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I am currently commenting on the articles of the Apostle’s Creed. This is for my benefit as much as anything. These remarks are organized only because they are following the outline of the creed. So while they are not systematic, I hope they are not rambling either! I’m giving myself a refresher course and you’re invited to come along. And as you do I trust these few words may contribute something to your understanding of what it is to have faith in the God of Jesus.

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I knew a pastor years ago whose grandfather came from Norway. The elderly fellow had lost a number of family members to illness in the old country, including several of his children. My pastor friend recalled how his grandfather could not understand how the Ascension of Jesus into heaven, which gave him such comfort, was made so little of by Lutherans in America. That old Norwegian knew something in his grief and sorrow about the significance of the Ascension.  He believed the promise that “This same Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come again in the same way…” (Acts 1).

My suspicion is that the Ascension of Jesus into heaven has lost traction with many in the church today due to the preoccupation with worldliness and this life which has become so widespread. When I was in the seminary over 30 years ago, I recall fellow students mockingly referring to those who emphasized the hope of heaven as being “So heavenly minded they are no earthly good.” I recently commented on this in another blog post to the effect that the Church has gone to the other extreme with a vengeance. Today many in the Church are so worldly minded they are no heavenly good. On any given Sunday, as we drag the sins and griefs we bear into church, we are likely to be greeted with words admonishing our lack of passion for peace and justice.  It’s no longer ‘What a Friend we Have in Jesus, it’s ‘What Friend we Should be to the World’.

For my part, I stand among the heavenly-minded with that old Norwegian. Our eyes filled with longing, looking hopefully to the heavens, we await with joy the Lord, our Friend, our Savior who will return to fulfill the promise He died to keep;.

” In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that where I am you may be also.”

“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Tomorrow: “And is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from there He will come to judge the living and the dead.”

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I am currently commenting on the articles of the Apostle’s Creed. This is for my benefit as much as anything. These remarks are organized only because they are following the outline of the creed. So while they are not systematic, I hope they are not rambling either! I’m giving myself a refresher course and you’re invited to come along. And as you do I trust these few words may contribute something to your understanding of what it is to have faith in the God of Jesus.

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Christ is risen.. This confession of Christ’s Resurrection is not one article of faith standing among many. The essence of the faith is proclaimed in the Resurrection. St. Paul stated this with an unsurpassed pointedness when he wrote, “If Christ was not raised, there is nothing in our message; there is nothing in our faith either…” (1 Corinthians 15).  Indeed, if there was no resurrection then the crucifixion was a tragedy, nothing more. Death looms as large as ever and all this talk of Christ alive is so much whistling in the dark.

In the last century or so biblical interpreters of the historical-critical method of studying Scripture have largely concluded that reason applied to the Bible can offer no proof of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Instead, they have tended to rely upon what we might call psychological explanations. Some sort of spiritual Christ consciousness settled upon the disciples after Jesus died. Or, the early Christians projected their vision of hope onto Jesus. But these, it seems to me, are nothing more than tricks to satisfy the skepticism of our reason. For these ‘explanations’ also take us beyond the boundary of historical reason.

The entire witness of the New Testament is predicated upon the events of the cross and resurrection. There is not one line in any of the twenty seven books that even remotely attempts to memorialize a dead Jesus. On the contrary. Every line assumes the event of the Resurrection. As difficult as it may be for reason to come to terms with this, faith can speak of the bodily Resurrection of Jesus only as an act of God

The brutal suffering and death of Jesus left the disciples in despair. They were a broken, defeated remnant of a lost cause. What revived them? Did they simply “look on the bright side” and give themselves a pep talk and say things like’ ‘Let’s carry on for good ol’ Jesus’? On the contrary, their faith was not revived by anything they did. The most obvious explanation for their transformation is the one given by the New Testament witness; the one whom they saw crucified, dead and buried, they also alive and arisen from the grave.

With the appearance of the Risen Lord the disciples were brought face to face with the fact that while Jesus lived, they were the ones who had succumbed to death. Their despair, faithlessness and refusal to believe what he had told them of His death and resurrection simply confirmed their deadness. If Jesus was the dead One who was now living, the disciples were the living dead.

