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In this morning?s sermon, we considered the continuities and discontinuities between the Old and New Covenant with regard to liturgy. Contrary to some Protestant traditions, Jesus did not teach that the New Covenant would dispense with rites, signs, material substances, and physical actions in worship. That is not what Jesus meant when He spoke of ?Spiritual?Eworship. And one great sign of that, as I suggested, is that we do perform rites using material substances and physical actions ?Ethe rites of baptism and the Supper. Every time we baptize, we are declaring our continuity with Israel of the Old Testament. <\/p>\n
Paedobaptism says even more, and says it more emphatically. Baptizing babies says that the boundaries of the church are in the same place as the boundaries of ancient Israel, the people of Abraham. We are saying that we are still the same people, and the same kind of people, as Israel was. <\/p>\n
But baptism also declares our differences from the Old Covenant. In the Old Covenant, the mark of inclusion was a cut in the flesh ?Ethe foreskin of the child was cut off. The rite of entry into Israel was a rite of severing, and this not only pointed to the threat of being ?cut off?Efor covenant unfaithfulness, but also pointed to the fact that Israel was herself ?severed?Efrom the rest of the world, distinguished by clothing, food, and other customs from the Gentiles. Further, circumcision was a kind of sacrificial rite, in which a body was cut into two pieces and blood was shed. That was fulfilled in Jesus, and we no longer perform a rite of separation, a rite of cutting, a rite of severing, a sacrificial entry into the church. We instead perform a rite that symbolizes the inclusion of Jew, Gentile, slave, free, man, woman, white, black, Hispanic, and whoever in one body in Christ. A child entered Israel through shedding blood; blood is a sign of life, but pouring out blood is a sign of death. But in the NC, we no longer live under the ministry of condemnation and death; we live in the covenant of life, symbolized by the living and life-giving water of baptism. <\/p>\n
For you, this means that your son?s baptism should be a constant reminder that you live under the New Covenant, not the Old. The Old Covenant came with great promises, the promise that Yahweh would dwell among His people and be the God of His people. But Hebrews tells us that the second covenant comes with better promises. The second covenant declares that the Son has come to tabernacle among us in human flesh. The second covenant announces that the Father is seeking worshipers to worship Him in Spirit and truth. And the second covenant comes with the promise of the Spirit, as Peter said at Pentecost: the promise is for you and for your children, and to all who are far off. Remind yourselves often of the meaning of baptism as God?s pledge to you and to your son; and teach him to trust this promise of God, the promise of the new covenant, the better covenant, the covenant of water not the covenant of blood. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In this morning?s sermon, we considered the continuities and discontinuities between the Old and New Covenant with regard to liturgy. Contrary to some Protestant traditions, Jesus did not teach that the New Covenant would dispense with rites, signs, material substances, and physical actions in worship. That is not what Jesus meant when He spoke of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology-liturgical"],"yoast_head":"\n