Methodists hold an annual Covenant Service, at which they celebrate all that God has done for them, and affirm that they give our lives and choices to God. Most churches hold the service in the New Year. In the Methodist church I was brought up in in Northern Ireland we held this service on the first Sunday of the New Year. As a teenager I felt it was almost a blood curdling commitment:'Put me to suffering;let me be laid aside by thee;let me be empty;the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.
If we therefore end up having to go through a terrible year of trials, we can't really complain too much as we have given Him permission to allow it. But even then, we can still ask for mercy.
'I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt,
rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing,
put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full,
let me be empty.
Let me have all things,
let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine,
and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven'.
Amen.
The Covenant above makes it very clear that this affirmation is a serious one that embraces the whole of our life, in all its parts. Most people find it quite tough to say, and really mean it. But the prayer is so central to the Christian life that other Churches have also adopted it.
In our culture we tend to prize our ability to make decisions and choose our own path in life. It can feel very hard to give that up. But this prayer is like a love poem. It is about surrendering to God in love and joy.
History of the Covenant
ReplyDeleteWesley's Covenant Prayer or A Covenant Prayer in the Wesleyan Tradition is a prayer adapted by John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, for use in services for the Renewal of the believer's Covenant with God. In his Short history of the people called Methodists (1781), Wesley describes the first covenant service; a similar account is to be found in his Journal of the time. Wesley says that the first service was held on Monday 11 August 1755, at the French church at Spitalfields in London, with 1800 people present. He reports that he "recited the tenor of the covenant proposed, in the words of that blessed man, Richard Alleine". The words of that original covenant prayer are lost, but are thought to be reflected in the Directions for Renewing our Covenant with God which Wesley issued as a pamphlet in 1780. Services using the Covenant prayer have been included in most Methodist books of liturgy since, though none was included in the Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America book that Wesley published in 1784 for the use of his followers in America. Perhaps for this reason, while the Covenant service has been an invariable part of the liturgy of the British Methodist Church and its daughter churches in the Commonwealth, its use is less widespread in American Methodist denominations: Referring to the United Methodist Church, Hohenstein (1997) notes that "covenant services are seldom encountered these days", though some American methodist congregations do use the covenant regularly. The covenant prayer and service are recognised as one of the most distinctive contributions of Methodism to the liturgy of the church in general, and they are also used from time to time by other denominations.
Although Wesley's early covenant services were not held at any particular time of year, in British Methodism the custom soon developed of holding Covenant services near the beginning of the New Year, nowadays usually on the first or second Sunday of the year. This was perhaps under the influence of a different Methodist tradition, the holding of "Watchnight" services on New Year's eve, in competition with the rowdy secular celebrations of the new year.
The origins of the covenant prayer have been the subject of some scholarly discussion (see Parkes, 1997). While Wesley attributes it to the English puritan Alleine, influences of German pietistic have also been claimed, and also (less frequently) echoes of the high church tradition from which Wesley sprang.
The form of the covenant prayer and service have been simplified since Wesley's time, but important elements of them are still retained from Wesley's Directions. They include many of the words both of the bidding that traditionally precedes the prayer, and the prayer itself. The bidding traditionally includes phrasing such as:
...Christ has many services to be done. Some are easy, others are difficult. Some bring honour, others bring reproach. Some are suitable to our natural inclinations and temporal interests, others are contrary to both... Yet the power to do all these things is given to us in Christ, who strengthens us.
[edit] The Prayer
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.
(as used in the Book of Offices of the British Methodist Church, 1936).
THe comment above was gleaned from my good friend Wiki
ReplyDeleteAndrew, The Covenant Prayerand sounds to me like the clay speaking to the Potter, and it is beautiful and necessary but it can contain the lump of pride in it as it can be takened as if the clay is capable of keeping a covenant and therefore pointing to the clay rather than the Treasure in it known as the covenant keeper Himself, Jesus Christ the only Life there is.
ReplyDeleteEvery mountain brought low and every valley filled enables us to recognize this only Life of Christ since we are in this world and not of it and even as He is in the world, so are we.
I tried to keep covenants and I was allowed to fail miserably and given the experience of ” My yoke is easy and my burden is Life.” We learn on the Cross that we are entirely dependant in both Life and death. Grace is the Person of Jesus Christ and we should never be afraid of receiving Grace nor envious of others receiving Him.