And is this not our position in a blind, fallen world? We wring our hands in despair and anxiety over our lost innocence, broken dreams and the myriad injustices all around us. We stand before the seductions, enchantments, terrors and threats of the world and allow them, rather than “Every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God”, to shape and define our hearts. But this glaring contrast was not the end of the story for the disciples and it is not the end for us. For Jesus, alive and risen from the dead, called them to life! “Because I live”, he promised, “so will you.”

So faith hears the message proclaimed of Christ Crucified and Risen. We stand before this proclamation and in this liberating Word we, too are brought from death to life. In the word of the Gospel and the sacraments, the Living Lord confides Himself to us, and in the words of the New Testament, …”causes us to be be born anew to a life of hope through faith in the power of God” (1 Peter 1).

“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Tomorrow: “He ascended into heaven…”

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For the next couple of weeks I am commenting on the articles of the Apostle’s Creed. This is for my benefit as much as anything. My remarks are organized only because they are following the outline of the creed. So while they are not systematic, I hope they are not rambling either! I’m giving myself a refresher course and you’re invited to come along. And as you do I trust these few words may contribute something to your understanding of what it is to have faith in the God of Jesus.

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Whenever the weekly lectionary presents me with a text on hell, I am tempted to sidestep it and look for another. Preaching on hell in the post-modern world is a bit like telling scary stories to frighten children. It is hardly the proper subject for the mature and enlightened. Millions of people, both within the churches as well as without, will hear no talk of hell for they are quite certain it does not exist. 

In the early 1980’s a group of us toured what was then East Germany. it was the 450th anniversary of Martin Luther’s birth and most of the places where Luther lived and worked were in the eastern part of that country. One of our stops was the concentration camp at Buchenwald. As we walked over the ground which had been the scene of senseless, premeditated mass murder one of our group said, “It must have been hell.” It was the right choice of words. Nothing else would do. The words written over Dante’s gate to hell could have been written over the gate to Buchenwald, “Abandon hope all you who enter here.”

We live close together on this tiny celestial ball. Our experience of being together may teach us that even as we attempt to create our versions of heaven on earth we also create our versions of hell on earth. We may not hear this in the churches anymore but television, movies, novels and plays scream these themes at us day and night. We desire friendliness and recognition but all too often we receive – and give – contempt and suffering. We turn each other’s lives into a living hell on such a scale the sheer ordinariness of it is staggering.  

Theologian Jurgen Moltmann has written, “What we have dismissed as a fairy tale is actually quite near, as near as our desire to live and our not being able to live, our desire to love and not being able to love. This becomes the anguish that has no name. Its thorn is guilt, the fiery torture of a bungled life. That is why all hells depend on us. “I do not do the good things I want to do; I do the wrong things I do not want to do” (Romans 8:19).” We may say about the Buchenwalds and the Auschwitz’s of this world, “Never again.”  But on what do we base our assurances? Are we safe from ourselves?

Jesus came proclaiming and living among us the nearness of God’s kingdom. Yet we made His life unbearable, finally giving Him a taste of hell on the cross. One more victim of the death dealers. What made Jesus’ death unique, however, is that this one who experienced profound abandonment (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”), is the same one who lived in the full consciousness of God’s presence (“The Father and I are one”). Through this experience of utter abandonment with the full knowledge of God’s nearness Jesus descended into the deepest torment of hell.

This is why Christians have taken such comfort in the knowledge that the just and righteous one was abandoned to hell’s fury. For if the Son of God, in whom God and life in their fullness dwelled, was subject to death and the deepest torment of hell, we also who long for love and life but too often receive or deal in contempt and death may no longer look to ourselves to break the impasse of evil. Instead, we are summoned, as Luther proclaimed, to “Look to the wounds of Christ, for there has your hell been mastered.”

“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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For the next couple of weeks I am commenting on the articles of the Apostle’s Creed. This is for my benefit as much as anything. My remarks are organized only because they are following the outline of the creed. So while they are not systematic, I hope they are not rambling either! I’m giving myself a refresher course and you’re invited to come along. And as you do I trust these few words may contribute something to your understanding of what it is to have faith in the God of Jesus.

