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What’s your creed? I’d like to talk about that today. A creed is a central core of beliefs, religious or otherwise, that provide unity to a people and which, when listened to or taken to heart, can guide a person’s and a peoples way life. In the Western Christianity we have two common creeds that most expressions of the church (denominations) will hold to but it doesn’t necessarily mean every individual who calls themselves a Christian would believe. These are the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. Our traditional Creeds arose during difficult periods when there was conflict in the church and God called up leaders from among the people who were able through much persecution from within and from outside the church to say this is the Truth which we have discerned God to have revealed about who God is and what God is up to in the world.
The thing about Creeds is that they can be on the academic side and seemingly a matter of the mind rather than what we believe in our hearts. The question I’m asking when I ask “What’s your Creed?” is what’s at the heart of what you believe about life, God, and people? Another way of saying is what do you keep telling yourself is true about the way things are? I can say that I believe The Apostles’ Creed – you know, I believe in God the Father (and the stuff that follows) and in Jesus Christ his only-begotten Son (and the stuff) and in the Holy Spirit (and the stuff). I can know and understand the Apostles’ Creed in my head and confess it to be “the Truth”, but what I really believe about God, what I feel inside about God, may be something really quite different. For some it may feel like abandonment, like God has hung me and the whole world out dry. God created it all but God certainly seems to have forgotten us. Or, something like God is almighty and on my side and is going to pour wrath upon “them” that ain’t whomever “them” may be because “them’s” just different than me and it threatens my way of life which God is Almighty God’s way. Or, it could simply that we believe this stuff but the topic of God rarely crosses our minds.
This divide between what I believe in my head and what I really believe in my heart may be simply the historical consequence that nowhere in our two most commonly confessed Christian Creeds does the word “Love” appear. You know, if God is Almighty it is helpful to define Almighty in terms of love, particularly the vulnerable love demonstrated be Jesus dying for us. For, Almighty typically gets defined in terms of power, often political power, and God is made a tool of Authoritarians. It would be helpful to have mentioned in our Creeds that “in love” or “by love” God the Father Son and Holy Spirit created and sustains the world and is and will save and heal it, but the writers of the Creeds didn’t and so our two foundational Creeds seem to remain matters of the head that don’t affect change the heart. Compare them to the fact that third step of Alcoholics Anonymous’s Twelve step program is more effective in affecting healing than either of Christianity’s two foundational creeds simply because of the word “care”. “Made a decision to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”
A good way to find out your creed is to determine what it is you are thinking and feeling about God and life when your feet hit the ground first thing in the morning. What’s the narrative, the blah-blah-blah, that starts in once you start to wake up. Some people get up immediately thinking about what they got to get done that day or the same worries they went to sleep with are still festering. If you’re grieving, it’s likely you wake up in the morning and for a few moments everything’s OK but then that ton of bricks sets in. Hang in there. In time, the ton of bricks gets lighter and doesn’t hurt so much because you’ve gotten stronger.
For me, my first few steps of the day on legs that ran a few too many marathons in my thirties on flat feet are a bit of adjustment. To be honest, there are days when my first word consists of four letters…umph. But, if pain were the dominant narrative of my inner voice, I would get right back into bed and never get up again unless of course it hurts more to be in bed than getting up and moving. But anyway, I don’t listen to the pain. I keep going because there is a deeper voice at work in me than what my body says first thing in the morning. And, like they say “Motion is medication.” Once, I’ve walked off the rigor mortis, it’s a new day. It’s not pain-free, but I’m above ground and on it.
Admittedly, I’m a morning person so I look forward to getting up around 5 AM. So, a sense of hope is a part of the voice I hear. I want to get up. I want to go downstairs, grab a coffee and read and learn all that theological and biblical stuff that I read that’s going to give me insight on how to lead and what to feed you people. I also take some time to pray for you folks and read the Bible. But, then everybody else starts to rouse and it’s time to get on with the day.
Yet, there’s still a deeper voice at play in me other than I look forward to getting up in the morning. There’s a song that’s been going through my head lately in the mornings. It goes something like this, “O Lord, thou art my God and King. Thee will I magnify and praise. I will thee bless and gladly sing unto thy holy name always. Thee will I bless each day I rise, and praise thy name, time without end; much to be praised and great God is. Whose greatness none can comprehend.”
That song is reflective of something going on in me that I realize that my life is not my own. I belong to Jesus Christ. He is my Lord. He is my King. In all things even family decisions I have to do right by him. I have to discern his voice before doing anything else (and quite honestly doing what’s best for the family can wind up being what it is.) I do have to live my life with the fundamental narrative that daily I must turn my will and my life over to the care of God. This doesn’t mean that life goes perfect and that I don’t get hurt and suffer. God does not prevent every bad thing from happening, but I know he’s with me when they do and I’ve learned to wait things thing’s out listening for him. Another way of saying this is that I’ve come to know myself, to experience myself, as a beloved child of God. That changes everything.
There is, then, a “therefore” that arises from this fundamental belief I have that my life is not my own but belongs to God and is entrusted to God’s care. As my life belongs to God, I have to conduct my life God’s way which means according to the same love God has shown me in Christ through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” He meant that his people actually do that.
While I’m quoting Jesus, let’s look briefly at our reading today. This scribe came to Jesus having seen that Jesus had answered well all the questions that the various power groups in Jerusalem had used to try and entrap him that they might have a legitimate reason to kill him. Jesus brilliantly turned all the questions back on them. So, this Scribe (Scribes were like lawyers with a lot of academic behind them) wants to know if Jesus is a true Jew at heart. A true Jew would have keeping the Commandments as their reason to live and so he asked Jesus what was the greatest of all the commandments. Jesus answered quoting a Creed rather than naming one of the Commandments.
This Creed was and is the basic Creed of the Jewish faith. They call it The Schema, which is the Hebrew word for “listen”. “Listen, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” The Israelites were to memorize this Creed and recite it at all times. It would have been on their lips when their feet hit the floor in the morning. In a day when people worshipped many gods, Israel had to remember who the only God is. They had to love God with their whole being and Love is an active word. As a people, as a nation they had to live according to the love of God and by the community that arises from this love the other nations would know who the true God is. As a faithful Jewish man this was Jesus’s Creed.
So, Jesus also added a second part “and to love your neighbour as you love yourself,” which comes from the Book of Leviticus at the end of a list of laws requiring Israel to practice justice and economic fairness and particularly show it to the poor. This was something all those power groups in Jerusalem who were seeking to kill Jesus were not doing. They were trying to save whatever hint of privilege and power they had by buttering up the Romans and collecting taxes that the poor could not pay. They were obviously not listening to their Creed that God alone is God and loving God with their whole being was their purpose. They were rather cowering before the supposed divine power of the Roman Emperor and abusing the poor while they themselves kept their privileges.
It is interesting to note that when Jesus was there in the midst of his most powerful enemies who were trying to entrap him in order to kill him, he stood on the foundational Creed that was in his heart. And so, that brings me back to asking the question what is your Creed? When you get up in the morning what are you saying to yourself…and is it healing and restorative? Does it bring you to remember the “Truth” that you are a beloved child of God? Does it inspire you to live for someone other than yourself? What’s your Creed? Amen.
