Proper
12A 2014
Father Adam Trambley
July 27, 2014 St.John’s Sharon
This morning we continue to look at the basic elements of
what we believe as laid out in the Apostles’ Creed used in the Baptismal
Covenant. (Read part one on God the Father here, and part two on God the Son here.) The Apostles’ Creed is one of
two creeds we use in worship, the other being the Nicene Creed that is normally
professed at our services when we have a Eucharist. The Apostles’ Creed is part of our baptismal
service, and we can always renew our baptismal covenant, which we are doing
after the sermon during this month. I
should also note that even though the creed is separated into three different
questions, and that I am breaking it down by sections and by lines to explain
it, we believe what we say in the creed as a whole. The entire sweep of the attribute and work of
God we profess is more important than in the particular explanations and interpretations
of any one phrase.
This week we’ll turn to the section beginning “I believe in
the Holy Spirit.” Up until now, most of
what we have looked are foundational elements of Christianity. What we profess about God the Father and God
the Son would be easily accepted by almost all branches of the Christian faith. From this foundation, edifices of doctrines
and dogmas are built, but we can all at least come back to the beginning
together. What we are going to look at
today is also believed officially by almost all Christian churches, but some of
it differs from how we usually talk about things in contemporary America. If you have questions, feel free to ask.
The first statement in this section of the Apostles’ Creed
is “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Here
again, we affirm that God is Trinity in Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A month ago at Pentecost, we talked in moredetail about the work of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit can be thought of as the love that connects God the
Father to God the Son, that connects us to God, and that connects us to each
other in a variety of spiritual and practical ways. Because God is love, the medium of divine
love that connects us is also God. The
Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ in each of us binds together the church
into the Body of Christ with Jesus Christ as its head. The Holy Spirit also provides us with
spiritual gifts to serve and build up one another. The presence of the Holy Spirit is recognized
in a person or group of people by the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Then we profess to believe in the “holy catholic
Church.” Here we should note that
catholic begins with a small “c” and Church with a large “C”. Small “c” catholic means universal, and
doesn’t necessarily equate with Roman Catholicism or what we often think of as
“the Catholic church.” Large “C” church
means the entire Church of God, which is bigger than any particular
congregation or denomination or any particular expression of that large “C”
church in a specific place. All of those
particular expressions are important – we can only connect to the large “C”
church through a specific small “c” church in our own community -- but no one
expression is ever the entire Church.
God is bigger than we are, or than any group of us are, so the Church
always includes people and institutions beyond our own church. The big “C”
Church also includes many small “c” churches that we dislike and disagree with
and would really like to kick out of the Kingdom of God because it would seem
to make our life so much more pleasant.
Believing in that big “C” church, however, means that we are all
connected together in one Body of Christ and that we can’t say to anyone else
in it: “we have no need of you.” All the
people Jesus died to save are part of our Church, whether they are Catholic,
Protestant, Independent, Charismatic, Evangelical, Pentecostal, Four-Square
Gospel, Orthodox, or anything else, even if they don’t believe that we are part
of their church for whatever reason. This
big “C” church is little “c” catholic because it covers everyone everywhere,
and is universal.
The Church is holy because it is set apart for God. When we say something is holy, we don’t mean
it is necessarily overly pious, or pure by some prevailing moral sensibility,
or “holier-than-thou.” Things that are
holy are designated for a special purpose. Holy people might need to be more
disciplined to accomplish that purpose, but primarily holiness is about what
someone or something is made for. God’s
church is holy because it is set apart to love God and neighbor and to restore
all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. As part of the church, we aren’t here just to
go through life with as little inconvenience as possible so that we die at a
ripe old age with a reasonable amount of toys.
Our purpose is to live out God’s calling for us, using the gifts God has
given us to build up our brothers and sisters.
The group of people called to live such a holy life is God’s Church,
which is set apart to pour itself out to do God’s work for God’s people, and
not simply to maintain itself as an institution.