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 The section of the creed dealing with Jesus Christ is as significant for what it does not say as it is for what it says. Missing from this section of the creed is any reference to the teachings and works of Jesus, to what we might call His earthly ministry. The language moves from His birth immediately to His death, resurrection and the events following, including His Ascension to the Father. This pattern is present in all the ancient creeds of the Church. Therefore, it is not accidental.

What is mentioned was of the greatest significance to the early Church. The details of the Christological section of the creed provide the basis and criterion for understanding and confessing what is essential about Jesus and His Gospel.

There is much that can be said about this article, too much for the length of this blog. So I want to focus on the word “crucified”.  In this article of the creed “crucified” appears with the words “suffered”, “died” and “buried”. One would think a reference to crucifixion would be superfluous under the circumstances. Why this specific reference to the manner of Jesus’ death?

The answer, I believe, lies in the fact that the event of the cross is the key to understanding the meaning of Jesus entire mission to this world. On the cross, humanity looked upon the One who had encountered them in love and righteousness and dealt with him as a common criminal. The event of the cross, then, exposes human antipathy toward the Living God and puts the lie to all our claims to love justice.

The event of the crucifixion is mentioned in the creed because this event, unlike any other in all of history, confronts man with the enormity of his crime; the theft of our existence and contempt for the Living God. At the same time the cross reveals God’s intention to have mercy on sinners. The Cross of Jesus is the consequence of God’s love. On the cross God reveals His intention to sustain us in all that we do, for all that we do is finally unsustainable and leads to death. In the death of Jesus all our works and all our ways are buried with Him. 

Tomorrow: “He descended into hell…”

“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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For the next couple of weeks I am commenting on the articles of the Apostle’s Creed. This is for my benefit as much as anything. My remarks are organized only because they are following the outline of the creed. So while they are not systematic, I hope they are not rambling either! I’m giving myself a refresher course and you’re invited to come along. And as you do I trust these few words may contribute something to your understanding of what it is to have faith in the God of Jesus.

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There is hardly a teaching of the Church more inaccessible to modern reason than the virgin birth. The problem is simple. Conception and birth are a process of natural life which bring a person into existence who had no prior existence.  Yet the Church confesses that the Son was born of Mary and has existed eternally just as God is eternal.  

Faith may confess this article of the creed with assurance but it does not remove the stumbling block. But if it is the task of faith to make the Son of God accessible to the world, then some way through the obstacle of reason must be found. 

Some would argue that these stories are nothing but reflections of the mythic traditions of the Hellenistic world. But this interpretation does not do justice to the forward looking, eschatological character of the revelation in Christ which is anything but a falling back into myth. The infancy narratives which are contained in Matthew and Luke are subject to the revelation of Jesus Christ as the living Word of God. In Jesus something entirely new has happened. The restraint of the birth narratives makes no room for the details of conception or the actual birth. What matters to the gospel writers is that God has revealed Himself in the flesh. What can be said of this human birth cannot be said of any other human birth, yet it was as real a birth as yours or mine. For in Jesus God does not begin a new ‘uber’ race but a new humanity.

Therefore, the Church cannot acquiesce to the insistence of reason that the virgin birth be dismissed from our confession. For our confession preserves the mystery of the Word made flesh, in all lowliness, meekness and humility. The confession of the virgin birth, which includes the poor, lowly girl who submitted to God’s will for her, guards against the presumption of reason and the will of man which refuses to receive the essential message of the Incarnation; God’s salvation comes – and is willed – in the form of man’s lowliness and weakness without any kind of pride, even unto death on the cross.

Tomorrow: “Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried…”

“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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For the next couple of weeks I am commenting on the articles of the Apostle’s Creed. This is for my benefit as much as anything. My remarks are organized only because they are following the outline of the creed. So while they are not systematic, I hope they are not rambling either! I’m giving myself a refresher course and you’re invited to come along. And as you do I trust these few words may contribute something to your understanding of what it is to have faith in the God of Jesus.

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The confession of belief in God runs off in as many directions as there are those who make such a confession. Even to confess belief in a God of creation does not really say much. As Martin Luther observed, “God may be in the creation, but is He there for you?”  Who is this God that has created a natural world that is both benevolent and, at the same time, has a way of turning on us?  How does this God meet us in the precarious historical situation in which we find ourselves in this world, surrounded as we are by powers too great for us, especially death?

