Here We Stand
June 9, 2013
1 Peter 3:8-15
Credo. “I believe.” The first
word of the Apostles’ Creed in the Latin raises some wonderfully rich questions
that will, I hope, help us embark on a summer of exploring the confessions of
the faith that, in part, define us as a congregation of the Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.), and individually as members of the body of Christ.
We’ll come back to the word
itself in a bit, but first, you might well be wondering why it matters at all.
I had a lovely long conversation last week with a long-time friend who pastors
a little Presbyterian congregation in New England. Pat serves on the General
Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission. That body is, in effect, the supreme
court of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
They hear and decide all kinds
of cases about issues in the church ranging from disputed dissolutions of
pastoral calls to disputes over church property. Pat told me last week about a
case that is upcoming involving a congregation whose session has voted to leave
the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and, as is almost always the case, wants to
retain the church property which, in all cases, actually belongs to the
presbytery of which the congregation is a member congregation.
The case revolves around a
disputed understanding of what it means to be part of the Reformed theological
tradition. In other words, it comes down to how we understand who we are as a
church. In still other words, it comes down to what we proclaim or, in still
other words, what we confess.
As our text from 1 Peter suggests,
there are times when one must be prepared to give account of the hope that is
within us. As the various historic documents that comprise our Book of
Confessions indicate, giving an account of hope is all the more important in
times of despair and hopelessness.
The confessions matter because
they are efforts by particular people at particular moments in history to
declare clearly and publicly who they are and for what they hope. The
confessions come from moments when a people felt the clear need to declare,
“here we stand.”
If you grew up in the church, at
least in its Mainline Protestant or Roman Catholic expressions, you’ve
encountered, and, perhaps even memorized the words of the ancient creed that
are printed on the back of this morning’s bulletin.
You’d think by its name that
this creed is the most ancient
Christian expression. You’d be forgiven for believing (as, in fact the
church-supported legend held for centuries) that these words were codified when
the apostles themselves felt the clear need to declare, “here we stand.”
Actually the Nicene Creed
predates what we now know as the Apostles’ Creed by at least several centuries.
“Several centuries” is a fairly
large margin of error, and that margin serves as an excellent reminder that we
live in unimaginably different times than our forebears in the faith. There are
not multiple iterations of the Apostles’ Creed carefully preserved in markup
Word files. Indeed, there are no manuscripts at all, just fragments and
references in other texts to something that eventually coalesced in the early
700s into the form we have today.
The creed was used as a teaching
tool and as part of the baptismal liturgy. Parents were expected to know it by
heart and priests were expected to be able to teach the faith based upon the
claims of the creed, which distills various parts of scripture into a dozen
assertions about the triune God.
The Apostles Creed provided a
common language used by early Christians to say, in effect, “here we stand.”
The creed of Nicaea, slightly longer
but similar in many respects to the Apostles’ Creed, has a considerably clearer
history. It emerged from Emperor Constantine’s desire to unify his empire
ecclesiastically as well as militarily and economically.
Perhaps understanding the call
in our text this morning for “unity of spirit,” Constantine said, “Disorder in
the church I consider more fearful than any other war.” He was intent on
creating order first by achieving agreement on the fundamentals of the faith.
Far more interested in political
stability than in complex theological formulations, nevertheless, the emperor
suggested the compromise language that convinced the holy fathers of Nicaea to
declare that Jesus was of the same substance as the Creator at the council of
the year 325 of the Common Era. In Constantinople in 381, a second council
further developed the creed, and by the middle of the fifth century it was
accepted as the definitive statement of Christian faith.
“The creed, in its present
language, is the oldest theological statement of the church, and it is the only
creed accepted and used by all three major branches of Christendom: Eastern
Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant.” As former GA moderator Jack Rodgers
put it in a book that has seen the past generation of Presbyterian clergy
through our ordination exams, “It is highly appropriate that [the Nicene Creed]
stands first in our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Book of Confessions.”[1]
The Book of Confessions is part one of the constitution of the
Presbyterian Church. It includes nine historic confessions: the two ancient
ones we’re considering this morning; four that come from the age of the
Reformation and its immediate aftermath; and three more from the 20th
century.
When we ordain and install
officers in the church – ruling elders to serve on session; teaching elders to
serve as pastors; deacons to serve pastoral needs in community – we ask them to
“sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as
expressed in the confessions of our church” and to be “instructed and led by
those confessions as [they] lead the people of God” [W-4.4003].
We are a people of hope, as we
sing here each Sunday, and we are also a people who have striven through the
ages to be clear about the nature of that hope and about the God who is its
source.
That’s why we have these
documents; they are both examples of how our ancestors said, “here we stand,”
and guides in our own attempts to say the same thing in our own time and place
with words that speak the truth as we have been given to understand it.
Of course, the confessions are
more than that. They arose from particular moments when a great deal was at
stake politically, socially and in the life of the church. Constantine, for
example, was trying to hold an empire together, and the church was a
significant part of the effort.
Our time is no different, and,
also, vastly different. We face our own set of questions and challenges, but
the demand on us is the same: in the face of what confronts us, where do we
stand? In the face of a culture of despair, what is the nature of our hope? In
the face of a culture of disbelief, what truth do we proclaim?
Credo. I believe.
In a few moments I’ll invite you
to join in reciting the ancient words of the Apostles’ Creed. If by the words,
“I believe,” we mean “I give my intellectual assent to these propositions taken
literally,” then I cannot stand before you and say “I believe” to a great many
of these ancient ideas.
So where does that leave me? You
may find yourself in a similar boat. If by credo
we mean “I hereby agree to the literal-factual truth of the following
statements,” many of us should remain silent. But credo doesn’t necessarily mean that, or merely that.
While the deep and ancient
etymological roots are twisted, complicated and buried under centuries of
linguistic sediment, there’s a connection in the Latin credo to the heart as well as to the mind. Thus, as Marcus Borg
puts it, “when we say credo at the beginning of the creed, we are saying, ‘I
give my heart to God.’”
Borg goes on:
And who is that? Who is the God to whom we commit our loyalty
and allegiance? The rest of the creed tells the story of the one to whom we
give our hearts: God as the maker of heaven and earth, God as known in Jesus,
God as present in the Spirit.[2]
So here I stand: committed to
living as fully and deeply into relationship with this God and with God’s
people in the community of Christ’s church, endeavoring, even now – especially
now – to follow the way of Jesus who beckons us, “come and see.” I have, I am
and I will. And this has made all the difference.
Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
8:36 AM
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