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September 05, 2004
We Believe
We Believe
(First in a Series on the Nicene Creed)
Deuteronomy 6: 4-9 / Mark 9: 14-24
September 5th, 2004
Jesus taught us that we should love God with all of our mind as well as with our heart, soul, and strength. This morning I begin with you a series of sermons in which I attempt to love God with my mind. I ask you to join me with your minds. I hope you will think about and talk together about what you hear.
We will begin to explore an ancient statement of faith in God, the Nicene Creed that was hammered out in the year AD 325, in a little town in northern Turkey. Why should we devote several months of Sundays to thinking about what Christians thought so long ago?
Because what they thought about is still important for us to think about. They wrote a very important expression of faith in God. The Nicene Creed was composed by Christians from many countries who came together not long after when to be caught as a Christian resulted in terrifying torture. At last they were free to come together to think about what was most important.
The Nicene Creed was written in a time when the young Church was also in terrible discord. We know something about that.
Today there is widespread disagreement between Christians, and that’s like it was back then. We need to remember what’s at the heart of our faith.
But our situation is different because it has been so easy for so long to identify oneself as a Christian. Then it was new to come together like this because so recently Christians were persecuted terribly. Edward Gibbon, who wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, remarked that in the ancient world hostile nations embraced or at least respected the superstitious of other countries. . . except for the Jews, and after them, the Christians.
It’s so easy to be a Christian today that some Christians are very “in your face” about it. They aren’t alone. Being a Muslim, or being a Mormon, or being a whatever has become very “in your face.” This cacophonous hodge-podge of proud religions has bred a crisis of faith for a lot of people. When you see many sects proudly claiming, “We’re the one,” which one do you trust?
Ruth Tucker, a professor at Calvin College, wrote a book a few years ago called Walking Away from the Faith. It is full of stories of people who were once well known as Christians who abandoned their faith. Why? For many different reasons. But mostly because of the silence of God when people desperately needed to hear Him. For people overwhelmed with the silence of God it is puzzling to hear others who talk easily about hearing God.
Within the church as well as outside the church there are many people who really struggle with the silence of God. There are people who stay in the church who have questions very much like those of people who say they are not religious. I have the hunch many people who say they aren’t religious are just admitting they’ve not heard the voice of the God a lot of religious people say they hear.
Those who are in doubt are further put off by some of the effects of self-confident religion. Arrogance about unseen things is off-putting. But worse than arrogance is the terrorism that has become such a part of our religion-saturated globe. Whether it be Iraqi Muslims who blow themselves up in suicide-raids, or Chechnan separatists who butcher little children in Russia, or people who murder doctors at abortion clinics, religious-motivated terrorism does little to convince doubting people about God. Religion can seem to instigate evil behavior.
But it’s not just the religion of terrorism that is off-putting. Where’s any sign of humility, even token modesty in speaking of this unseen God?
I get up early every morning and walk out to get the newspaper. When I look up into the early morning sky on a clear night and see it filled with stars so far away that the light I see actually was generated many years ago, I feel dread that I make my living speaking about God every Sunday morning! I resonate with the psalmist who asked, “When I consider the heavens the work of thy fingers, what is man that thou art mindful of him?”
When I look up I’m moved to silence more than to speech. A lot of people feel awe. I have atheist friends who feel awe before creation. I believe the immodesty and violence with which the word “God” is flashed before the world today leads many thoughtful people who feel this awe to pull back from specific belief in God. What is the path from this awe to faith, to trust in God as a Personal Being?
Some people think that the progress of modern science has made it hard to believe in God. Stephen Gould argued in his little book, Rocks of Ages, that religion and science talk about two non-overlapping arenas. Many scientists politely disagree. John Polkinghorne’s thoughtful books about God start with his findings as a physicist.
I believe the partisanship of much talk about God is off-putting to many thoughtful people. How can you trust that I will offer anything more than a partisan view that hopes to win your trust in the competing religious market place? Maybe you wonder if I feel genuine modesty before the unspeakable grandeur of the universe when I speak of its Creator.
All I can say is that I sense myself very much to be a pilgrim, a fellow pilgrim with you. I have personally placed my faith in Jesus Christ, not as a partisan, but as a pilgrim who has an invincible surmise that there is a God and that Jesus was more than a mere man. Something weird happened on Easter that compels my trust in Jesus.
Furthermore, I have few competitive instincts in matters of faith. Some fellow Christians see this as a liability. I am lured to Jesus because it’s clear when I read the Bible He loved not just my kind of people. Loving Jesus does not mean I must hate the Buddha, or Mohammed. I love Jesus because “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son” to die for it. There is too much I don’t know to be arrogant.
