One of the challenges of preaching the church’s welcome to those who don’t believe everything we say, is that the church doesn’t always help with that message. Imagine an impassioned ending to a homily that goes something like, “So don’t worry too much about what you believe. If you want to be here, then there must be a reason. You and God will work out what you believe just like those first disciples did. They didn’t know what they believed either. They just kept gathering together and things started to happen. Don’t worry, just keep showing up.” And then the preacher sits down and someone says, “Now, standing, let us affirm our faith using the words of the Nicene Creed. We believe……” And then comes that long list. It happens. And when it does this preacher has to note once more that there’s something wrong with the picture. There it is again, that pesky creed.
I’ve been noticing the creed lately, not just because it speaks of belief, but also because of what the creed doesn’t say. There really isn’t much in the creed about what it means to be a Christian. Oh it has plenty to say about things like who Jesus is and how he is related to God, and about the whole Trinitarian, divine, cosmic scheme of things, but the creed doesn’t say anything about following Jesus, or loving our neighbor. There’s nothing about the community coming together on Sunday or feeding the poor or aching to have our lives transformed. I’m just not sure the creed deserves such a prominent place in the middle of our service any more. It’s been around a long time, and ideas and understanding do change.
I’ve also been thinking about the creed because I see some communities around the world replacing the creed in their liturgy with what they call an “affirmation.” Here’s one from the New Zealand Prayer book.
The Affirmation of Faith
You, O God, are supreme and holy.
You create our world and give us life.
Your purpose overarches everything we do.
You have always been with us.
You are God.
You, O God, are infinitely generous,
good beyond all measure.
You came to us before we came to you.
You have revealed and proved
your love for us in Jesus Christ,
who lived and died and rose again.
You are with us now.
You are God.
You, O God, are Holy Spirit.
You empower us to be your gospel in the world.
You reconcile and heal; you overcome death.
You are God. We worship you.
And here’s one from the Iona Abbey worship book from the Iona Community in Scotland
An Affirmation of Faith
We believe in God above us,
maker and sustainer of all life,
of sun and moon,
of water and earth,
of male and female.
We believe in God beside us,
Jesus Christ, the word made flesh,
born of a woman, servant of the poor,
tortured and nailed to a tree.
A man of sorrows, he died forsaken.
He descended into the earth to the place of death.
On the third day he rose from the tomb.
He ascended into heaven
to be everywhere present,
and his kingdom will come on earth.
We believe in God within us,
the Holy Spirit of Pentecostal fire,
life-giving breath of the church,
Spirit of healing and forgiveness,
Source of resurrection and of eternal life. Amen
Both of these speak central themes from the Nicene Creed, and both add a bit of what Christians have come to value as central to the faith since those days. Empower us to be your gospel (good news) in the world. God beside us…servant of the poor…Spirit of healing and forgiveness. Little changes and additions, but changes.
It seems perfectly reasonable to me that if God is at work among us as we claim in our worship, and in our community life and our outreach to those in need, that God would also be working on our understanding of what life with God is about. I am encouraged to see signs, like these affirmations, that Christians are at work updating the ancient framework of ideas around which we gather. And it isn’t that I don’t think the Nicene Creed is important. I value it as a foundational piece of our history, a set of ideas that has anchored the tradition for sixteen hundred years. It is just that there is so much more to say about who God is and what God is up to among us. Still, the Creed is important. In fact, I think the Creed is so important we should give it it’s own feast day. One Sunday a year we could really focus on the Creed in the context of its place in history and spend some time appreciating and celebrating its carefully crafted language.
So what would we do in place of the Creed all those other Sundays? I’m thinking of something a little more up-to-the-minute. Imagine if right after the sermon, the preacher introduces a speaker, someone from the congregation who begins, “Hi, my name is Alice. I want to tell you what I’m learning these days about what it means to follow Jesus, and tell you a bit about how that’s going.” Maybe she’d talk for two or three minutes about some connection she was making between the gospel and her life, in a relationship, in caring for others, in hope, in seeing beauty in the world, in moments of silence or a walk by the river. She might talk about learning to keep to the right path even when it costs something, or noticing systems that need to be challenged. Maybe she would mention belief, maybe some new belief coming into focus, but however she told her story, she would be affirming a connection between God and humanity. In that prominent place in the liturgy we would affirm not arguments settled long ago, but new insights into the nature of God reported by people just like us. People who gather around those ancient ideas hoping that something new will happen in our lives.
The Creed speaks of God choosing to come and live with us. It speaks of the promise of new life on the other side of struggle and despair, and it speaks of our being empowered by God to become new people. What it doesn’t say clearly is that all of those things are going on in our lives and the lives of those around us every day. We’re the only ones who can affirm that part of the story. So I wonder what you would say if it were your turn to speak. What are you learning about what it means to follow Jesus? How is that going?
John Baker
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