Category Archives: creed

A creed review.

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We finished the creed.

The creed is the black lines of a child’s coloring book, waiting for crayons to color in the spaces, to give life.

The creed is the “Lord I believe”, waiting desperately for the answer to “Help my unbelief.”

The creed is the recalibration of the navigation system to remember where north is.

The creed is the standard weight used to test other objects.

The creed is the tags, the seo keywords for the Christian faith.

The creed is the poem you recite when you cannot remember the essay

The creed is the mnemonic, doing for the basics of the Christian faith what “Every Good Boy Does Fine” does for those trying to remember the lines of the treble staff or “Mozart’s in the closet, let him out let him out let him out” does for remembering the beginning of Mozart’s 40th Symphony or Roy G. Biv is the colors of the rainbow.

Each clause of the creed is a thread, leading us through the Bible like the lines on the floor of a hospital take you to ER or the birthing center or outpatient surgery or a research opportunity tracing “forgiveness of sins” from David’s relief in forgiveness

How joyful is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How joyful is the man the LORD does not charge with sin and in whose spirit is no deceit!

To John’s baptism

John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for theforgiveness of sins.

To the offer of forgiveness from Jesus

And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.

death and life

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It was a gift, actually. Death is an expiration date for brutality. Once Adam and Eve knew they could defy God, it would do no good for them to live forever in bodies. Breaking the tab on the back that said “trained service technicians only” meant the created was trying to act as the creator.

And so, once they knew what wrong was, they also knew what death was. Wrong-doing by an individual could not be inflicted forever. The eventual demise of villains gives hope in an odd way.

But all of us have villainy in our hearts. All of us have a desire to run things in our minds. All of us have “death” on our calendars.

Life matters, don’t get me wrong. God would not have put on human life if life did not matter. And three years with the disciples and the twelve, eating, drinking, laughing provides a seal of approval on the idea of living in conversation with God. It was a glimpse of the garden. There was table-talk of such delight that it created an appetite for a great feast someday.

The death and resurrection of Jesus, the one who lived in complete communion with the Father, suggests that there may be a different kind of actual body, a remarkable kind of living after death. No wings, no harps. Instead broiled fish and conversation and freedom. Maybe, just maybe, villainy can finally die and life as intended can happen. Forever.

And so, when at the last breath of the creed we say we believe in, “Life everlasting”, we are affirming a hope that goes back as far as people can remember. For bodies that don’t break. And for living that matters and can happen without villainy. And for conversation with God face-to-face. Freely. Fully.

Finally.

the resurrection of the body

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Ted was 93. People who knew him for 40 years, 60 years, 20 years, talked about him. About his compassion, his encouragement, his hospitality. His leadership, his diligence, his career. His faith. We gathered for an hour and more. There were two hundred and fifty of us.

Much of my professional life was in that room, a room where I worked for seven years, worshiped for several more. A man I met forty years ago. People I taught with 25 years ago. People I went to church with, people I cried with, 10 years ago. People I work with now. People from every place I’ve worked for the past 25 years.

The funeral was a resurrection of memories. People I helped. People who helped me. People whose opinions I feared and curried and respected and ignored. That husband has died, who hired me and was mad at me and forgave me, and I him. That husband has died, who annoyed me but also grew in my respect. Those people left, those didn’t and the relationships have never been the same.

If the resurrection of the body we affirm in the creed is like this resurrection of memories, I’m not sure I’m interested. I lived them once, I’ve relived some of them too often. As Ricky Nelson wrote, “if memories were all I sang, I’d rather drive a truck.”

But a resurrection of the body, that’s different. A real touchable body. A body without the Alzheimer’s and pneumonia and allergies and age. A body that is somehow us, and yet not us now. A body that is not part of some collective consciousness, but is individual. A body that exists on an earth that exists even if this body was burned to ash and spread.

But all those molecules mingled would take a miracle to individually resurrect.

Precisely.

I believe in the forgiveness of sins.

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As I sat down to write about the next part of the creed, I realized that I have talked about sin and forgiveness of sin a lot.

  • I wrote about Jesus and a sinner, a woman from a different culture and life than Jesus.
  • I wrote about the hard work of repenting, the process of turning around, of rebuilding relationship.
  • I wrote about Good Friday and the forgiveness in the middle of excruciating pain  I wrote about the same thing in Like God.
  • I wrote about Patrick’s forgiveness in going to Ireland, the land where he had been held captive (About the saint in Patrick).
  • I wrote about five ways that David journaled his prayer, including asking for forgiveness.
  • I wrote about the importance of personally acknowledging my sin (I did it).
  • I wrote about the Mary who poured perfume on the feet of Jesus (It’s okay to not know everything) in gratitude.
  • I wrote a whole series on the part of Matthew 18 where Jesus talks about how to handle sin in the context of church. (It’s here in one document: Matthew 18)

As I looked through these posts I see that apparently I believe in sin. That’s the first part of this clause. In order to believe in the forgiveness of sin, there has to be something to forgive, there has to be something more than a mistake, a slip up, an error. We’ve got to see that there is something that was wrong.

And then that there is someone that was wronged. someone who deserved right.

And then that the person wronged has the capacity to forgive.

And then that the person wronging asks for forgiveness.

It’s not complicated, this forgiveness of sin I believe it. But it’s often quite hard. Because it means I’m the one who wrongs.

I’m tired of long sentences and parentheses about church

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(part of the Creed series)

Every time I say “church”, I feel like I have to explain.

By church, I never mean “church service” or “worship service” or “worship gathering” or “Sunday morning service” or even Saturday evening service. Those events are important. They allow us to listen, to sing together louder than we can sing alone, to have our private spiritual space invaded. They force us (or give us the opportunity) to give greetings and hugs, to share tears and frustrations, to be confronted with people that we don’t like and may have treated us rudely when we visited their store this week, but who are just as much in need of grace and healing as we are. But going to church services isn’t church.

By church, I never mean “church building” or “school building we are renting until we can get a real church” or “don’t run in the building because it is God’s house” I never mean “the  place that spent too much on glass and chandeliers when people are starving” or “the place that ignores the fact that God created us with eyes and some of us with an aesthetic sense that is affronted.”

Places have value. Humans are created in time and space. Spaces take on meaning for us. Having a building makes it possible to share it for blood drives and immunizations and kids basketball and weddings and funerals and a week’s worth of activity. But going to the building isn’t church.

When I say “I believe in the holy Church“, I mean the church being made holy. I mean the people who have decided that they, imperfect as they are, will follow Jesus and will do it in community, as imperfect as it is, with the rest of the people who have decided that they will follow Jesus.