Here We Stand, VI: A Brief Statement

July 28, 2013

If you were called upon to state your faith, to, as scripture puts it, “give an account of the hope that is within you,” what would you want to say? What key points would you want to make? What would be essential to you?

*****

That was the question put to the drafting committee that wrote A Brief Statement of Faith. The committee was convened by the moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) when the denomination was born of the 1983 union of the two largest Presbyterian denominations in the nation. That union was, in fact, a re-union of the northern and southern strains of Presbyterianism that had split over the issue of slavery in the first half of the 19^th century.

The General Assembly directed its moderator, J. Randolph Taylor, to appoint a committee representing “diversities of points of view and groups within the reunited Church to prepare a Brief Statement of the Reformed Faith for possible inclusion in the Book of Confessions” (Rodgers, 231). The moderator appointed 21 people from across the church, and they began a journey that would carry them forward for the better part of a decade.

While the occasion of reunion was, in and of itself, perhaps significant enough to call forth a statement of faith, the larger concern the drafters confronted is one we continue to face: the basic question of faith in an increasingly secular world, and, in particular, how to articulate – in brief – a coherent, Reformed, Christian faith in and for our time.

As Jack Rodgers, who served on the committee, said in his foundational book on the creeds of the church, “It may be the first time in the history of Reformed creedal formation that a group was chosen specifically for its diversity and then expected to write a document evoking unity” (Rodgers, 231).

In other words, the challenge of confessing the faith in our particular moment in Christian history lies in recognizing the validity of numerous perspectives while naming and acknowledging a common commitment that claims us as a distinctive people of faith. In still other words, how do we draw the circle within which we find ourselves as members of this body? How do you make that circle wide enough to include the orthodox, the neo-orthodox, the post-orthodox? The staunchly conservative and the creatively liberal?

A Brief Statement of Faith approaches that fundamental challenge not so much by talking about the church, about the community within the circle, but, instead, by talking about the God who calls us into the circle.

The first claim the statement makes about the God who comes to us in Jesus reminds us just how widely God draws the circle and whom it is that God sees within the circle of God’s concern. Giving voice to the Divine will within him, “Jesus proclaimed the reign of God: preaching good news to the poor and release to the captive, teaching by word and deed and blessing the children, healing the sick, and binding up the brokenhearted, eating with outcasts, forgiving sinners, and calling all to repent and believe the gospel.”

That’s a wide circle: the poor, the captive, the children, the sick, the brokenhearted, the outcasts, the sinners – all, all, all fall within the circle of God’s care, concern and compassion. In these words, uniquely among the confessions of the church, A Brief Statement of Faith takes seriously and speaks clearly and eloquently about the life and teachings of Jesus. You may recall my remark about the Apostles Creed reducing the life of Jesus to a comma. A Brief Statement of Faith describes this Jesus whom we call Lord.

The statement continues in the same vein, proclaiming that, “In sovereign love God created the world good and makes everyone equally in God’s image male and female, of every race and people, to live as one community.”

A Brief Statement was the first broadly accepted Christian creedal statement that not only makes clear the fundamental equality of men and women – including the equality of call to ordered ministry in the life of the church – but also employs both male and female images of God.  God is described as “like a mother who will not forsake her nursing child, like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home.”

These clear statements about God’s love and grace, along with the clear statements about fundamental human equality, have been crucial in the struggle for GLBT equality in the church during the past 20 years. In the same way, they have been critical in the work of proclaiming the good news to a largely unchurched young adult population across North America.

I am always happy to respond to those who dismiss the church as unrepentantly bigoted by lifting up our denomination’s most recent confession, and saying, “well, that may be true of some, but it is not true of the faith that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) proclaims.”

Of course, the truth we proclaim with our lips is not always the truth that we reveal in our lives.

As we did a few moments ago, we often use words from A Brief Statement of Faith in worship as our prayer of confession. In this statement of faith, the church acknowledges the deep brokenness of our lives. We humans regularly ignore God’s commandments, and in doing so “we violate the image of God in others and ourselves, accept lies as truth, exploit neighbor and nature, and threaten death to the planet entrusted to our care. We deserve God’s condemnation.”

That would be the part of worship that the youth at our church in Cleveland called the “we suck” prayer. I prefer to think of it as the, “yeah, we’re pretty broken” prayer, but whatever works for you. The truth is, of course, we are pretty messed up. It doesn’t take more than a glance at the news, or at Facebook, or in the mirror to confront that truth.

Thanks be to God, that is neither the end of the story nor the end of A Brief Statement of Faith. For, as I noted earlier, the statement is much more about God than it is about us. We trust in a God who loves us in spite of who we are and because of whose we are.

In life and in death we belong to God. The statement begins there, with an echo of the first question of the Heidelberg catechism, to tell us whose we are and to remind us of the great comfort that comes in that simple assurance. No matter what, God claims us as God’s own.

Thus, as we confront the truth about ourselves we are assured by the truth about God:

“God acts with justice and mercy to redeem creation. In everlasting love … hearing [our] cry … loving us still … God is faithful still.”

This is the core of what we believe to be true about the God in whose heart and hands we have our being. We are claimed as God’s own … for the world.

That’s the key. We are called and claimed for the sake of all the others who are also loved by the same Creator. In that call, the Spirit gives us the courage to live not for our own sakes but for the sake of the world. A Brief Statement describes what it looks like to live for others when it proclaims that the Spirit gives us the courage “to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.”

In good, proper, decent and orderly Presbyterian fashion, the church crafted this statement of faith to serve as a reminder of whose we are and how we are supposed to live based on that belonging. We are God’s own for the world – not in an exclusive way, but in a clear and particular way whose roots sink deep in the soil of the Reformation.

It took eight years of conversation, drafting, debating, forming and reforming, the votes of two General Assemblies and a majority of the 187 presbyteries before the work begun in 1983 was brought to final fruition with the formal adoption of A Brief Statement of Faith.

The statement remains, almost a quarter century on, a clear and simple declaration of Reformed faith and it continues to serve the gathered community of the church as both guide and inspiration for our common life. We will use the opening and closing sections of the statement as our confession of the faith this morning.