Opening the Door Creeds:  Tests or Testimonies?

Luke 11:1-13

One of my favorite authors tells a story about a priest who invited her to speak at his church in the South.  When she asked him what they wanted to hear from her, the priest answered, “Come tell us what is saving your life now.”  She writes that “it was as if he had swept his arm across a dusty table and brushed all the formal china to the ground.”   She was not being asked to shower them with high theology or lecture them as if they were in the academy, instead she was being invited to share with them what it was that her life depended on- no frills or gimmicks, nothing fancy or farfetched, just a real expression of what mattered to her and where God is in all of it.

For quite some time, I have believed that part of why we gather, part of the reason we put up with each other and love each other and commit to grow together even when it is hard, is to sweep the formal china to the ground and discover what it is real and true and what is left when the prettied up stuff is shattered and broken and we are left with ourselves, just as we are.

Our lives are so much about what we think we need to do or how we think we should act or what we think we are supposed to believe and I have learned this is particularly true when it comes to our faith.  It turns out that a lot of you have been sitting in these pews or other pews or the couch in your living room that replaced a pew on Sunday morning, you have been sitting in pews and thinking that you were the only one who struggled with the core tenets of the Christian faith.

You have sat there wondering if you were the only one who found the virgin birth or the resurrection difficult to swallow.  You have sat there wondering if you were the only one who felt uncomfortable with the idea that God is so vast, so wide, so deep and yet Jesus is the only person God has used in the six billion years of the earth’s existence to bring us closer to God.  You have sat there wondering if becoming fully alive in God is really about doctrine, about believing particular things in order to experience salvation and abundant life or if there is something more.  And to you, whoever you are, I believe that Jesus was talking to you.

Jesus’ friends were tired of hearing that they needed to do what they were told and not to ask questions.  Jesus’ friends were tired of hearing that they did not fit because they challenged the leaders of the time.  When they gathered around him to ask him how to pray, he teaches them what we know as the Lord’s prayer.  But I think the best part of this scripture, the part that changes everything for us, is the part that comes after. 

After he teaches them to pray, he goes on to tell them a story.  Imagine what would happen if you went to a friend in the middle of the night and said, 'Friend, I need some food, I know that I didn’t call ahead, but I see that you are home and I need some help. 

The friend might shout to the door from his bed that he doesn’t want to be bothered, that this isn’t a good time, that he has nothing to offer.

But Jesus said, let me tell you, that is not how God works.  Even when it is inconvenient, even when the hour is late, even when you are not in your best state, come find me. 

9"Here's what I'm saying:

Ask and you'll get;
Seek and you'll find;
Knock and the door will open.

Knock and the door will be open.  I believe that this is what Jesus was saying about God.  Knock and the door will be open.  Look for me and you will find me.  Ask for me and I will come.

But of course we human beings couldn’t let that be his message, we needed something in writing, something codified, something that would try to preserve their experience for all time and so when the books of the New Testament were being formed, the Roman Church was developing a formula that would later become the core of what we know today as the Apostle’s Creed.  It started with three simple questions used when a new believer was baptized.  Do you believe in the Father?  Do you believe in the Son?  Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? But as more and more people came to know God through Jesus, they decided that it was necessary to ensure orthodoxy and so in the fourth century with Marcellus of Ancyra and Rufinus of Aquileia we encounter the following text, which you can find on page 881 in the UMC hymnal.  “I believe in God the Father Almighty; and in Christ Jesus his only-begotten son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried, in the third day rose from the dead, ascended unto the heavens, and sat at the right of the Father, from whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit, the holy church, the remission of sins and the resurrection of the flesh.”

But even these words would not settle the arguments and so in the year 325, long after Jesus was gone, when it was clear that there was a battle under foot for whose ideas would prevail, Constantine, “who had hoped that Christianity would be the ‘cement of the Empire’ and who had already found himself in the necessity of intervening in <another theological schism in north Africa> gathered a council in the city of Nicaea in Bythinia, where over three hundred bishops were in attendance.”  And after much conversation and clear attempts to drowned out the voices of those who wanted to emphasize that Jesus’ divinity was not the same as God’s, the words of the Nicene Creed were adopted.  You can look them up on page 880 in the hymnal.

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

But even when the vote was taken, for more than fifty years after, the controversy over Christ’s nature continued, and much later “in the year 449, the leading fathers of the Christian church met in Ephesus, in Asia Minor where a band of monks and soldiers took control of the meeting hall, forcing  bishops to sign a blank paper on which the winning side later filled in its own favored statement.  The document targeted the patriarch of Constantinople, Flavian, one of the three or four greatest clerics in the Christian world” and all hell broke loose.  Some in the crowd asked that Flavian be slaughtered and that they beat him so badly that he died a few days later.  From what would happen later, we know that this episode was one of many just like it, gatherings supposedly grounded in Christ, but more like angry mobs filled with violence and hate.  

I have heard it said that reciting the creeds brings us back to the harmony of the “original” faith, but this is something like a fantasy that feeds our deep longing to have something pure.  But friends, the purest faith we have is the invitation extended to us by Jesus. Knock and the door will be open.  Look for me and you will find me.  Ask for me and I will come.

So for those of who have struggled with the words of our Christian creeds, to those of you who have found it hard to accept each part of the doctrines that have come to define what it means to be a Christian today, I believe that Jesus was talking to you.

In spite of our need to codify Christ, the early church was not of the same mind and I wish they would have been okay with that.  I wonder how different Christian history would be if those early church fathers had understood that unity in Christ does not mean we must all think the same way.  The moment we raise our arms to defend our love of a man who asked us not to, we know that we have lost our way.

I hear the words of these creeds now and I can’t help but notice how far they are from what Jesus said to his hungry friends.  Knock and the door will be open.  Look for me and you will find me.  Ask for me and I will come.

Some of you have asked me why we don’t read these creeds together and I am not against it, but it has never been clear to me how to say them together in church without it sounding like it is some kind of inquisition, some way to test who is in and who is out.  For some among us, these creeds symbolize hope and faith, while to others they represent impossible faith and a closed door.  I believe that we are here together, we have promised to walk together not because we all believe the same things but because we are committed to sweeping the formal china to the ground and discovering what is real and true and what is left when the prettied up stuff is shattered and broken and we are left with ourselves.  Jesus didn’t ask for a test of faith, he simply offered an open door and invited us to come in.  Knock and the door will be open.  Look for me and you will find me.  Ask for me and I will come.  May we remember that unity in Christ is enough.  May it be so.  Amen.

Barbara Brown Taylor.  An Altar in the World:  A Geography of Faith page. Xv.

Justo L. Gonzalez.  A History of Christian Thought:  From the Beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon.  Abingdon Press, 1987. P. 152.

Philip Jenkins.  “The Politics of Creeds:  Fighting Words” The Christian Century March 23rd, 2010