The Christian confession of the God of creation finds its’ center in Jesus, who we call the Christ, Messiah, Savior. In making this confession the Church is saying that the historical life of Jesus of Nazareth was the radically singular event in God’s self-revelation and the history of the world. Jesus words and actions were the words and actions of the self-expressing God who was “in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.” To confess “… Jesus Christ, His only Son, …” is to say that God and Jesus may be mutually substituted for one another and that they really include one another. Therefore, Jesus is not an open question who points humanity to God. In Jesus God responds to the questions posed by our radically fallen existence fully and unconditionally.

In Jesus God reveals both His saving divine will and grace for the sake of a humanity that is derivative of this same Jesus, the Word made flesh. “All things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that was made.”  The confession of faith in this Jesus which calls Him “…our Lord”, is an acknowledgement of trust in the One who alone has the absolute right to judge our lives and demand the radical self-surrender of man and woman, in faith, to the Word of God. This self-surrender, however, is brought about by grace. Whoever is able to make this confession does so by grace (“No one can say Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit”).  But this grace is not a divine substance. Grace is God Himself, giving Himself in love.

To call Jesus lord is to confess, therefore, that in Him, the crucified and risen One, God has given Himself unconditionally for sinful humanity. And that through this faith I may look forward in hope to the fulfillment of the final possibility of God’s saving purpose as he brings forth a new creation in Christ.

Tomorrow: “Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary…”

“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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For the next couple of weeks I am commenting on the articles of the Apostle’s Creed. This is for my benefit as much as anything. My remarks are organized only because they are following the outline of the creed. So while they are not systematic, I hope they are not rambling either! I’m giving myself a refresher course and you’re invited to come along. And as you do I trust these few words may contribute something to your understanding of what it is to have faith in the God of Jesus.

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The subjective danger in the Christian confession of faith is that God’s Word has meaning only if it has meaning for me. Or, to put it another way, God’s goal in salvation has been reached when the human is fulfilled.

This article of the creed pushes the envelope of salvation, the desire that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven, to include all things, including those beyond the capacity of natural reason. The work of salvation in Jesus Christ is for the sake of humanity. But it is not only for our sake. To confess the God who is Creator of heaven earth is to believe that salvation encompasses the whole of Creation and that reality the Word of God calls heaven, where we pray God’s will is done by other beings capable of doing God’s will. To confess God as “Creator of heaven and earth” is to say all things exist in an inescapable relationship to God.

This understanding lies behind those verses in the letter to the Philippians which speak of the human struggle against “principalities and powers.” The Almighty power of God is at work in this world and wherever His will is opposed. In this respect, this article of the creed prepares us for the next article, the confession of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world and worlds unknown to us, in Whom “all things seen and unseen”, find their fulfillment and perfection.

Tomorrow: “And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord.”

“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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For the next couple of weeks I am commenting on the articles of the Apostle’s Creed. This is for my benefit as much as anything. My remarks are organized only because they are following the outline of the creed. So while they are not systematic, I hope they are not rambling either! I’m giving myself a refresher course and you’re invited to come along. And as you do I trust these few words may contribute something to your understanding of what it is to have faith in the God of Jesus.

“I believe in God the Father Almighty…”

To confess God as Father is to acknowledge that the creation, and that includes my solitary life have their source, and therefore their goal, in God. It is to confess that my first obligation is not to myself or those around me or to the creation but to God.

Furthermore, the very basis of the idea that the human being may be called a person rests in the belief that we were created in the image of God. The fact of God’s personhood is what makes us aware of our own. I can think of  myself as a person because I am held in the mysterious, definitive grip of God. This essential personhood, reflective of God’s image, and held accountable to God is what the commandments, for example, attempt to hold inviolable. 

To confess God as Father is to identify with the God of Jesus. Some today refuse to use the word ‘Father’ when speaking of God. They reject the word for reasons largely shaped by issues of gender inequality.  But can the word be dismissed so arbitrarily? We confess God as Father not because it is the best word but because it is the word Jesus used. It is the word of the Bible. In confessing God as Father we are led to see Jesus in the light of God’s saving activity. More of this in the days to come.