God, the Bible tells us, is pleased to dwell in a humble and contrite heart. Not only God loves a humble and contrite heart. Particularly in matters of faith, doubting people are attracted to humility. I believe many people who don’t believe in God are put off by the absence of humility in many who say they do.
Another reason why people have doubts about God is how much suffering there is in the world. Particularly if we think of God as good and loving, and all powerful, why then in His world is there so much pain? How could a good God allow terrorism to go on? How could a good, all-powerful God have designed a system where the balance of nature depends on animals preying on each other?
But worse than all the predation in the animal world is the way human beings crush each other, creating a hopeless class of humanity, the poor who will never rise out of their suffering. How could a good God create people in His image, even religious people who say they love God, and then cause such suffering to each other?
In the lesson from the New Testament we read this morning a despairing father said to Jesus, “I believe, help my unbelief!” I suspect that his honest plea to Jesus is echoed in the hearts of an awful lot of people.
In the Bible we read that God told the ancient Israelites to remember every day one simple matter. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” These words were to be on their heart throughout the day. And this was the basic thing they were to teach their children.
It wasn’t a complicated teaching. It wasn’t an arrogant teaching. Moses taught them this after they’d seen amazing things happen in their nation’s history. The more thoughtful of the Israelites knew that their nation’s history had a higher purpose, to bring blessing to all the earth. The God whom they worshipped said to Abraham, “In your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” The sense of this universal blessing was to keep their focus on God rather than on themselves as the conduits of God’s blessing. So long as they remembered to remind one another that they were to love God with heart, soul, and strength, their life had purpose.
Perhaps some would say that it was “brain-washing” that took place in devout Israeli households. Many people today favor a different kind of brain-washing, a kind that pummels young and old minds with the idea that all that matters is how much you have and how much you can consume and winning, whether it be games or battles.
The Nicene Creed was composed after Christianity won in a long struggle with other ideologies in the Roman world. But it did not systematize a spirit of triumph. Instead it reminded Christians of the God the ancient Israelites confessed morning and evening when they said, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.”
A creed is a statement of faith. The word “creed,” comes from the Latin word that means “I believe.” But I have called my remarks today, “We believe.” In some of the early editions of this creed the first word was “we believe,” and in others it was “I believe.” But “we believe” is how this statement of faith was apparently first written..
The rampant individualism of today in our democratic society makes many people think it dishonest to say, “We believe.” After all, how do we know that others who say, “we believe” actually believe what I believe?
There is another Creed better known to most of us than the Nicene Creed. The Apostles’ Creed which was composed as we know it after the Nicene Creed was written, starts, “I believe.” It was a statement of faith people would say when they were baptized. It is an individual statement. The Nicene Creed is a statement of faith in which we humbly dare to presume that the object of our faith is larger than my personal opinion. I join with you and you with me as we say, “We believe.”
There are two questions that have haunted people of all time, to which the Nicene Creed offers an answer. The first question is “What’s next?” The second question is, “What else?”
I doubt that there is anyone who doesn’t wonder, “What’s next?” Movies like “Ghosts,” fascinate us with tales of the lingering unseen presence of people who have died. Haunted houses at Haloween would have no interest if folk didn’t wonder what’s next? Not only old people die. Young people die too. Even babies die. As I get older and read the daily obituaries I’m struck by how many people younger than I am have already finished their lives. Then what? The Nicene Creed offers a simple answer to that question that thoughtful people have found intriguing. We will ponder than answer.
Hinging on the question “What’s next,” is the other one. “What else?” We live in fabulous homes, drive fabulous cars, eat fabulous food, play and work with fabulous computers, but every one of these fabulous things leaves us unsatisfied. I think one reason alcohol and drugs may be so popular is that they erase the question, “What else?”
It’s a question that defies your desire to have proof. A simple answer may be the best one. What else? Well, God, “in whom we live and move and have our being.” The ones who wrote this Creed did not try to prove the existence of God. And humbly they admitted together, “We believe.” It’s a liberating trust. Generations of people have found release from their striving, from their anxiety in resting in and assenting to the basic Fact of God.
This morning we gather around the Communion Table. On this table are the two elements of bread and wine, simple, common elements found in our kitchens. We remember that the God in whom we say, “We believe,” was present, and people saw Him and heard Him. Some were amazed and some were appalled. And those who were appalled crucified Him, little knowing that in doing this they lifted Him up high where all people could see Him.
If you can say with me, “We believe” in this Jesus, you’re welcome at this Table. If you do not believe yet, it is best not to take this bread and wine, because it will be meaningless to you. But know that it is here before you as an invitation you can see, “Come, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” Jesus said. I invite you to trust in God, in this Jesus whom God provided for us to see and hear, and see if it doesn’t bring some peace into your heart.
Let us pray: O Lord God, we believe; help our unbelief. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at September 5, 2004 09:30 AM