Richard
Richard, thanks for your comments.
ReplyDeleteIn the Methodist church I was brought up in Northern Ireland we held the Covenant Service on the first Sunday of the New Year. As a teenager I felt it was almost a blood curdling commitment: ‘Put me to suffering; let me be laid aside by thee; let me be empty; the covenant which I have made on earth let it be ratified in heaven’etc.
If we therefore end up having to go through a terrible year of trials, we can’t really complain too much as we have given Him permission to allow it. But even then, we can still ask for mercy.
I think in essence it is a development of our daily prayer when we pray :‘Thy will be done’. However, after a lot of difficulty through illness in my own life I often resorted to Jacob’s ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me’, as I felt I was going under, never to rise again. I also stopped praying Paul’s ‘That I might know the fellowship of your sufferings’, and for a change prayed ‘that I might know the power of you resurrection’. Like yourself, I agree that of ourselves we are so weak to keep perfectly our oaths and covenants: we need His grace.’
Even so I think the covenant prayer is perhaps better (more biblical, or at least more in keeping with the type of prayer God is pleased with- many may disagree) than ‘the prayer of Jabez’ even though his prayer was answered.
Wesley, though I love him greatly, was not also without faults and weaknesses as I’m sure you also know.
Andrew, I do appreciate your honesty and I’m sure that God has you, as myself, where he want’s us. There are perhaps only a few points of similar experiences in our background and I’m certain the overall finality is that we posess the very Heart of God whom He so freely gave to us.
ReplyDeleteGod’s victory in our wreseling with Him comes through as an undeniable fact that we already have been blessed with all the blessedness that every was, is or can be… the very Life of God that oozed from the very God, Jesus our Lord and Saviour.
Paul’s Gal. 2:20 ( as you know ) brings the focus off us unto Him, back to us, unto Him and so on and so on that there is such a identification that Jesus our High Priest said of His followeres to Paul, “Saul, Saul, hy does thou persecute ME.”
I think that our Heavenly Father sometimes must shake His head from our piety as we resolve to be one of His favorites and do things for Him. He is the courage in us that brings us out of having our back in the corner and take our part in His salvation in the moment to moment reality that is the He of the I AM.
I love hearing my pastor say after pointing out great lovers of the Faith at Jesus’ feet… ” And what have you got do to reach such devotion…. nothing but the next thing in the fact of Faith that God has you where He want’s you for His Glory.”
I salute you Andrew as a Living Epistle; To some a mad man, to others the Son whom the Father saw afar away and came running to meet him.
Richard ( From Jesus Creed Blog)
Richard, thanks again for your comments. Perhaps it might help to quote what is said by the congregation just before the Covenant prayer to provide you with some sort of context.
ReplyDelete.’..Christ has many services to be done. Some are easy, others are difficult. Some bring honour, others bring reproach. Some are suitable to our natural inclinations and temporal interests, others are contrary to both… Yet the power to do all these things is given to us in Christ, who strengthens us.
[edit] The Prayer
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
It some ways the prayer is the most natural thing to do at the time. At a marriage ceremony the two lovers make a commitment to love and honour one another ‘till death do us part’. Despite that they might fail many times it’s appropriate and right that they do it at this time : their wedding.
There is a build up in the Covenant service and the Covenant prayer is the climax. In one sense we can acknowledge that we can’t keep it, but on the other it is the most reasonable thing in the world to do.
The same might be said of ‘The Jesus Creed’: that of loving God completely and our neighbours as ourselves. Impossible we say : but is it really, given that God’s Spirit is within us. Surely we have the potential to live fully pleasing lives even if no one actually does. Again Wesley: Charles this time turns the impossible commandment on its head in the verse that follows.
O GOD, of good the unfathomed sea!
Who would not give his heart to thee?
Who would not love thee with his might?
O Jesu, lover of mankind,
Who would not his whole soul and mind,
With all his strength, to thee unite?
To him it is the most logical thing in the world to do, as he states three times:
’who would not’ give his heart, soul and mind to thee. The hardest commandment in the Bible then becomes the most reasonable for a child of God who has been given so much.
May you and all ‘Jesus Creed ‘ readers have a great year with God.