Next we state that we believe in “the communion of saints.” The communion of saints a way of talking
about the mystical body of the Church that goes beyond only those people living
on earth today. The communion of saints
is the great congregation of all those living and deceased who are members of
the Church. Some people talk about the
communion of saints having two parts, the church militant which are those of us
still fighting on earth and the church triumphant which are those who have
already gone to be with God. Roman
Catholic and Orthodox churches believe strongly that the saints who have passed
away can still be asked to help us by their prayers on our behalf. Stricter Protestants tend to view any
communication with those who have died as problematic at best and idolatrous at
worst. In our Anglican tradition, we
know from scripture that there is a “great cloud of witnesses” that supports us
in our life of faith, but what exactly they can do isn’t described. We do have a connection with the entire
communion of saints, and asking anyone in our Church for prayers is a good
thing. Yet there is nothing we can’t pray to God about directly, and we
probably go overboard if we are focusing in prayer on talking to the saints instead
of approaching the throne of grace ourselves with confidence in our time of
need. The communion of saints supports
us, but we remember that only God is God.
We believe “in the forgiveness of sins.” We profess that God forgives us and that when
we forgive one another our sins are truly forgiven, since Jesus gave his church
authority to forgive sins. Forgiveness
of sins means that the sinner is reconciled back to God and brought again into
the Body of Christ, the Church. Whatever
barriers we have put up in our relationship with God have been taken away. We should note that God himself doesn’t put
up barriers to our relationship with him – they all come from our side, and God
helps us take them down. Forgiveness of
sins also means that if we are turning toward God and want to be in a
relationship with him for eternity that we will have everlasting life with him,
no matter what we have done. Forgiveness
includes all sins, no matter how terrible and no matter how much we may feel
like we cannot be forgiven. God forgives
and allows us to start over, which is another crucial piece of forgiveness. We acknowledge and take responsibility for
what we have done, but we no longer need to be ashamed or controlled by our
past. God has forgiven us, and we can
regret past failings while going forward to sin no more, at least to the degree
we can manage it with God’s help.
Forgiveness of sins doesn’t mean, though, that everything is
magically fixed. Past actions have
consequences, and much of the pain and suffering on the planet is due to past
sins, many of which were forgiven, and much of our current difficulty is the
result of our own past failings, most of which have hopefully been repented of
and forgiven. God doesn’t remove the earthly
consequences of our decisions, however bad.
He does, however, redeem broken situations. When we hurt someone we love, the pain is
real, and can linger, but as we reconcile, God can use that hurt to make the
relationship stronger and more loving.
We all have stories of God’s redemption of broken situations, but that
redemption is different than making everything as if no sin had ever
happened. Jesus’ resurrection is the
ultimate act of redemption of sin. God didn’t restore things as if the
crucifixion never happened. Instead he
allowed something more powerful to come out of it, and he forgave those who
crucified him, such that many of them later became Christians and now are with him
in paradise.
Finally, we profess “the resurrection of the body, and the
life everlasting.” We believe that we
are made to live forever in an embodied physical life that resembles this one
without all the problems. The Book of
Revelation describes this new life as being in the huge city of the new and
eternal Jerusalem which gleams with gold and gems and where the Lamb of God is
the temple and the light of the city.
Just as Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, our faith tells us that
all of us will be raised from the dead on the last day to an imperishable body
something like Jesus’ resurrected body.
Our bodies will have some connection to our current bodies, and we will
eat and be able to touch each other, but they will be better. This resurrection is our ultimate hope. Before the final resurrection on the last
day, we believe that God protects us from hell when we die and takes us to a
place of paradise where we are with Jesus and those we love. Remember how on the cross Jesus told the
thief who repented, “Today, you will be with me in paradise”? This paradise, however, is only a temporary
place until we are raised with Christ from the dead and brought to the fullness
of an embodied life everlasting.
What we have talked about these past three weeks are the
basic beliefs of the creed. Next week,
we’ll begin to look at the questions in the Baptismal Covenant which address
the practical implications of how we live out what we believe.
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