Being a Covenant to the Peoples
Reflections on the Baptism of Christ
RCL Baptism of Christ A[i]
11 January 2026
Saint Helen’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
Click HERE to watch the video recording of the Sermon.
Focus Text
I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, so that I, the Lord, may open the eyes that are blind, so that I, the Lord, may bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.[ii]
Some years ago I was one of three theme speakers for the annual gathering of the BC and Yukon Anglican Youth Movement along with the late Bishop Jim Cruickshank and the Very Rev’d Beth Bretzlaff, now Dean of Ottawa, but then a young priest in the Diocese of Kootenay. I had chosen the baptismal covenant from The Book of Alternative Services as the structure for my interactive session with the young people from across BC and Yukon.
As I’ve done many times with the covenant, I recited a section and then asked the young people what they thought that it meant for them in their lives, for example, “What does it mean to call God ‘Father’?” or “What does it mean to call Jesus ‘Lord’?” Things were going well, I thought, until I reach the commitment we make to resist evil and repent and return to the Lord. I asked the young people, “Where do you experience evil in your lives?”
At this point one of the adult group leaders said, “Father Leggett, I think that this is a bit too heavy for young people.” Before I could respond, more than one young person said, “No, we want to talk about this. There are bad things in our lives, and we want to know how we resist that evil.” I am happy to say that the young people won the debate, and we continued with a really good discussion about the evil that young people experience in their lives.
Last week in my sermon for Epiphany, I spoke to you about the difference between the question, ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’ and ‘What do good people do when bad things happen?’ It’s appropriate on a day when the Christian community throughout the world remembers the baptism of Christ and its meaning for all those who have gone through the waters of baptism and now bear the name of Christ and have chosen to be one of his disciples.
We heard in our first reading these words: “I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, so that I, the Lord, may openthe eyes that are blind, so that I, the Lord, may bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.“[iii] These words were spoken to a people who were still in exile but hoping to return to their homeland, a people who were wondering why the ‘bad thing’ of the exile had happened to them. To them the prophet responded by turning the question around and directing them to be a ‘good people’, a covenant people, in whose life God would do ‘infinitely more than (they) could ask or imagine’.
In many and various ways, we are a people living in a time of exile, what some might even want to call ‘bad’ times. When we look around the world, we are besieged by images of war, civil unrest, natural disasters and human needs that tax our compassion. As a nation, we are aware that our old assumptions about our relationships with other nations, especially with our neighbours to the south, no longer serve us well. We know that many of our neighbours here in the Lower Mainland face what is now termed the ‘affordability crisis’. And, adding to our burden, are the upheavals in the life of this congregation over the past decade and over the past two weeks.
But we are a ‘covenant to the nations’; we are a community whom God has called to be witnesses to the blind gaining their sight and to those who are held in any kind of bondage are being set free. Let me share with six things that good people do when bad things have happened and are happening.
When bad things happen, good people gather for strength, comfort and renewal. It is tempting to shut the door, climb into bed and pull the comforter over our heads. We might even remove all social media from our digital devices and cancel our subscriptions to news services. But that won’t serve us well. We continue to gather here, Sunday after Sunday, to hear the Word of God proclaimed, to offer our prayers for the world and ourselves, to be strengthened by the bread broken and the wine poured, and to go forth to do what needs to be done.
When bad things happen, good people resist the evils that distort and deny the purposes of God. We need to be willing to speak openly about all that works against the good news of God in Christ, to acknowledge our own failures and shortcomings, and to re-commit ourselves to lives of reconciliation. We do not forget the past, but rather than be held hostage to that past, we choose to re-vision the future.
When bad things happen, good people tell the story of how, even in such times, God is at work among us. Friends, the good news of God in Jesus Christ is simply the story of human lives that have been transformed by our encounter with God’s love incarnate. The good news speaks whenever you and I share what God has done and is doing to help grow into greater likeness with Christ.
When bad things happen, good people serve their communities, loving their neighbours as themselves. It’s tempting to put a hold on everything until we get our own house in order, but I don’t think that actually works. Do we need to get our house in order? Certainly. But in the meantime, as we doing what we need to do within our walls, we still have obligations to take care of our neighbours and our neighbourhoods.
When bad things happen, good people strive for justice and peace, so that the dignity of every person is respected and treasured. It is easy in bad times to create categories of ‘us versus them’ or ‘insiders and outsiders’ or ‘friends and foes’. But that is not God’s way; we choose a different path. Every human being has been made in the image of God, that is, the power to be life-giving rather than life-denying. Our vocation as a community is to empower each other to become more life-giving in all of our relationships.
When bad things happen, good people care for ‘this fragile earth, our island home’. I remember hearing someone being interviewed and asked, ‘What if you knew you were going to die in an hour, what would you do?’ ‘Plant a tree,’ was the answer. Whether actual or metaphorical, let’s plant trees that will grow to give shade and life. This and so much more is what good people do when bad things happen.
Let us pray.
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light, look favourably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery. By the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation. Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raise up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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