To confess God as Almighty is to say something about how God is encountered in history, in our lives. The pagan religions of the Old Testament saw the power of gods revealed in the finite; the sun, the moon, the stars, etc. The God of Israel, on the other hand, was perceived to be active in the midst of what we call historical events in surprising, unexpected ways. God’s activity could come as bondage or freedom, destruction or salvation. Israel’s faith emerged in this dynamic as what became most real to them were the recurring acts of God’s mercy in their restoration and salvation. For now, I must confess in faith this God Almighty who kills and makes alive in His mercy, since the final coming and revealing of His Almighty power lies in the future.

Tomorrow: “Creator of heaven and earth…”

“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.“

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I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
 He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. 

Amen.

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Many of the world’s Christians use the Apostle’s Creed as a vehicle for confessing the faith. Of course we live in an age when some question whether the ancient formulas of the creeds are able to adequately express contemporary belief. Is there value in this critique?

My answer to the question of whether the creeds have value for us is a resounding, ‘Yes.’  And here is why I believe this to be true.

First, the creeds remind us that the Church is far more than a group of like-minded individuals. The creeds point the Church to what God has done for the salvation of the world. They are not, first and foremost, expressions of personal piety. The creeds point us to events, to the mighty acts of God. In this respect the creeds are objective statements fit for every time and place.

Second, the ongoing confession of the creeds are like the links of chain which bind Christians to the historical continuity of the Church. The radical, sectarian elements in the Church who disavow the creeds and discount their connection with the wider Church, run the risk of losing the faith itself. The creeds bind us to one another in a common confession across the generations.

Third, the creeds are biblical. That is to say, they reflect the faith proclaimed in the Scriptures. In this respect, they are not man-made as some would claim. The language of the creeds is drawn from Holy Scripture and, therefore, that same language invites us to examine the Scriptures. The creeds send us to Scripture and, ultimately, to Jesus Christ.

Fourth, the creeds do provide the individual believer with language rooted deeply in the gospel, language which must be continually unfolded and re-examined so that our indiviual and corporate confession of faith may be made with an honesty and integrity rooted both in the Church’s long history and the demands of the present.

In a sermon from 1535 Martin Luther commented on the Apostle’s creed with these words. “Neither we nor the early fathers invented this confession of faith, but just as a bee collects honey from all kinds of beautiful flowers so is the Apostle’s Creed a finely constructed summary of the whole of Scripture, the writings of the beloved prophets and apostles, for the benefit of children and all Christians.”

For the next couple of weeks I will be commenting on each of the articles of the Apostle’s Creed. Come along. For these ancient words ring with new life. How could they not? They point us, after all, to the Living God and all He has done for us in Jesus Christ.

“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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“Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! For in our union with Christ he has blessed us by giving us every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Even before the world was made, God had already chosen us to be his through our union with Christ, so that we might be holy and blameless before him.”

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During my rock n’ roll years as a teenager here in Southern Cal, I had the privilege of playing in a band managed by the well-known disc jockey, Casey Kasem. Casey is an Armenian Christian and that aspect of his life was apparent. He is famous for a statement he used at the end of his long running radio and TV programs. You might remember it. 

 “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.”

The world has a way of keeping our feet on the ground, our noses to any number of grindstones. Created for the heavens, we too often find ourselves choking on the dust, immersed in the tedium of the day. On the one hand, of course, we have no choice. We must live in this world.  But there is more.

St. Paul begins his letter to the Ephesian Christians by turning their sights from the earth to the stars. In these two verses from the beginning of his letter he describes a great mystery, a mystery of which we are a part as God’s people. We are thankful for the great opportunity of our lives, of course. At the same time it is our life in Christ Jesus, our life in God that draws from the Christian the greatest swell of thanks and praise. How can we fathom it? All the blessings of heaven Paul, declares, are already ours in Christ. Before the dawn of time, of creation, Paul tells us, God had already chosen us as His own through Christ. And right there, within the great mystery of predestination, emmanating from God’s eternal, steadfast love, the greatest mystery of all was present and waiting to be revealed.

And what is that most ineffable of mysteries? That on the earth-bound, bloody cross the dear, holy, blessed, heavenly Jesus became sin although He knew no sin so that our sinful selves would be overwhelmed by the grace and mercy of the eternal God, and  “that we might be holy and blameless before Him.”  

“May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

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