Covenant

Editorial

Faith, the way we respond to God, to neighbor, to self, is covenantal and essentially collegial. It lays the foundation for and shapes our ecclesial environment. It "makes" church into the inclusive, communal fullness which it is commissioned to be -- both servant leader and conscience of culture.

When we proudly and selfishly would make faith into a contractual system of belief (not an ignoble undertaking, only a wrong one) and into a confession which must be adhered to and consented to in order to belong to, we impair the community Jesus prayed for. We are not so much in a partnership with God as we are colonizers responding to God’s gracious initiative in stewardship.

This is the covenant that God offered in Eden and that we refused. Our refusal is the sin against the Holy Spirit that cannot be forgiven because it rejects, refuses the covenant and thus is literally unfaithful, lacking in faith, faithless, refusing the reconciliation which forgiveness could and can effect. For Anglicanism, covenant is the via media, the middle way. It is not easy. Its entrance and its shape is cruciform. That some through such instruments as the Windsor Report would make this relationship with God depend on a belief that is contractual, systematized, and behavioral is to deny the ironic nature of the cross, to disallow it as icon, to make of it an idol, and to replace the God of our understanding with our understanding of God.

In baptism, we make and enter this covenant with God at God’s gracious invitation into the fellowship of the apostles -- the church -- and we will and choose to undertake these steps: to repent, to proclaim, to seek and serve Christ in all, to strive for a just peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being. God welcomes all into that fellowship. We know that welcome as the open and freeing welcome of grace.

This is the shape of our liturgy, our work as a people. Our biblical ancestors rightly called it The Way.

[The Covenant Journal, Issue 23, August 2006]