”?  We understand contracts, right?  We make them all the time.  If I hire a company to replace the roof on my house, the roofer and I make a contract detailing what we expect from each other – the scope of the project, when it will happen, how much I’ll pay, how long the work will be warrantied.  If either one of us doesn’t hold up our end of the deal, we can take legal action to compel the other’s compliance.  And that’s really the point of a contract: to protect the interests of both parties.  And under that is an even deeper truth: Contracts try to cover all the contingencies because, deep down, the two parties aren’t really invested in each other.  I mean, I’m sure the roofer is a good guy, but if he installs a roof that leaks, I’m not going to pay him just to be kind.  My relationship with the roofer stops with getting the job done.  And that approach, too, doesn’t get us very far in orienting our lives toward Love.

So, instead, we affirm a Baptismal Covenant.  Covenants are less about people getting things done and more about people coming together.  A covenant creates a binding, enduring relationship of mutual loyalty.  It’s rooted in respect and affirms the inherent worth of both parties.  It emphasizes mutual responsibility and belonging that endures even when expectations aren’t met, even when promises aren’t kept.  Covenants are rooted in a deep commitment to trying again.  We vow to stand with our covenant partner to create something that hasn’t existed before, a relationship both parties commit to keep building stronger.¹

In my mind’s eye, I can see an icon of this kind of relationship.  It’s a tree in the front yard of the house where I grew up, and for me it’s the symbol of my parents’ marriage.  Their anniversary is this week, as is my anniversary with Ann; so, I guess I’ve got the covenant of marriage on my mind.

The tree in my parents’ front yard was a dogwood – actually, two dogwoods, one pink and one white.  They’d been planted side by side, so close together that, over the decades, the trunks fused.  The branches intertwined such that you couldn’t tell where one tree stopped and the other began – until spring came, and the pink and the white flowers testified that these were actually two trees that had become one.  That tree was an icon of my parents’ relationship – two people living in covenant, distinct but rooted side by side, some of the branches gnarled and twisted but still reaching toward the sun together.

I think that’s what the Baptismal Covenant is offering us – the chance to marry our life with the Source of Life.  When we come to the waters of baptism, we aren’t pledging blind obedience to a distant, heavenly ruler.  We aren’t signing on the dotted line to ensure that our needs will be met.  Instead, we’re saying “yes” to a relationship with the God who exists as a relationship – Father, Son, and Spirit, creating and redeeming and sustaining from before time and forever.  And here’s the truly amazing thing:  God loves you enough to want you to join that dance.  You don’t bear the burden of having to get all the answers right or do the work perfectly; instead, collaboration is baked into the system.  Our pledge to God is always, “I will – with God’s help.”

So, what does all that have to do with today’s crazy Gospel story?  It’s easy to get caught up in the drama of the Transfiguration, like the three disciples did.  One minute, you’re on the mountaintop with your friend and teacher; the next minute, he’s blazing with divine glory so brilliantly that looking at Jesus is like looking at the sun.  Peter wants to build a monument to capture the moment, something to mark their friend’s true nature and the fact they got to witness it.  But then, suddenly, God descends in a terrifying storm cloud to mark a heavenly intersection – past, present, and future come together as God names Jesus much like Peter had named Jesus just a few days earlier – as the Son, the Messiah, the Chosen One, the Lord who’s enacting God’s reign and rule on earth.

With all that drama, it’s easy to miss the theme that both begins and ends this story.  Wrapped around this experience of God’s overwhelming power and majesty is an invitation to go deep in relationship.  The story begins with Jesus bringing Peter, James, and John “up on the mountain to pray” (Luke 9:28), and it’s being in prayer that opens them to experience this unparalleled glory.  And then, at the story’s end, as the divine voice booms from the storm cloud, God doesn’t give the disciples an order to follow or an agreement to sign.  Instead, God says, do the one thing that every deep relationship requires:  “Listen to him,” God says.

If we did, what would we hear?  After all, in this reading, Jesus has precisely nothing to say.  So, if we listen to him, what will we hear?

Well, in Luke’s story, the last thing Jesus says before he heads up the mountain is this:  “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (9:22).  That’s his part of the covenant.  And what about the disciples, both then and now?  Jesus continues:  “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross daily, and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” (9:23-24)

All this really should come as no surprise, because that’s what covenants are all about:  If you pour yourself out for the relationship, you’ll find life like you never imagined.

1.      Childress, James F., and John Macquarrie, eds. The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986. 136-137.