C. Douglas Simmons, D.Min.
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
The Nicene Creed as challenge and guide
By now most of you know that I have set myself the task of amplifying
segments of the Eucharist when I preach at later services. This morning I
want to deal with that
portion of the Eucharist that comes after the sermon; the Nicene Creed. Before I do that
I want to again say
that these reflections are mine and may not represent those of the Episcopal
Church as a whole. You may find
yourself in disagreement with what I have to say, you may be disturbed or you
may feel that what follows is helpful.
In truth I’m writing these sermons to learn,
so I’m teaching myself and
asking you to eavesdrop.
I
appreciate this opportunity to hold my theological feet to the fire and thank
you for your courtesy in allowing me to do so. Of necessity this will not be an exhaustive study, the Creed
has a complex history and structure and time only permits so much, and we
Episcopalians always appreciate brevity.
With such a document as the Creed I will endeavor
to pursue that elusive
goal. If you gain from this
exercise, so much the better, if you don’t you have my apology for wasting your
time.
Like many others who read the Nicene
Creed I find some places with
which I take issue and other parts that lend themselves to twenty-first century
Christian understandings of reality and its Creator. In coming to grips with what I view as the Creed’s meaning I
have found it the exercise to be an exhilarating challenge to articulate my own
faith precepts. I encourage you to
try it some time.
First let me set the stage for what follows
with a series of brief
definitions:
Number one,
Religion, defined as a particular institutionalized or personal system of
beliefs and practices relating to the divine.
Number two,
Belief, defined as a statement, principle, or doctrine that a person or group
accepts as true.
Number three, Creed,
defined as a set of religious
beliefs.
And finally, Number
four, Faith defined as devotion
to, or trust in somebody or something,
especially
without logical proof.
Please
notice that there is a distinct difference between belief and
faith. Admittedly they do become a
bit intermingled in the Creed yet it stands, as used, as a belief statement,
not as a personal statement of faith.
Belief is a set of understandings commonly agreed
upon by the people of
a group, in our case the Episcopal Church. The Nicene Creed is part of that common understanding
because in practice we use it at every Eucharist. Yet I have found that there are people who, because of their
understanding of reality, human history and their own experience find the words
of this Creed narrow and constricting.
In Inquirer’s classes I have been asked if
I accept that Jesus, the
Christ, is the only way to God and the only Son of God and in all candor I have
to answer no. Followed by my
avowal that for me He is the pathway to God, adding that other great exemplars
such as Jesus exist for people of other cultures and religions.
Part of the
problem regarding the Nicene Creed is the absolute and
archaic language of the Creed it leaves little room for modern hearts and minds
to be in agreement with every word and phrase. One of the reasons for this is that when it was written its
authors held an entirely different worldview and understanding of reality than
we do, so their faith language sounds strange in many places. For them heaven
was “up” and there was
a hell and it was “down”. They
accepted the Ascension of Jesus to God’s “right hand” as a perfectly
appropriate thing to say and they could imagine it happening as the book of
Acts describes it. They accepted
that there would be a final “judgment,” a separation of the faithful from the
unfaithful at the second coming of The Christ. In other words much of what they held to be the absolute
definition of Christianity is different than the way many Christians in this
day and time would express it.
In
short the Creed presents a difficulty for Christians to say because of its
language. For example, I have
noticed in this congregation that a fair number of people refrain from saying
the Creed probably because of the aforementioned factors.
Having said
all of that, this Creed still an important place in our
worship life. To illustrate this
premise I’ll go through the Creed by its various segments, of which I find
four. The first segment is as
follows:
“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven
and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.”
In this opening
paragraph we see words that echo the theme of Genesis
regarding the Creation of all things.
We may find it hard to accept that God is almighty
because of all the
petty wars of possession and terror that abound in today’s world. The same sort of
thing existed in the
time when the Creed was finalized.
The only difference is in weaponry and mobility. What makes God almighty is not power of
an earthly nature but rather the capacity to create and interrelate with
creation in an infinite variety of constructive ways.
We may find
the phrase,” Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is,
seen and unseen,” difficult to consent to because we don’t view “heaven” as the
authors of this Creed did, to them it was more a place than a state of
being. Yet the phrase, “maker of
all that is, seen and unseen,” needs to be appreciated if we claim to accept
that God is the Creator and originator of all that was, is and will be. We have discovered
in our day and time,
through the work of science, that the reality of creation is a complex structure
that is both seen and unseen.
We
have learned that it is much more mysterious and porous than heretofore
believed. For example both the
star filled cosmos and the sub-atomic realms of reality contain far more space
than solid matter. You might say
the modern understanding of reality is full of holes. And even as long ago as the fifth century AD people believed
that reality had both seen and unseen aspects. They didn’t define or understand these phrases as we do but
they had no trouble, nor should we, in saying the Creator’s work is still more
mystery than known fact.
Understood in this way the opening phrase of the
Creed makes a lot of
sense to me.
The next segment is about the Incarnation
and its meaning; “We
believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of
the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten,
not made, of one being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of
the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.”
These phrases contain the statement of Jesus’
Incarnation, and make
the bold claim that he is the “only Son of God”. Such a claim is, for some, very troublesome because of its
exclusiveness. In addition, if one
takes the event of the Incarnation of Jesus as distinct and entirely different
from any other human birth, humanity, as we know it, has no relationship to God
our Creator the very real humanity of Jesus is a crucial connection to God for
then all humans have the same potential.
