Not long after J started attending the Alice Springs Uniting Church, we were chatting one morning after the service and she says to me, “Emily I really like your sermons.” Naturally I was pretty chuffed to receive this complement from such a thoughtful young person and so I said, “aaww thanks. Is there anything in particular you like or find helpful?” To which she responds, “I just really like the length.”
For those of you who do not attend here (and so do not get why the regulars all giggled), I try pretty hard to keep my sermons between 12 and 15 minutes and it’s really the only directive I give to our lay preachers too. That might seem short to some but we have a lot else going on in our services and it seems some people at least appreciate it. And so Jemima I promise to keep to that even if closer to the 15 minute end (there is a bit to say about Baptism).
As I said at the beginning of the service today is the fourth Sunday of Eastertide. The time in the church when we continue to reflect on the crucifixion and resurrection and Jesus post resurrection encounters.
J actually only gave me 2 weeks’ notice for this, so it was quite fortuitous that baptism happens to be so central to the great commission that Jesus gives to his followers in this final chapter of Matthew.
Also, at the heart of the baptism service the person been baptised and the community of faith around them says the creed. And so this week I was listening to an interview about the creed on a certain radio national program, hosted in fact by someone here today, who happens to be quite close to J. Anyway, I found out that this week marks 1700 years since the council of Nicaea where the creed was first drafted and accepted.
I am aware stuff like this makes me a bit quirky but all that made me so happy and feel like the Spirit was in this.
People have different opinions about the creed. For some people it is stuffy and prescriptive and exclusive. I certainly was one of these people. But in the last couple of years I have begun saying the creed as part of my morning liturgy. And so I thought given we are having a baptism and it’s the anniversary of the creed I would take a moment to reflect a little on why and how this has become a life-giving practise to me.
Before I do that, I will begin by saying that the Nicene Creed (or any creed) is not by any means a perfect summary of the Christian faith. There is no mention of anything Jesus said and did between the manger and the cross. This is a serious limitation that we need to be aware of.
We also need to recognise that saying the so called “right” things about Christ does not always make us more “Christ like” which is actually what Christianity and discipleship to Jesus is all about. Like baptism itself, saying a creed, is not some kind of magic formula that means we are in or out. We do need to be ever mindful of the ways these creeds have been used to do this and to exclude people or stifle questions, doubts and people’s own thoughts and experiences of God.
And finally, we need to be aware of the risks of things becoming rote and insincere when we say them a lot. Over time the creeds for some people have lost their meaning. They are not life giving to all and if that is you, that’s ok.
Acknowledging all that though I would like to share some things that matter to me about the Christian faith that the creed orientates me towards that you might reflect on when we say it today.
Firstly, the creed orientates me to long history of the Christian faith.
Now, I think it is important that every generation, interprets the faith for their time and place. God is a living God. He says to Isaiah, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” And Paul proclaims, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
But God also says to Isaiah, “Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other. And every week when we share in communion we recite the words of Jesus who said, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In baptism we remember Christ’s baptism.
In another phrase I use a lot, it matters to me that I am part of a faith, with traditions and prayers like the creed that are older, wiser and deeper than what my small brain and life experience can contain. This is not say I cannot have my own thoughts and experiences of this faith, but it is not all about me.
And it is also older, wiser and deeper than any individual minister, pastor or Christian leader. In the last two or three decades we have seen the rise and fall of a number of church leaders and their churches and the devasting impacts this has on congregations who placed a lot of their faith in that person. The creed is not a guard against all of that. But I do think saying it regularly does direct our gaze away from any individual leader to God – Father, Son and Spirit.
And finally, Christianity is older, wiser and deeper than my particular church.
It’s no secret I am a fan of the Uniting Church and its way of doing things. But it’s not for everyone. We do not all experience God in the same way, and I thank God that there are other churches that meet the needs of others. Jesus called his followers to make disciples of all nations. The church has always been diverse.
Another podcast I listened to on the creed this week described it something like this. In our denominations we are all gathering and worshipping and doing our thing in our different rooms but every so often we need to walk out into the hallway and realise we are all in the same building.
The creed helps us to do this. I am not saying our differences do not matter at all. We need to wrestle with them, and I actually do not think the answer is that we all become one (as the Uniting Church originally envisioned). But these differences should not be cause for contempt or lead us to believe that we are the one true church and all the others are not. I think making a habit of saying things like “we believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church” is one way to guard against this kind of wrath and pride (well it has been me).
