If you’ve looked at your bulletin, then you’ve
probably noticed something of a change in the program a bit later on in the
service. After the sermon, following the hymn of the day comes the creed,
not just any old creed though, but the
Athanasian Creed*. If you know anything about the Athanasian Creed or
if you were a bit curious and looked it up before the service started today
then you know that it’s a doozy, not just in terms of its length, but in its
agonizing and at times almost painful repetition. “The Father is infinite;
the Son is infinite, the Holy Spirit is infinite. Eternal is the Father;
eternal is the Son; eternal is the Spirit.” Right now, I’m sure that more
than just a few of you are wondering what’s gotten into the pastor today?
Its summer time, things are slow around here and we certainly don’t need
anything that is going to make things drag on and on and on! Talk about a
sure fire way to scare off the visitors! What’s say we ditch old Athanasius
and fall back on what we know, like the Apostles’ Creed? Hey, at least that
one is short and to the point. Or maybe one of us could work on an abridged
version for next year. Any takers?
A
link on the
ELCA website* notes that “this creed is of uncertain origin. It was
supposedly prepared in the time of Athanasius, the great theologian of the
fourth century, although it seems more likely that it dates from the fifth
or sixth centuries and is Western in character. It assists the Church in
combating two errors that undermined Bible teaching: the denial that God's
Son and the Holy Spirit are of one being with the Father; the other a denial
that Jesus Christ is true God and true man in one person. It declares that
whoever rejects the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of Christ is
without the saving faith. Traditionally it is considered the "Trinitarian
Creed" and read aloud in corporate worship on Trinity Sunday.”
So why in the year 2006 do we bother with
something that seems so mystifying, so befuddling, so outdated? Don’t we
already struggle with enough of a credibility gap these days? Why go and
make matters worse? Maybe the time has come to offer up a polite nod to
Athanasius and company and putting them all to rest for good. But then
again, there seems to be a lot of confusion out there these days about just
who God is and what God is up to in the world. Who or rather just what is a
person to believe, even those of us who call ourselves Christian?
Witness the controversy stirred up by the
latest Hollywood blockbuster, the Da Vinci Code. Friday evening a trinity
of an entirely different sort gathered at Tinseltown Theater in Pflugerville
to take in the film. Noshing on our popcorn and swilling Coca Cola, Carol
Crader, Jenny and I sat front and center for two hours and twenty nine
minutes of intrigue, action and ecclesiastical drama. (Could somebody
please check to see if those two words can be used together?) If you
haven’t seen the film or read the book you probably haven’t missed the
greatest movie of all time, but in my mind, it does manage to raise some
interesting issues about the whole notion of the Holy Trinity, particularly
with regard to the divinity and the humanity of Jesus.
Of course the issues raised by the Da Vinci
Code are by no means new. Throughout history, the church has had to deal
with all kinds of misunderstandings about Jesus’ identity and his
relationship with God the Father and the Holy Spirit or Advocate as the
writer of John’s calls it. At the same time, we need to remember that while
there are a few texts that seem to support it, the actual doctrine of the
Trinity wasn’t officially sanctioned until the third century or fourth
century AD.
I’ve heard it said before that the creeds
serve as a kind of framework that supports faith. Without it, all we have
is a confusing pile of ideas, feelings and misconceptions that can lead us
in two very different directions—a kind of relativism that says “it really
doesn’t matter what you believe” but really says, “it doesn’t matter if
you believe”, that or the kind of relativism that enables the kind of
religious extremism we know so very well these days. And by the way, we
Christians are in no way immune to this kind of stuff. Let’s quit kidding
ourselves. The creeds, including the one we use today help us to sort
things out, to understand what is important, what is essential, what it is
that we have to share with world, not as a club to beat others into
submission, but as a gift.
A very wise leader in the church these days is
a fellow named Brian McLaren. Brian was the presenter at our tri-synod
theological conference in January of 2005 and in his fascinating book, A
Generous Orthodoxy, has this to say about the Holy Trinity. “The
experience of God in Jesus was so powerful that it forever transformed what
followers of Jesus meant when they said the word God. What was God
like? What was God about? When they thought about what they had learned,
seen and experienced in Jesus, their understanding was revolutionized.
Eventually, after a few centuries of reflecting on God as revealed and
experienced through Jesus (in the context of some major controversies with
varied forms of Greek philosophy), the church began to describe God as
Father-Son-Holy Spirit in Tri-unity or the Trinity. For them, God could no
longer be conceived of merely as “God A”, a single, solitary, dominant
Power, Mind our Will, but as “God B,” a unified, eternal, mysterious,
relational community/ family/ society/ entity of saving Love.”
McLaren invites us to consider further “the
kind of universe you’d expect if “God A” created it: a universe of
dominance, control, limitation, submission, uniformity and coercion.
Then think of the kind of universe you would expect if “God B” created
it: a universe of interdependence, relationship, possibility,
responsibility, becoming, novelty, mutuality, freedom. I’m not sure which
comes first—the kind of universe you see or the kind of God you believe in,
but as a Christian who believes in Jesus as the Son of God, I find myself in
universe B getting to know God B.”
I wonder what it would mean for us and for our
world if we as the church were to begin to see ourselves living in sway of
God B, of the One whose deep desire is to make known His creating,
redeeming, saving love not only to the likes us, but through us to all
creation? I suspect that life would look a whole differently. Maybe we
wouldn’t have to worry about having all the answers, but could find ways to
live with the mystery that is life with God and with one another. Maybe we
as the church can finally begin to get past the issues that sideline us to
what is really important, to what is really essential. Maybe we can get
beyond the idea that faith has to be a matter of the head or the heart, but
that it could actually involve both the way we think and feel. Maybe we can
get over our need to look down, to dismiss or condemn those who don’t see
things from our point of view.
A six hundred and twenty six word long
statement of faith—not what we have to believe, but what we get
to believe, the gift of faith that God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit has
handed on to us through the lives of others, the Church that God himself
makes holy and one with Him. Now may the gift of faith that we have
received, become the gift we share that all may know God’s love. Amen.
Pastor Brian Peterson
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