Personally, having been privileged to witness the
births of our two
grandchildren, I hold as a matter of conviction that the Incarnation happens
every time a child is conceived. I
am convinced that the Spirit of God is bestowed upon the joining of egg and
sperm and stays with what they become for eternity, for at their foundation
they are the creation of God, and humans are only cooperative agents in the
creative act. I can say, from
personal experience, that the job of being a cooperative agent in the creation
of a life is quite enjoyable.
It
may not be so for some people for whom human coupling in sex is an act of
violence and certainly a mother in labor may take exception to the enjoyment
that viewpoint as well.
However,
on the whole I’ve yet to hear any complaints in that regard, with the
exceptions I have mentioned.
So I
understand the Incarnation of Jesus to be God’s declaration that all human life
is Holy and sacred. If it turns out
otherwise it is not the work of God but rather the distortion of lives brought
about by human inhumanity.
The
Christ Spirit, that which Jesus gave his life to in radical obedience, is the
Spirit that was there with God when the beginning began. It is that self
same Spirit that I avow
as abiding in us with the same potential for its complete realization that is
found in Jesus. That is how I
understand the second segment of the Nicene Creed.
The next segment
involves Jesus’ death, resurrection and a final
judgment; “For
our sake he was
crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in
accordance with the scriptures: he ascended into heaven and is seated at the
right hand of the Father. He will
come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have
no end.” This segment creates some problems for me since I do not
understand the crucifixion and death of Jesus as a payment for human sin but
rather as an act of Divine Love so generous, extraordinary and stunning in its
mode of expression that it draws humanity back into relationship with God.
The statement about judgment troubles me, not
because I fear it but because I do not accept that God judges, at least not as
we understand it from human courts of law. A major point in my conviction about this is that the
dehumanizing acts we do and that represent a part of our self expression will
simply not be able to exist in the presence of God’s radiance. Here’s how
I imagine it will be for
me. After my bodily death I
envision myself as somehow being aware of God’s radiant presence. And between that
radiance and me there
is a wall of fire. But the fire is
not about hell, it’s about transformation; it involves those times of my life
in which I have not been loving as God, in Jesus, the Christ, calls me to be
that are at issue in this vision.
In my vision I am aware of God asking me if I would
like to be on the
other side of the wall of fire, in other words with God. As I behold God’s
radiance the only
possible answer is an unqualified yes.
Next, God then invites me to walk through the wall
of fire. I ask, “What will happen?” God’s response is, “All that does not
belong over here will be burned away, that which does belong will come to no
harm.” And I ponder in my vision
if there will be anything left of me after my walk through that fire. To my mind that’s
cleansing and
purifying, not judgment.
Finally,
it’s my choice whether it will take place or not, because God only invites, God
does force participation.
If there’s
any kind of judgment it happens from my side and it’s about my evaluation of my
life. God wants me to be on God’s
side but whether I have the courage and willingness to part with some of my
personally engrained self defining traits is what is at issue here. If you can find
a more intimidating
picture than that let me know.
The
concluding phrase of this segment, “His kingdom will have no end” doesn’t
resonate with someone unused to royalty.
I simply understand it to say that God will always
be and that we are
unconditionally invited to always be with God.
The
concluding phrases are somewhat complicated and require some
knowledge of the Bible to really appreciate. Here’s what they say; “We believe in the
Holy Spirit, the
Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is
worshipped and glorified. He has
spoken through the Prophets. We
believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the
forgiveness of sins. We look for the Resurrection of the
dead, and the life of the world to come.”
That there is a Holy Spirit I have no doubt, from where that Spirit
emanates is not for humans to know or define. To simply say that there is an unseen aspect of the Divine
that has sustained and nourished creation should be enough.
The prophets
of the Hebrew Testament are mentioned as persons through
whom the Holy Spirit has made known God’s compassion. They were spiritually sensitive people of their day and
time, in other words they opened their hearts and minds to God and discovered
the essence of God. Most of their
writings are about treating our fellow humans with dignity and not parading our
religion as though we were its sole professors. We are called to emulate our Creator’s attitude toward
humans, in other words treat others as God would, with compassion. Find and read Isaiah,
Amos, Micah,
Hosea, Jeremiah and Ezekiel for starters and you’ll see what I mean.
The phrase about the “one holy catholic and apostolic church” is for
me, like a dictionary definition for all faithful humans who give their lives
to the cause of compassion.
So it’s
a much larger group of faithful people than the authors of the Creed probably
had in mind.
Baptism is, for me, a declaration of something God has
already done
and a reminder that we are all involved in helping each other to live into and
up to the meaning of Baptism and that is, to put it in the words of a bumper
sticker I saw, “God bless everyone, no exceptions.” The last phrase hinges on our trust that in Jesus God has
shown us that life is a whole lot more than we have any idea. The way I like
to put it is that this
earthly life, while we are toddling around in bodies, is only pre-school and
our death, the death of our bodies, is our promotion certificate to the
kindergarten of the next stage of life.
In summary,
the Nicene Creed, even with some of its archaic language,
challenges each one of us to wrestle with how we express and live out our
faith. I do not see it as a
blanket statement that word for word every Episcopalian is in perfect agreement
with. Yet it’s there because it’s
important for us to continually, be reminded that faith is a living and
constantly growing attribute.
To
treat it as static and complete is to do a grave injustice to what I think the
Nicene Creed is all about.
So if
we can use the Creed as the source of a continual challenge to grow in our
trust in God and in Jesus, the Christ we should have little trouble with
including it in our Eucharistic feast.
I believe that it has been preserved in the Eucharist
to get us to think
and then to act on the faith that we see in and through the life of Jesus, the
Christ. Why else do we conclude
our Eucharists with a call to “go forth to love and serve the Lord?”
I think a good way to end this sermon would be for us all to stand and
proclaim our faith through the words of the Nicene Creed.