Secondly, the creed orientates me towards the community of faith.
Another metaphor I heard this week that I liked was that faith is not a one man kayak but a sailing ship. There are times in life we might have to put down our oars but we do not have to jump out of the boat. In those times we allow others to carry us until we can row again.
Saying the creed together is one way (not the only way) we can do this. It does not say, “I believe,” rather “we believe.” When we say it some lines deeply move us, other lines we might find ourselves thinking I don’t really know about that. I think that’s why we say, “we.” For the bits we struggle with we depend on the people around us. And we say the bits we love for those around us who might struggle with them.
Thirdly, the creed is big enough and roomy enough to hold my convictions with my questions, to hold the wildness and the mystery of God.
When we say the creed we do not say, “we know that.” Nor do we say, “we feel perhaps, maybe that.” Rather what we say is “we believe in”. As you have probably heard before the Greek word often translated as believe in the New Testament is pistis which means to have faith in or to commit to trust in someone.
We often think that unless we have total certainty we are left with emotional subjectivity but to say we believe is neither of those extremes.
In the post resurrection experiences this is not what we find.
Mary, Thomas, the couple of the road to Emmaus were filled with uncertainty and conviction, doubt and trust. And in today’s reading it says when the disciples saw Jesus “they worshiped him, but they doubted.”
If you spend time with it, you come to realise that the Nicene creed itself is actually more mystical and ambiguous than we are often led to believe. It is in fact more poetic than prose inviting us into the great mystery that is the Trinity to which we can only really come to with humility and awe.
If you had not worked this out that radio national program, I was listening to was Soul Search and in it, Meredith said to her guest, “you are painting a picture essentially of the creed as defining some boundaries and yet within those boundaries something incredibly hospitable to a huge diversity of belief and practice. It defines its centre yet maintains diversity.”
Finally, the creed forms me.
Philosopher James K. A. Smith’s book called, You are what you love: the spiritual power of habit, points us to the fact that our world is full of what he calls ‘cultural liturgies’ in which values and truth claims are covertly embedded in images and repeated narrative. And whether we like to admit it or not these are forming us.
Elizabeth Oldfield responds, “Smith’s work has helped me see the power of repetition, ritual and image to form and orient me. It’s made me more aware of how often I am mindlessly participating in liturgies that are shaping me in directions in which I have not consciously consented to go. And so I now see participating in church liturgy as a form of pushback, another little resistance. I am making a free choice about what I want to shape me, what values and desires I want inscribed on my heart and mind.
Formation is what saying the creed regularly is about for me. Some days the words come alive and feel deeply sincere, and other days I say them out of habit, but they are always forming me in a way that I am choosing. They remind me in these often dark and uncertain times that our faith is in the Triune God and so our sense of security is not dependent on our status or our bank balances and our hope is not dependent on whatever party is leading this country, or ideology is gaining popularity.
“We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come” which I believe there are glimpses of all around us. For those living their best lives perhaps this does not matter all that much. But when I say it, I say it to align my heart with those for whom life on this side of eternity is filled with tragedy, grief and horror. This should not (and in my experience does not) lead us to inaction on injustice but rather to do all we can to be part of bringing hope and relief to the suffering. The only way that the creed, is compelling is through a community that does not just say it, does not just believe it, but actually lives it. Well at least seeks to.
Today, we are baptising J. She and I met during the week to talk about baptism, what it is, what it means and why we do it. We noted in that conversation that there is no one answer to those questions. It means different things to different people. But like saying the creed, like sharing in the life of the church and the Lord’s supper, in Baptism we take part in the long history of the Christian faith, we formally take our place in the story of Triune God and the community who proclaim it. Like a lot of things to do with faith, what happens at Baptism is a bit weird and mysterious, we will never fully comprehend. None the less it forms us. We hear the words that God spoke to Jesus spoken to us, “You are my Beloved, with you I am well pleased”.
In J’s words in Baptism “we make a public declaration of our faith.” We answer the call to discipleship. This is the most costly but also most exciting and wonderful journey we will ever go on. Bonhoeffer, a man who knew the costs better than most, puts it like this, “if we answer the call to discipleship where will it lead us? What decisions and partings will it demand? To answer this question we shall have to go to him, for only he know the answer. Only Jesus Christ, who bids us to follow him, knows the journey’s end. But we do know that it will be a road of boundless mercy. Discipleship mean joy.”
Amen.
